How much does Midjourney cost per month?

Midjourney has four plans: Basic at $10, Standard at $30, Pro at $60 and Mega at $120 a month. If you pay annually in advance, prices drop by 20% to $8, $24, $48 and $96 a month respectively. All amounts are net prices in US dollars.

Is Midjourney available for free?

No. There is currently no free trial on midjourney.com or in Discord – a subscription is mandatory. Only the sister app niji·journey for iOS and Android can be tried for free to a limited extent. If you want to generate AI images for free, you will find alternatives in our comparison of AI image generators.

Why am I paying more than $10 for Midjourney Basic?

Midjourney shows net prices. When you buy from Germany, the payment processor Stripe charges 19% VAT (Umsatzsteuer) based on your billing address – so $10 becomes roughly $11.90. Because Midjourney bills exclusively in US dollars, your bank converts the amount and, depending on your account type, may charge a foreign currency fee. You can pay with common credit and debit cards and, depending on your region, with wallets such as Apple Pay or Google Pay; PayPal is not supported.

What are Fast GPU hours?

Midjourney does not count in images but in compute time. According to Midjourney, an image job usually uses about one minute of GPU time and a video job about eight minutes. Basic includes 3.3 hours (200 minutes) per month, Standard 15, Pro 30 and Mega 60 hours. Important: unused Fast time expires at the end of the month and is not carried over – even on an annual plan.

How much does extra compute time cost?

Extra Fast Time costs $4 per hour and can be bought at any time. These hours expire after 60 days and are non-refundable. If you regularly have to top up, the next higher plan is usually cheaper.

From which plan do my images stay private?

Stealth Mode is only available from the Pro plan at $60 a month. On the Basic and Standard plans, all generated images and videos are publicly visible on the Midjourney website. Note: even with Stealth Mode, whatever you generate in public Discord channels remains visible – you only work privately on the Create page on the web, in direct messages or on a private Discord server.

Do I need a specific plan as a company?

Yes. According to Midjourney, companies with more than one million US dollars in gross annual revenue must subscribe to the Pro or Mega plan in order to use the images commercially. This requirement does not apply to smaller companies and the self-employed. There are no discounts for companies, associations or educational institutions; Midjourney only offers consolidated billing from 50 Pro or Mega annual subscriptions. If you enter a VAT ID (Umsatzsteuer-ID) when buying as a business, you will receive an invoice without VAT after the payment processor has successfully verified it, provided an exemption applies.

Is the annual plan worth it for Midjourney?

With Standard, the annual plan saves you $72 a year ($288 instead of $360), with Pro $144 and with Mega $288. The 20% discount is therefore noticeable. But it only pays off if you actually use Midjourney for twelve months without a break – and you pay the full annual amount in advance.

Do I get my money back if I don't like Midjourney?

Only within narrow limits. According to Midjourney, a refund is only possible if you have used less than 20 GPU minutes over the entire lifetime of your account – Fast and Relax time combined. That is roughly 20 image jobs. If you want to try it out quickly after signing up and then cancel, you should decide early. Top-up Fast time is generally non-refundable.

Can I also create videos with Midjourney?

Yes, all four plans can generate videos. Basic is limited to SD resolution; from Standard upwards HD is available too. However, a video job costs about eight minutes of Fast time instead of roughly one minute for an image – so the 200 minutes in Basic only allow around 25 video jobs. Unlimited SD videos in Relax mode are only possible from the Pro plan.

Is there free Fast time?

Yes, but only for subscribers. Every day, the 2,000 members who rate the most images receive an additional hour of Fast time. Occasionally, Fast time is also given for taking part in surveys. This gifted time expires 30 days after it is credited and can only be used with an active subscription.

Midjourney Cost 2026: All Plans, Prices & Hidden Extra Costs

All Midjourney plans at a glance

Plan	per month	Annual plan	Fast GPU	Relax mode	Video	Stealth Mode
Basic	$10	$96 $8/month	3.3 h (200 minutes)	–	SD, Fast only	No
Standard	$30	$288 $24/month	15 h	unlimited images	SD & HD, Fast only	No
Pro	$60	$576 $48/month	30 h	unlimited images + SD video	SD & HD, SD also in Relax mode	Yes
Mega	$120	$1,152 $96/month	60 h	unlimited images + SD video	SD & HD, SD also in Relax mode	Yes

All prices are net prices in US dollars. When buying from Germany, 19% VAT (Umsatzsteuer) is added – so Basic effectively costs around $11.90.

No free trial: Midjourney has abolished its free trial. The tool cannot be tried without a subscription. You can find free alternatives in our comparison of AI image generators.

Which Midjourney plan is worth it?

The decision depends less on price than on two features that Midjourney hides behind higher tiers: Relax mode and Stealth Mode.

Basic at $10 includes 3.3 hours of Fast GPU time per month. Since one generation uses roughly a minute, that is about 200 image jobs. Once the allowance is used up, nothing more happens – Relax mode, which keeps generating without limit, is not included in Basic. The plan is enough for a first month to get to know the tool, but rarely for serious work.

Standard at $30 is the sensible starting point for most people. Besides 15 hours of Fast time, it is the first plan with Relax mode and unlimited images – generation just takes longer. In practice, that means you no longer hit a limit with images, only the limit of your patience. Videos in Standard, on the other hand, only run on Fast time, though already in HD.

Pro at $60 is worth it mainly because of Stealth Mode. On Basic and Standard, all generated images end up in the public gallery – for commissioned work, unreleased products or confidential concepts, that is a deal-breaker. Anyone working commercially effectively has no cheaper option at Midjourney. On top of that, companies with more than one million dollars in annual revenue have to book at least Pro anyway.

Mega at $120 doubles the Fast time compared with Pro to 60 hours and allows 12 instead of 6 parallel video jobs in Fast mode. There are no other new features. The plan only pays off if you actually use more than 30 hours of Fast time a month – otherwise Pro plus occasional top-ups of compute time is cheaper.

What you get for your money: compute time in images and videos

Midjourney gives as a rule of thumb about one minute of GPU time per image job (a grid of four images) and around eight minutes per video job. Upscaling costs more, variations less. This gives a rough idea of how far the Fast time of each plan goes:

Plan	Fast time	≈ image jobs	≈ video jobs	Price per Fast minute
Basic	200 min.	200	25	5.0 cents
Standard	900 min.	900	112	3.3 cents
Pro	1,800 min.	1,800	225	3.3 cents
Mega	3,600 min.	3,600	450	3.3 cents
Top-up	60 min. each	60	7	6.7 cents

Calculation based on monthly prices in US cents, net; Relax time is not included. The actual number depends on resolution, aspect ratio and model version.

Two things stand out: from Standard upwards, a Fast minute costs the same everywhere, so in the higher plans you are not paying for cheaper compute time but for Relax mode, Stealth Mode and more parallel jobs. And top-up time at $4 per hour is twice as expensive as subscription time from Standard upwards. If you top up every month, you are better off with the next higher plan. Incidentally, version V8.2 has been the default model since 24 July 2026.

The three cost traps

1. VAT is not included in the price

Like almost all US providers, Midjourney shows net prices. When you buy from Germany, the payment processor Stripe charges 19% VAT (Umsatzsteuer) based on your billing address; you only see the total at checkout. The advertised $10 becomes $11.90, $30 becomes $35.70 and $60 becomes around $71.40. Since billing is exclusively in US dollars, your bank may add a foreign currency fee depending on your credit card. Midjourney does not accept PayPal, but does accept cards and, depending on your region, Apple Pay or Google Pay.

2. Fast time expires at the end of the month

Unused Fast GPU hours are not carried over to the following month but expire. If you work irregularly – intensively one month, not at all the next – you therefore pay for time you never use. Additional hours cost $4, expire after 60 days and are expressly non-refundable.

3. Privacy costs $60

Stealth Mode is the most expensive upgrade in the plan system: if you do not want your images to be public, you jump from $30 to $60 – a doubling of the monthly fee for a privacy setting. And even then, whatever you generate in public Discord channels remains visible to others. Factor that in before using Midjourney for client projects.

Midjourney on an annual plan: what you save

With annual payment in advance, Midjourney gives a 20% discount. In absolute terms, you save $24 a year on Basic, $72 on Standard, $144 on Pro and $288 on Mega. The catch: you pay the whole amount up front, so $1,152 in one go on Mega.

Whether that is worth it is also a question of the market. The AI image market moves fast: in 2026 Leonardo was discontinued, Freepik AI was renamed Magnific, and OpenAI introduced an ad-funded low-cost tier. If you commit for twelve months today, you may find yourself in six months facing a much better offer that you cannot use.

Alternatives to Midjourney

Midjourney is the best-known name, but not the best for every purpose. For text in images, Ideogram renders lettering far more reliably. For scalable vector logos, Recraft delivers genuine SVG files. For product photos in an online shop, Photoroom is specialised. And if you only need images on the side, you get them with ChatGPT or Google Gemini as part of the subscription you already have – with Gemini even at genuine euro prices with no exchange-rate risk.

We have compared all providers with their prices, free tiers and usage rights in our comparison of AI image generators.