You have probably seen some amazing AI-generated images and are wondering how much does Midjourney cost?
Midjourney costs between $10 to $60 per month, depending on which plan you need. There is also a free trial which is good for 25 image generations.
April 2023 Update: Midjourney’s Free Trial is currently on hold
In this post, we will cover the price of Midjourney, what you get from a paid plan, and whether it’s worth the value.
Midjourney Cost Per Month
Midjourney offers three paid plans that are aimed at everyone, from hobbyists to the advanced superuser.
If you are new to Midjourney and want to continue using it after your free trial, we recommend the Basic Plan.
It’s $10 per month and comes with 3.3 fast hours per month. Each fast hour is good for roughly 60 image generations, so the Basic Plan is capable of generating about 200 images before you run out.
If you exhaust your Basic Plan, we recommend checking out the Standard Plan at $30 per month. This version comes with 15 fast hours and, more importantly, provides access to relax mode.
Midjourney relax mode allows you to generate an unlimited amount of images. The only catch is that you must wait for an available GPU, which can take anywhere from 0-10 minutes.
The Pro Plan comes with more fast hours, but it also introduces stealth mode.
Midjourney stealth mode is a feature that hides your generated images from the public Midjourney community website. This is great if you are working on a sensitive project for a client or employer and want to remain anonymous.
Overall, we find that the Basic Plan is enough for most users because it offers a great introduction to Midjourney and provides enough credits to experiment with the app.
Midjourney Price Per Image
Based on the current pricing, the price per image is 3 to 5 cents.
The price per high-quality image is 6 to 10 cents since these generations consume twice the amount of fast hours.
We calculated this figure based on the assumption that one fast hour yields 60 images.
This does not consider relax hours that come with the Standard and Pro plans. Factoring in relax hours would drastically lower the price per image to fractions of a penny.
For fun, we also calculated the value of the free trial, which comes to about $1.20 based on the 0.4 fast hours it comes with.
Is Midjourney Unlimited?
Yes, some Midjourney paid plans offer unlimited access to image generation via relax mode. This feature uses relax hours, which provides unmetered access to Midjourney image generation.
This option is perfect for anyone who wants to maximize their experimentation with the platform.
The beauty of relax mode is that you can write several prompts and place them in a queue for Midjourney to process when computing resources become available.
With relax mode, Midjourney’s Standard Plan offers unlimited image generations.
This makes Midjourney cost less per image than paid alternatives like Dall-E.
Is It Possible to Get Midjourney for Free Forever?
April 2023 Update: Midjourney’s Free Trial is currently on hold
If you’re on a budget, you’re probably wondering if it is possible to avoid paying for Midjourney.
Midjourney is still free through a trial account, and there are a couple of ways to save money with the paid plans.
The best method for using Midjourney for free is to create a free trial account.
Some users on Reddit have reported creating new trial accounts each time they exhaust their 25 free images.
Note: It’s against Midjourney terms and conditions for a user to have more than one account
This sounds pretty tedious to us, but if you’re looking to save a buck and are willing to trade some of your time, this might be the best option.
There is another method that is not free but can help save you money on your Midjourney subscription.
It involves rating Midjourney images in Discord.
Every day, Midjourney gives one free fast hour (about 60 image generations) to the top 1,000 users who rated the most images that day.
Our personal experience and several self-reports we found online suggest you need to rate more than 50 images to be eligible for this reward.
Keep in mind that as Midjourney becomes more popular, this figure will likely increase as well.
Midjourney Alternatives
Additionally, you could look into Midjourney alternatives.
Stable Diffusion models are available to the public for free.
While these models are less polished than Midjourney out of the box, there are several open-source projects organized around training models for specific purposes like anime, photography, or faces.
We plan to cover more of these options in the future.
Is the Midjourney Cost Worth It?
Yes, we find that Midjourney is the most accessible and easy-to-use AI image-generation tool available today.
It offers the most polished images without users needing to use complicated prompts or train their own models.
The paid plans offer tremendous value considering you are able to generate literally anything within the realm of imagination, apart from NSFW content.
We suggest trying out the free trial and upgrading to a Basic plan depending on how often you use Midjourney.
For us, Midjourney has replaced stock images on several of our projects outside of Approachable AI.
We have found it much easier to simply type what we are looking for in a prompt than to spend time looking for a royalty-free image online.
When you compare a Midjourney subscription to Shutterstock, Midjourney is significantly cheaper per image.
Factor in the complete control you have over the outputs, and it’s a no-brainer to use Midjourney or alternative AI image-generation tools.
Midjourney Without Discord
You currently must have a Discord account in order to use Midjourney.
The easiest way to use Midjourney is to start a direct message with the Midjourney bot.
This is much better than using one of the beginner channels because you do not see the image generations of other users.
In the future, Midjourney may offer API access similar to other AI companies like OpenAI.
However, in the meantime, we will closely monitor any developments that make AI apps like Midjourney easier to use for non-technical users.
Can Anyone Use Midjourney?
Anyone over the age of 13 is eligible to create a Midjourney account.
Apart from that, Midjourney has a simple code of conduct for its platform.
Having said that, Discord is an open platform, so you may encounter users who say offensive things or generate offensive content.
If this might be an issue for you, we recommend using Midjourney exclusively through direct messaging the Midjourney bot, as we explained earlier.
Whatever plan you decide to use, we hope you have as much fun on Midjourney as we are!
