Does Midjourney Cost Money? 2026 Plans, Commercial Terms, and Free Alternatives
Midjourney has no free version or free trial. Its four paid plans, Basic, Standard, Pro, and Mega, are metered in Fast GPU time. This guide explains the differences, the commercial rule for companies with over $1M in annual revenue, and free or free-tier alternatives such as Flux, Nano Banana, and Leonardo.
Midjourney is subscription-only, and its four plans sell Fast GPU time per month rather than a number of images. On Basic, once the time runs out you wait for next month or buy more; Standard and above can fall back to the slower, queued Relax mode. Besides volume, two easy-to-miss rules decide which plan you need: images are public by default and Stealth mode starts at Pro, and companies with more than $1M in annual revenue, and their employees, must be on Pro or Mega to own what they generate. If you only make a few images now and then, the free alternatives below may be a better fit.
Who is this for?
Recommended tools (10)
Midjourney
Web and Discord; Relax mode from Standard, Stealth mode from Pro
Flux.1
Runs locally; licenses vary by version, with FLUX.2 [klein] 4B under Apache-2.0
Stable Diffusion
Huge ecosystem of derived models and plugins; needs a capable GPU and some setup
Nano Banana
Default image model in Gemini and Search, usable on the free tier
Leonardo
Image generation, editing, and upscaling; free-tier work is public
Duiyou AI
Chinese prompts, with a community for sharing work and prompts
Bing Image Creator
A daily allowance of fast generations, then slower generation continues
Fooocus
Built on SDXL; one-click install, just write prompts
Adobe Firefly
Built into Photoshop and other Adobe apps for commercial design workflows
Krea AI
Canvas edits and prompt changes show up in the output as you work
Midjourney plans compared
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per mo) | Fast GPU time | Relax mode | Stealth mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $10 | $8 | ~3.3 hrs/mo | No | No |
| Standard | $30 | $24 | 15 hrs/mo | Yes | No |
| Pro | $60 | $48 | 30 hrs/mo | Yes | Yes |
| Mega | $120 | $96 | 60 hrs/mo | Yes | Yes |
Prices and GPU time follow Midjourney's subscription page, checked October 1, 2026; extra Fast time costs $4/hour.
FAQ
- Q: Does Midjourney have a free version?
- A: No. Midjourney currently has no free version and no free trial; paid plans start at Basic. To try AI image generation for free, use Nano Banana in Gemini, Bing Image Creator's daily free boosts, or Leonardo's daily free tokens.
- Q: What's Midjourney's cheapest plan?
- A: Basic is $10/month, or $8/month billed annually, with about 3.3 hours of Fast GPU time per month—roughly 200 standard generations. Basic has no Relax mode, so when the time runs out you wait for next month or buy more at $4/hour. Standard starts at $30/month and includes Relax mode, so you can keep generating in a queue after Fast time runs out. Check the official subscription page for current prices.
- Q: Can I use paid images commercially?
- A: Paid users own the images they generate, and that continues after canceling. But Midjourney's Terms of Service say a company with more than $1M in annual revenue, or any employee of one, must subscribe to Pro or Mega to own its images. The terms also give no IP warranty, so assess copyright risk yourself before commercial use.
- Q: Is Flux free for commercial use?
- A: It depends on the model. Black Forest Labs' FLUX.2 [klein] 4B is Apache-2.0 and allows commercial use; FLUX.2 [dev] and [klein] 9B use the FLUX Non-Commercial License, so self-hosting them in a commercial product needs a separate license. Images generated through the official API can be used commercially under its terms.