We all make instant judgements based on what we see, and when it comes to YouTube videos, a thumbnail can make or break a viewer’s decision to click. Creating eye-catching and engaging thumbnails is crucial for increasing your video’s click-through rate and attracting more viewers. With the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a wealth of online tools available, you can create YouTube thumbnails quickly and easily. Here are a mix of 10 AI YouTube thumbnail generators, and online YouTube thumbnail makers to help you do that.
How to make YouTube Thumbnails with the Best YouTube Thumbnail Makers (AI and Online)
AI Thumbnail Makers for YouTube
1. Canva (AI and Online)
Canva occupies a sort of between place with both online and AI thumbnail makers for YouTube. You can create a YouTube thumbnail in the usual online way of starting with a template and adding or removing elements, or you can use their text to image prompt to create customised results with AI.
Quick Look
Pricing
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Tier
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Cost and What you get
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Free
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You get access to quite a lot in the free tier, including the AI generator. There are plenty of free templates, fonts, and assets to choose from.
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Pro
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£99.99 per year – access to over 100 million extra photos, videos, elements, fonts, and templates. You also get a magic resize tool, background remover, and animations.
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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There’s a lot of functionality with Canva that’s absolutely free and zero watermarking. The premium offering isn’t badly priced compared to some similar platforms.
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Cons
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You need a (free) Canva account. Some limitations on included assets but you can also upload your own which offsets that a bit.
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2. Plus AI
Plus AI is a no nonsense AI thumbnail maker for YouTube. Just send them your prompt – a description of what’s in the video – and their AI will make something customised in just a few minutes, sending the results by email. You’ll get five options to choose from.
Quick Look
Pricing
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Tier
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Cost and What you get
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One-off
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$5 per thumbnail
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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The process is pretty simple. A one off cost is great for those who don’t like subscription models.
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Cons
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The cost per thumb is a little high. The results that include people still look very AI generated. You can’t see what you’re getting until you get your email.
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3. Appypie
Appypie includes a suite of tools including a free AI YouTube thumbnail generator. You can choose from one of their existing templates and edit it using their AI powered features. You can change fonts, sizes, colours and create something truly bespoke.
Quick Look
Pricing
Free, though some of Appypie’s other tools have a cost attached.
Pros and Cons
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Pros
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It’s a free AI YouTube thumbnail generator. It’s easy to use.
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Cons
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You have to sign up for a (free) account which includes accepting that they’ll be able to use your data for certain things. The results seem to vary in quality, some look a little cheap.
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4. Thumbly
Thumbly is an AI thumbnail maker for YouTube, though refers to itself as a ‘Clickbait YouTube Thumbnail Generator’ which we take to mean it uses currently popular elements to build a thumbnail that should be appealing to your audience. You can write in your own prompts to create something with their AI tool.
Quick Look
Pricing
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Tier
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Cost and What you get
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?
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An entire mystery.
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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Their embedded video shows the process looking fairly simple. No design skills required.
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Cons
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You have to sign up to a waiting list to ‘witness the magic’. While this might excite some with the idea of exclusivity, it’s an annoying barrier and an obvious data scrape.
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5. Picmaker (Online and AI)
Picmaker is an online thumbnail maker that has an ‘AI-enhanced MAD button to suggest designs in seconds’. There’s also a background remover powered by AI. Aside from that, you can choose from pre-made templates and customise them.
Quick Look
Pricing
Based on annual pricing to save 20%. To complicate things though, Starter currently has 45% off, and Pro has 30% off.
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Tier
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Cost and What you get
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Free
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A limited number of templates and features. Watermarked outputs. |
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Starter
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$180 per year. Everything in free but no watermark, premium assets, schedule to social accounts, 20 GB storage and more.
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Pro
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$380 per year. Everything in Starter but 50GB storage, hashtag suggestions, all downloadable formats, and mystery things like ‘Buzz’ and ‘Panic Button’.
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Teams
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Custom pricing. As above but includes support and priority options.
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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Easy to use. Decent rage of free templates available.
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Cons
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Requires a signup. The prices seem outrageous compared to similar offerings, unless ‘Buzz’ and ‘Panic Button’ turn out to be some sort of magical features…
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How to make YouTube Thumbnails with the best YouTube Thumbnail Makers (AI and Online) – Continued
Online YouTube Thumbnail Generator
6. PlaceIt
Placeit is one of the most popular online platforms for creating YouTube thumbnails. You can choose from a wide variety of customisable templates and modify the text, images, and colours to suit your brand and video content. There are some AI created pre-made elements as part of certain templates.
Quick Look
Pricing
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Tier
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Cost and What you get
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PAYG
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You can pay per design – around $3 for a thumbnail for YouTube
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Subscription
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$9.99 per month based on yearly billing. Unlimited downloads and all features.
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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It’s really easy to use. A pay as you go option is useful for those who don’t like subscriptions. You can create just about anything, including video stuff, not just thumbnails.
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Cons
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Some of the designs are a little dated. No free allowances.
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7. Snappa
Start with a pre-made template and then adjust it to create your YouTube thumb, or start from scratch with a blank canvas at the right dimensions. Drag and drop what you want to use onto your thumbnail.
Quick Look
Pricing
Prices are based on annual billing.
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Tier
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Cost and What you get
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Free
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One user, 6000+ templates, 5,000,000+ elements, 3 downloads per month
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Pro
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$19 per month. As above but with unlimited downloads, social media integrations, custom font uploads and a background removal tool.
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Team
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$20 per month. As above but with up to 5 users, and some team collaboration options.
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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The free tier gives you access to a lot. If you’re working in a team, the price point is better than for an individual – collaboration tools are useful.
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Cons
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3 downloads for free isn’t a lot. $19 per month for an individual is a bit of a leap.
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8. Piktochart
Piktochart is very similar to the other online thumbnail makers for YouTube. You get a select number of templates to choose from and very limited downloads as part of the free option.
Quick Look
Pricing
For those in education the pricing is a little different (better!) so it’s worth checking that out if it applies to you.
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Free
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Free forever includes 1-4 people, 5 projects, 100mb of cloud storage and 1 folder. There’s no watermark on downloads but other features are limited and you can only download twice.
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Pro
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£14 per member per month. As above but up to 25 team members, 100gb of storage, unlimited projects and folders.
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Enterprise
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Custom pricing. Over 25 users, 200gb of storage, and full features access.
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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It’s easy to use. There’s a free option.
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Cons
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The pricing is quite expensive considering you can get the same for cheaper, or even free, elsewhere.
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9. FotoJet
FotoJet is a similar offering to many YouTube thumbnail makers. You can design and edit online, choosing from either a pre-made template or a custom canvas with access to assets that you can drag and drop to create something bespoke.
Quick Look
Pricing
Based on being billed annually.
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Tier
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Cost and What you get
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Free
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Access to a handful of templates to try it out.
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FotoJet Plus
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(Also available as a 7 day free trial with signup). $3.33 per month – custom canvas sizes, all the premium resources, and no ads.
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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Very easy to use. Limited freebies means you can create something simple without cost.
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Cons
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Restricted use without a subscription. Some of the design elements look a little cheap.
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10. Adobe Express
Adobe Express is a free YouTube thumbnail maker. Adobe promises it will be ‘free forever’ though it also has locked features behind a premium sub, so it’s not quite as good as it might seem at first. Still, the stuff that is free is nicely designed compared to other sites.
Quick Look
Pricing
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Tier
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Cost and What you get
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Free
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Limited templates and design assets.
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Premium
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(also available as a 30 day free trial). £99.80 per year (saving 16%). Extra features like resize, cut-out and all premium templates and design assets. Schedule unlimited posts to social media channels.
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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Quite a lot of choice with the free assets still. The design interface is quite nice, and it’s also instinctive.
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Cons
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Links with a required Adobe account to use. Premium offering is a little steep.
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Summary: What is the Best YouTube Thumbnail Maker?
Whatever your design skills, there’s a YouTube thumbnail maker out there for you, and we hope you’ve got lots of options from this article. If you’re still undecided, here are some more thoughts to help you choose:
AI YouTube Thumbnail Generator
AI-powered thumbnail makers like Plus AI and Appypie are great for instant creation. This makes them time efficient and can target specific design elements that are known to be successful in generating clicks. Their downside is they often come with a price-tag, and that’s usually a subscription, so you could end up locked into an ongoing cost for at least a year. If casual use and cost are important factors in your decision process, skip YouTube thumbnail generators with AI.
Online YouTube Thumbnail Maker
Placeit, Canva, and Adobe Express are leading the way with online thumbnail creation tools, offering a vast range of customisable templates, design suggestions and, in the case of Canva, AI driven tools to help you create something even more tailored to your needs. The pre-made templates offered by online tools are usually visually very appealing and have a wide range of customisation options that are easy to use.
Best YouTube Thumbnail Maker – All Round
We have to opt for Canva as the best all-rounder. Most of its assets are free to use, so you’ve got plenty of choice when it comes to design. The free account also gives you access to some of the AI features including the AI YouTube thumbnail generator – text to picture prompt. If you did decide you needed the premium features, the price is competitive compared to others, coming out at just over £8 per month.
All of the tools in our round-up today are easy to use and have an instinctive interface. The real question comes down to your specific needs and requirements. We’d definitely recommend trying the free and trial options first, so you can get an idea of how they work and whether they’d be right for you.
Envato Elements
If you’re looking for YouTube thumbnail templates, why not try Envato Elements. For a monthly subscription you get access to thousands of video templates, graphics, stock photos, music tracks and more – use as many as you like!
Each month there are free templates too, including free graphic design templates. Above are some of this month’s freebies, so take a look and see if you can grab yourself something great.
Conclusion
YouTube thumbnail tools, whether online or AI-powered, provide benefits for creators everywhere, making the process of thumbnail creation more accessible, efficient, and visually appealing. Whichever tool you decide to use, you’ll hopefully be able to create something quickly and easily that will help you stand out in the competitive world of YouTube content.
About This Page
This page was written by Marie Gardiner. Marie is a writer, author, and photographer. It was edited by Gonzalo Angulo. Gonzalo is an editor, writer and illustrator.