Midjourney — Price, Plans and How It Works
Updated 15 September 2026 · Twin AI Labs
Midjourney is a closed, subscription-only text-to-image AI service, and it costs $10, $30, $60 or $120 per month — 20% less when billed yearly. There is no free tier: the trial ended in March 2023. The plans differ mainly in fast GPU hours (3.3 to 60) and in whether unlimited Relax generation and Stealth mode are included.
What is Midjourney?
Midjourney is a generative AI service that creates images from a text /glossary/prompt. Unlike /glossary/stable-diffusion, it is fully closed: the model weights are private, you cannot self-host it, and you use it only through the company's own apps. It is made by Midjourney, Inc., a small independent research lab founded by David Holz (also a co-founder of Leap Motion), and it opened to the public in July 2022. Its reputation rests on one thing: the default aesthetic. Where many models render a literal, flat interpretation of your words, Midjourney leans hard into lighting, composition and artistic mood, so even a short prompt tends to come out looking like a finished piece.
How much does Midjourney cost?
Midjourney costs $10 a month on Basic, $30 on Standard, $60 on Pro and $120 on Mega. Paying for a year up front takes 20% off every tier, so the same plans work out to $8, $24, $48 and $96 a month. There is no free tier and no trial — Midjourney withdrew its free trial in March 2023 after heavy abuse, so the $10 Basic plan is the cheapest way in.
What you are buying is fast GPU time, not a fixed number of images. Each tier includes a monthly allotment of fast hours that does not roll over, and extra hours cost $4 each. Standard and above add unlimited Relax generation (slower, queued, but uncapped), while Stealth mode — which keeps your images out of the public gallery — is limited to Pro and Mega.
| Plan | Per month | Yearly (per month) | Fast GPU hours | Relax mode | Stealth mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $10 | $8 | 3.3 | No | No |
| Standard | $30 | $24 | 15 | Yes | No |
| Pro | $60 | $48 | 30 | Yes | Yes |
| Mega | $120 | $96 | 60 | Yes | Yes |
How Midjourney works
Under the hood Midjourney is a /glossary/diffusion model — it starts from random noise and denoises it toward an image that matches your prompt, the same broad family as Stable Diffusion and FLUX. The exact architecture and training data are unpublished, which is part of why its style is hard to reproduce elsewhere. You steer it not with sliders but with parameters appended to the prompt.
The most common controls you attach to a Midjourney prompt:
- --ar — aspect ratio, e.g. --ar 16:9 for a widescreen frame.
- --stylize (--s) — how strongly to apply Midjourney's house aesthetic versus literal prompt-following.
- --chaos (--c) — how varied the four initial options are from each other.
- --no — a lightweight /glossary/negative-prompt: --no text removes lettering.
- --sref and --cref — style and character references that carry a look or a face across images.
Midjourney versions
Midjourney ships numbered model versions, and each one changed the default look and how literally it reads a prompt. Knowing the version tells you what to expect from an image:
- V1–V3 (2022) — early, dreamlike and abstract; more "AI art" than photographs.
- V4 (late 2022) — a big jump in coherence, detail and prompt understanding.
- V5 / V5.2 (2023) — photorealism, wider aspect ratios and much better hands.
- V6 / V6.1 (2023–2024) — sharper prompt adherence and the first reliable in-image text.
- V7 and the current V8.1 (2025–2026) — stronger realism, character consistency and reference control.
How to access Midjourney
Midjourney began as a Discord bot: you joined a server and typed /imagine to generate. It now also has a web app at midjourney.com, which is the primary interface for most users, and both need an active subscription — there is no way to generate without paying. There is no official public API either, so any "Midjourney API" you see advertised is an unofficial reseller that can break or be shut down without notice. Refunds are only possible if you have used fewer than 20 GPU minutes, roughly 15-20 images, which makes a paid plan hard to evaluate before you commit.
How Twin AI relates to Midjourney
Midjourney gives gorgeous defaults but locks you into one closed model, one subscription and, for many users outside the US, a payment wall. Twin AI takes the opposite approach: it runs several leading image models — FLUX 2, Nano Banana, GPT Image 2 and Seedream (Midjourney itself and the /glossary/stable-diffusion family are not in Twin AI) — behind one interface and auto-tunes the /glossary/sampler, steps and /glossary/cfg for each, so you get Midjourney-grade polish without learning parameters. Upload a few photos and Twin keeps your face consistent across a whole shoot, powering /use-cases/ai-photoshoot and /use-cases/avatar, and you can run one prompt across models side by side in /compare/midjourney-vs-flux. Everything is payable with a Russian card or SBP, no VPN required. Start free in /create/photo.
Sources
- Midjourney Docs — Comparing Midjourney Plansdocs.midjourney.com
- Midjourney — official pricing pagemidjourney.com
FAQ
What is Midjourney?
Midjourney is a closed, subscription-based text-to-image AI service that generates highly stylised images from a written prompt. It runs on a proprietary diffusion model, launched in open beta in July 2022, and is known for a polished, art-directed default aesthetic that looks good with minimal prompting.
Is Midjourney free?
No. Midjourney removed its free trial in March 2023 and is subscription-only: Basic $10, Standard $30, Pro $60 or Mega $120 per month, 20% less billed yearly. Twin AI, by contrast, lets you start generating AI images without a subscription or any install.
How much does Midjourney cost per month?
Midjourney costs $10 a month on Basic, $30 on Standard, $60 on Pro and $120 on Mega; billed yearly those become $8, $24, $48 and $96 a month. The price buys fast GPU hours — 3.3, 15, 30 and 60 respectively — rather than a set number of images, and extra fast hours cost $4 each.
What is the difference between the Midjourney plans?
Fast GPU hours and two features. Basic ($10) gives 3.3 fast hours and nothing else; Standard ($30) adds 15 fast hours plus unlimited Relax generation; Pro ($60) gives 30 fast hours and adds Stealth mode, which keeps your images private; Mega ($120) is the same as Pro with 60 fast hours.
How is Midjourney different from Stable Diffusion?
Midjourney is closed and hosted with a strong built-in aesthetic and little low-level control, while Stable Diffusion is open-source, self-hostable and endlessly customisable with LoRA, ControlNet and IP-Adapter. Midjourney trades control for convenience and out-of-the-box beauty.
Does Midjourney have an API?
No official public API exists. Midjourney is used through its Discord bot and its web app at midjourney.com; any third-party "Midjourney API" is an unofficial reseller and can break or be shut down at any time.
Do I need Midjourney to use Twin AI?
No. Twin AI runs several modern image models for you behind one interface and auto-tunes their settings, so you get comparable polish without a Midjourney subscription, Discord, or a foreign card. Just upload photos in /create/photo.