Best AI T-Shirt Design Tools Compared (2025)

We tested every major platform that claims to do AI t-shirt design. Here's the honest truth: most are either design tools without purchasing, or POD platforms without AI. Very few do both.

The Comparison Table

The Gap in the Market

Notice the pattern? Kittl and Canva are great design tools, but they don't sell or ship shirts. Printful and Printify handle fulfillment brilliantly, but have no AI design tools. You need to use multiple platforms and stitch them together.

Shirtgen.ai was built to close this gap: type an idea → AI generates designs → edit in a full studio → preview on a realistic mockup → buy → we print and ship. One platform, one flow.

Detailed Breakdown

Kittl — Best for Professional Designers

Kittl is genuinely impressive. Multiple AI models (Flux, DALL-E, Ideogram), beautiful templates, vector editing tools. If you're a designer making assets for clients, it's excellent. But it's a design tool, not a store. You export your design and take it to a separate POD service.

Printful/Printify — Best for Existing Stores

If you already have designs and need fulfillment, these are the gold standard. Huge product catalogs, global shipping, Shopify integration. But no AI — you need to make your designs elsewhere.

Shirtgen.ai — Best for "I Have an Idea, I Want a Shirt"

Built for the person who thinks "I want a shirt with a samurai cat" and wants to be wearing it in a week. Type the idea, AI generates 4 options, edit if you want, pick your size and color, checkout. Done. No design skills, no jumping between platforms.