Midjourney Pricing Explained (2026): What $10 to $120 a Month Buys

Midjourney has four paid plans and no free one. As of 12 November 2026, Basic costs $10, Standard $30, Pro $60 and Mega $120 a month billed monthly. Billed yearly they are $8, $24, $48 and $96 a month, charged upfront as one payment of $96 to $1,152. These are US-dollar prices with tax added at checkout where it applies, and Midjourney's website offers no free trial.

That is the easy part. You are buying GPU time, not images, so the right plan depends on three things the plan cards barely explain: Relax mode, privacy and video.

How I read Midjourney's prices

I read Midjourney's pricing page in both billing states, its plan comparison, its help articles on GPU speeds, Fast time, Relax and Turbo modes, video, Draft mode, Stealth mode, free trials, refunds, cancelling, upgrades, payments, tax, group plans and student billing, and its Terms of Service, on 12 November 2026. I did not open an account or reach checkout, so I never saw a real bill with tax on it. Derived numbers are marked as my arithmetic.

Midjourney plans at a glance

A yearly price below is one charge for twelve months, and every figure is in US dollars before tax, as of 12 November 2026.

Midjourney's pricing page and its Comparing Midjourney Plans article, read 12 November 2026; the two agree on every price. Every plan lists "General commercial terms" and Fast time top-ups at $4 an hour.

Check the switch before you read a number. The page opens on yearly billing, so the $8 under Basic is really $96, charged once and upfront.

Yearly billing saves 20%, paid upfront

Midjourney's page says "Switch to Yearly to save 20%", and at US prices as of 12 November 2026 that holds on all four plans:

My arithmetic on Midjourney's US prices, read 12 November 2026, before tax. Midjourney says the full year fee "is paid upfront".

The number to remember is 9.6. Every yearly charge equals 9.6 monthly payments (my arithmetic), so yearly wins only if you would still be paying in month 10. Stop in month 6 and monthly was cheaper.

The catch: a yearly plan still gets a monthly allowance. In Midjourney's words, "Whether you're on a monthly or yearly plan, unused Fast time vanishes at the end of each month". Twelve buckets, paid upfront. None of them carries over.

What a Fast hour buys in images

Midjourney's own analogy fits: a subscription "buys you time on these GPUs, similar to buying data for a cell phone plan." Its rule of thumb is about one minute per image prompt and eight per video prompt. The GPU article lists finer costs, and V8.2 has been the default model since 24 July 2026.

Midjourney's GPU Speed, Version and Draft mode articles, read 12 November 2026. Midjourney says upscales, unusual aspect ratios and older model versions can take more time.

Midjourney's own Basic figure is "~200 image jobs / month", and "One image job has four images, so 200 jobs is 800 images." That assumes about a minute a job. At 0.8 minutes per SD prompt, every plan's minutes stretch a little further:

My arithmetic from Midjourney's listed minute costs, read 12 November 2026, Fast mode only. Upscales, variations and retries cut these counts; Relax images on Standard and up do not.

Turbo mode "uses double the Fast time for each image", for speed Midjourney puts at "up to four times faster than Fast Mode". Its GPU article says Turbo "is not currently supported in V8.1" and calls it experimental, and it does not say whether Turbo runs on V8.2.

Relax mode is the reason Standard costs three times Basic.

Relax mode runs your jobs in a slower queue without touching your Fast time, and Midjourney calls that time "unlimited". Standard, Pro and Mega get it for images; Basic gets none. Three limits sit behind the word:

• The wait. The pricing FAQ quotes "average wait times of 0 to 10 minutes", while the GPU article says 0 to 30, depending on how much Relax you have used compared with other people.
• The rate limit. Section 7 of the terms reserves the right "to rate limit You to prevent quality decay or interruptions to other customers."
• The exclusions. Permutation prompts, the repeat parameter, HD video and the legacy Max Upscale never run in Relax.

Topping up Basic stops making sense at five extra hours a month.

Every plan can buy Fast time at $4 an hour as of November 2026. That is 6.7 cents a minute, double the 3.3 cents that Standard's monthly price works out to (my arithmetic). Bought hours expire after 60 days, need an active subscription and "cannot be refunded".

Now price Basic plus five bought hours (my arithmetic): $30 for 8.3 Fast hours and no Relax queue. Standard is $30 for 15 Fast hours plus Relax images. Same money. Rating images is one free route: each day the top 2,000 raters get an extra Fast hour, which needs an active subscription and expires after 30 days.

Basic, Standard, Pro and Mega, plan by plan

Basic at $10 is a metered plan with no slow lane.

Basic costs $10 billed monthly, or $8 a month billed yearly ($96 upfront), as of November 2026. You get:

• 200 Fast minutes a month, which Midjourney sizes at about 200 image jobs.
• No Relax mode, so once the minutes are gone every job needs bought or earned Fast time.
• SD video only.
• Three Fast image jobs and one Fast video job at a time.

It fits someone testing Midjourney for a month. With no trial on the website, $10 is the price of finding out.

Standard at $30 adds unlimited Relax images and HD video.

For $30 billed monthly, or $288 a year billed yearly as of November 2026, Standard raises Fast time to 15 hours a month and adds two things Basic lacks: the Relax queue for images, and HD video, which runs only in Fast mode. Privacy stays off the table, since everything you make lands on Midjourney's public Explore page. For anyone who generates most weeks, this is where I would start.

Pro at $60 is where privacy and the $1M revenue rule land.

Over Standard, Pro adds the rows below for $60 billed monthly or $576 a year billed yearly, as of November 2026:

Midjourney's Comparing Midjourney Plans article, read 12 November 2026. Both plans buy extra Fast time at $4 an hour.

The row that table leaves out is the one companies need. Midjourney's terms say a company with more than $1,000,000 a year in revenue, or any employee of one, must be on Pro or Mega "to own Your Assets." Every plan card says only "General commercial terms", so the cards will not tell you.

Mega at $120 only doubles Pro's Fast hours and video jobs.

Mega gives 60 Fast hours a month against Pro's 30 and 12 concurrent Fast videos against 6, for $120 billed monthly or $1,152 a year billed yearly as of November 2026. Every other row on Midjourney's comparison matches Pro, so buy it only when Pro's 30 hours run out month after month.

What Midjourney video costs

Video has no plan or price of its own: it spends the same GPU time, priced by batch size. A prompt makes four clips by default, and you can ask for two or one:

Midjourney's Video article, read 12 November 2026. Blocked jobs cost nothing; GPU time is deducted only when you see results.

• Each clip is 5 seconds, made from a start image that becomes the first frame.
• An extension adds 4 seconds, up to a 21-second maximum, and costs as much GPU time as the first generation.
• HD needs Standard or higher, in Fast mode only.
• Unlimited SD video in Relax belongs to Pro and Mega, under the same rate-limit clause as Relax images.

One worked line: Standard's 900 Fast minutes cover about 34 batches of four HD clips, if spent on nothing else. At the $4 top-up rate as of November 2026, a single SD clip burns about 13 cents of Fast time and a single HD clip about 47 cents. Both are my arithmetic, since Midjourney prices video only in minutes. For editing the clips afterwards, see my Descript pricing breakdown.

Can you use Midjourney images commercially?

Midjourney's own pages say yes: "With Midjourney, you own all the images and videos you create, even if you decide to cancel your subscription." Its terms, effective May 27, 2026, say ownership "persists even if in subsequent months You downgrade or cancel Your membership." There are two exceptions:

1. Upscaling someone else's image. Then "that image belongs to the original creator".
2. A business over the revenue line. "If you are part of a business grossing more than $1,000,000 USD a year, you need a Pro or Mega Plan to use your images commercially for your company."

Midjourney also takes "a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license" to what you put in and what you get out. On copyright, it says it "cannot offer guidance on copyright matters" and suggests a lawyer. Nothing here is legal advice. For the law itself, read what US copyright law says about AI art.

Everything you make is public until you pay for Stealth mode.

By default, "every image and video you create can be found on the Explore page." Stealth mode stops that, and it is "available only to Pro and Mega Plan members." No Stealth add-on is sold on Midjourney's pages today. Four details matter:

• Public Discord channels stay public: "any creations made in public channels on Discord are still visible to others."
• Full privacy means the web Create page, Discord direct messages or a private server, with Stealth on.
• Old public work stays public until you make it private by hand, and trashing it is a different action.
• Private work stays private after you cancel.

Is Midjourney free? No, and the only trial lives in another app

No free plan appeared on five loads of the pricing page that day, and Midjourney says "You must have an active subscription to use Fast time." Niji is Midjourney's anime and illustration series, built with Spellbrush, and the pages I read do not say how large its trial is.

Two loopholes close fast. The refund window shuts after 20 GPU minutes of lifetime use, about 25 SD prompts by my arithmetic, so a paid month will not double as a free test. And Meta's deal, announced on X by its Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang, is to "license their aesthetic technology for our future models and products"; no Midjourney page I read calls that a free Midjourney plan.

What Midjourney costs three buyers

Every total below is my arithmetic at US prices as of 12 November 2026, before tax.

1. Someone testing: $10 for one month of Basic, billed monthly. Cancel in that month and nothing more is charged. The refund window is gone after about 25 SD prompts, so treat the $10 as spent.
2. A freelance illustrator: Standard at $288 a year billed yearly, or $360 billed monthly. If client work must stay off the Explore page, Pro at $576 a year billed yearly is what Stealth mode costs. For the business side of the job, see AI agents for freelance designers.
3. A three-designer agency at a company with more than $1,000,000 a year in revenue: $1,728 a year billed yearly, or $2,160 billed monthly. That is three Pro accounts, because each account is one person and there is no team plan.

Teams, students and the 50-plan rule

Midjourney is priced one person at a time. From its Group Plans and Student Billing articles and its terms, as of 12 November 2026:

• One person per account, and one account per person.
• No team plan, no seats, no admin panel and no SSO.
• Bulk billing starts at 50 yearly Pro or Mega plans, with no discount beyond standard yearly pricing. Below 50, there is no single invoice.
• Organizations get no discounts or free plans, even nonprofits and schools.
• Each student needs their own account and subscription, which a school may reimburse, and I found no student discount.

Refunds, cancelling and renewals

Midjourney's help articles and terms, read 12 November 2026, set out these exits:

• Refunds: only under 20 GPU minutes of lifetime use, with Fast, Turbo and Relax time all counted. The option appears in the cancel flow, and processing can take up to 10 business days.
• Cancelling: click "Cancel Plan" on the Manage Subscription page. Access and remaining Fast time last to the end of the cycle, and cancelling "does not delete your generated images or account history."
• Renewal: automatic, and "disabling automatic renewals entirely isn't an option." You cancel before each renewal you do not want.
• Changing plans: an upgrade can take effect now, with a discount for unused Fast time; a downgrade waits for renewal and refunds nothing. Moving from yearly to an upgraded monthly plan needs billing support.
• Paying: US dollars only, via Stripe; "PayPal isn't currently supported."
• Price changes: allowed "at any time" under the terms, with no notice period in the sections I read.

How Midjourney compares with Leonardo, ChatGPT and Ideogram

These are three rivals, each read on its own pricing page on 12 November 2026. Each counts usage in its own unit.

Each vendor's US pricing page, read 12 November 2026; Leonardo lists its prices "ex. tax." Adobe Firefly's page showed no prices when read, so it is left out.

One plain fact from that table: at $30 billed monthly, Leonardo Premium and Midjourney Standard both include unlimited image generation at a slower pace, Leonardo's "for select models at a relaxed pace". For ChatGPT's plans in full, see my ChatGPT pricing breakdown. My HeyGen pricing breakdown covers the same questions for HeyGen.

Which Midjourney plan should you pick?

I would pick by these five rules, at US prices as of November 2026:

1. If you only want to see what it does, pay $10 for one month of Basic, billed monthly, and accept that there is no trial on the website or in Discord.
2. If you generate most weeks, Standard is the floor. Relax is what Basic lacks, and Basic plus five bought hours already costs $30.
3. If your work must stay private, or your company has more than $1,000,000 a year in revenue, buy Pro.
4. Buy Mega only when Pro's 30 Fast hours run out every month.
5. Pay yearly only if you would still be subscribed in month 10.

For where one monthly AI budget should go, start with the AI subscriptions I compared on the $20 shelf. If you need templates more than generated images, read my Canva pricing breakdown, and for the wider toolkit, the content creation tools I compared.

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