Midjourney Pricing: $10 to $120 a Month, What GPU Minutes Buy

Basic's 200 Fast minutes make about 1,000 images

Midjourney sells four plans (Basic, Standard, Pro and Mega), and each one buys you time on Midjourney's GPUs. On the newest Internet Archive copy of its plan page, from October 20, 2026, they cost $10 to $120 a month. Basic comes with 200 Fast minutes.

When we wrote this, the two pages ranking first for "midjourney pricing" turned those minutes into about 200 images a month. But Midjourney's own help center, in copies from October 2026, says an SD image prompt takes about 0.8 minutes of GPU time, and every prompt makes a set of four images. By our math, that's about 250 prompts a month on Basic, or about 1,000 images.

Midjourney's help center blocked us on November 1, 2026, so every figure we take from it comes from an Internet Archive copy, dated where it appears. Everything else comes from Midjourney's update posts, the App Store listing for the niji · journey app, Trustpilot and an ad set we made in Novoads in September. We didn't test Midjourney for this post.

Midjourney's four plans, side by side

Everything in this table comes from the October 20, 2026 copy of the plan page, and the prices are in US dollars.

Plan	Monthly	Billed yearly	Fast GPU time	Relax mode	Video resolution	Stealth mode
Basic	$10	$96 a year ($8 a month)	3.3 hours (200 minutes)	None	SD	No
Standard	$30	$288 a year ($24 a month)	15 hours	Unlimited images	SD and HD	No
Pro	$60	$576 a year ($48 a month)	30 hours	Unlimited images and SD video	SD and HD	Yes
Mega	$120	$1,152 a year ($96 a month)	60 hours	Unlimited images and SD video	SD and HD	Yes

Relax mode lets you make images without spending your Fast time, and the plan page lists it on Standard, Pro and Mega only. Stealth mode keeps your images and videos private, and it's only on Pro and Mega. On any plan, you can buy more Fast time at $4 an hour.

Paying by the month or by the year

Billed yearly, every plan costs 20% less, but you pay for the whole year upfront. That's how Basic comes to $96 a year, or $8 a month. According to the June 11, 2026 copy of Midjourney's How to Subscribe article, yearly billing is selected by default when you pick a plan, so if you'd rather pay by the month, click the Monthly billing tab first. All four plans renew on their own, monthly or yearly, until you set them to cancel.

Tax, currency and the hours you can add

Midjourney's tax article, in a copy from June 11, 2026, says Stripe works out any sales tax or VAT from your billing details and adds it to the plan price, and you see the total before you pay. Its currency article, in a copy from the same day, says Midjourney takes payment only in US dollars. So the list price is the same wherever you pay from, though the tax isn't. If your card is in another currency, your bank converts the charge and may add a foreign transaction fee.

The help center's article on buying extra Fast time, in a copy from September 28, 2026, puts three limits on the hours you buy.

• They expire after 60 days.
• They work only while you have an active subscription.
• They can't be refunded.

The Fast time that comes with your plan doesn't roll over at all. Midjourney's Fast Time Expiration article, in a copy from March 12, 2026, says unused Fast time expires at the end of each month, whether you pay monthly or yearly.

The niji · journey app's Mini Plan

Basic is the cheapest of the four plans on Midjourney's plan page, but the niji · journey app, where you use the niji models Midjourney develops with Spellbrush, sells plans of its own. Its US App Store listing, which we read on November 1, 2026, shows a Mini Plan at $4.99 a month. The same listing has a Basic Plan at $9.99 a month, against $10 on Midjourney's plan page. It also says accounts and subscription plans can be synced with existing niji · journey and Midjourney accounts. But it doesn't say what Mini includes, and we found no Midjourney page that does.

How far 200 Fast minutes go

One prompt, four images

Midjourney's GPU Speed article, in its copy of October 15, 2026, puts an SD image prompt at about 0.8 minutes of GPU time. An HD prompt, it says, takes about 1.3 minutes. Its Getting Started guide, in a copy from October 2, 2026, says each prompt makes a set of four images. Monthly Basic works out to 5 cents a Fast minute, and the numbers that follow all use that rate.

• An SD prompt costs about 4 cents for four images, or 1 cent an image if you keep all four.
• At 0.8 minutes a prompt, Basic's 200 minutes make about 250 prompts, which is about 1,000 images a month.
• Midjourney's rule of thumb, about a minute of GPU time per image prompt, gives 200 prompts and 800 images.

On Midjourney's own figures, then, a month of Basic comes to 800 to 1,000 images. That's four to five times what those top pages say. So where does their number come from? Both seem to count one image per Fast minute. CometAPI's page is one of them, yet the notes under its own table put a standard grid at about half a minute to a minute of Fast time. With four images to a grid, Basic would make 800 to 1,600 images a month at CometAPI's own rate, so the page's table and its notes don't agree.

Midjourney calls these costs approximate, and its GPU article says upscaling, nonstandard aspect ratios and older model versions can take more time. It doesn't say how much extra those aspect ratios cost, so a tall ad format may take more than 0.8 minutes a prompt. And if only one image from a prompt is good enough to run, that image costs you the whole prompt, about 4 cents on monthly Basic.

HD images, yearly billing and bought time

Midjourney's Version article, in its copy of October 6, 2026, says HD renders 2K images without upscaling. An HD prompt costs 1.3 minutes of GPU time, against 0.8 for SD. None of the Midjourney pages we read say whether HD images are limited by plan, so treat the Basic HD line below as unconfirmed.

• If Basic can run HD at all, an HD prompt on monthly Basic costs about 6.5 cents, and 200 minutes make about 153 of them.
• Basic billed yearly, at $8 a month, comes to 4 cents a Fast minute and about 3.2 cents an SD prompt.
• Fast time you buy at $4 an hour comes to about 6.7 cents a minute and about 5.3 cents an SD prompt.

From Standard up, the price per prompt tells you less. Standard's 15 hours work out to about 3.3 cents a minute, but Relax mode lets you keep making images without spending them. The GPU article says Relax prompts wait in line until GPUs free up, which can take anywhere from 0 to 30 minutes.

Video clips, and what a batch of four costs

Midjourney has had video since June 18, 2025, when it released its V1 video model, which animates an image you've made or uploaded. Its launch post said a video job would cost about 8 times as much as an image job. Each job makes four 5-second clips. Midjourney's Video article, in its copy of October 14, 2026, breaks the costs down by batch size.

• Four SD clips at 480p take 8 minutes, about 40 cents on monthly Basic.
• One SD clip takes 2 minutes, about 10 cents on Basic.
• Four HD clips at 720p take 26 minutes, about 87 cents on Standard, the cheapest plan with HD video.

Basic can't make HD video. Video in Relax mode is only on Pro and Mega, and only in SD. You can extend a clip 4 seconds at a time, up to 21 seconds, and each extension costs as much GPU time as the first generation. If you spent all of Basic's minutes on video, they'd make 25 batches of SD clips a month.

The model your minutes run on

V8.2 has been Midjourney's default model since July 24, 2026, the day Midjourney launched it in an update post. The October 6, 2026 copy of its Version article says the same. We cover what that model means for ad work in our V8.2 explainer.

Midjourney added Draft mode for V8.1 in June 2026. At the time, it said a draft job makes 24 images at a lower resolution and quality, using half the Fast time of a V8.1 SD job. Its October 8, 2026 changelog says drafts on V8.1 and V8.2 always come as a 24-image grid. If you want to try out looks before you spend full prompts, we'd start there.

Is there a Midjourney free trial?

Not on Discord or the website

No. Midjourney's Free Trials article, in its copy of October 16, 2026, says there's no free trial in Discord or on midjourney.com. Instead, it points to a limited trial in the niji · journey app for iOS and Android. The app's App Store listing, which we read on November 1, 2026, says you can make anime characters with 20 free generations, and that allowance belongs to the app.

Fast time you can earn

Midjourney's Earning Free Fast Time article, in a copy from October 15, 2026, says the top 2,000 members who rate the most images each day get an extra hour of Fast time. You need an active subscription to use it, and it expires 30 days after you get it.

The refund rule

We'd treat the refund rule as the nearest thing to a trial. Midjourney's Requesting a Refund article, in its copy of March 12, 2026, says you're eligible only if you've used less than 20 GPU minutes over the life of your account, Relax time included. If you qualify, the refund option shows up when you cancel. Going by the GPU article's table, 20 minutes is about 25 SD prompts.

Canceling, and the Midjourney, Inc. charge on your card

How to cancel

Midjourney's Canceling Your Subscription article, in a copy from August 16, 2026, says you can cancel at any time from your Manage Subscription page, with the Cancel Plan button.

• The cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle, and until then you keep every feature, remaining Fast time included.
• Canceling doesn't delete your images or your account history, and private images stay private.
• If you've scheduled an upgrade or a downgrade, cancel that change first.

Upgrading or downgrading instead

Midjourney's Upgrading or Downgrading article, in a copy from May 28, 2026, says that if you upgrade right away, you get a discount for the Fast time you haven't used, and your plan resets with the new allowance. A downgrade takes effect at your next renewal and doesn't refund the plan you're on.

Matching a Midjourney, Inc. charge

• Midjourney's terms of service, in a copy from October 23, 2026, name the company as Midjourney, Inc.
• Its payment methods article, in a copy from June 11, 2026, says Midjourney bills through Stripe and takes only the payment methods Stripe accepts.
• Its payment history article, in a copy from April 15, 2026, says Midjourney sends every invoice and receipt to the billing email on file, and the View Invoices button on your Manage Subscription page opens your billing portal.

We found no Midjourney page that gives the exact words a card statement shows, so the invoice email is your surest way to match a charge.

One ad image, priced in Midjourney and in Novoads

Midjourney's side

On monthly Basic, a four-image SD prompt costs about 4 cents. Billed yearly, it's about 3.2 cents. If only one image from the prompt works for an ad, the one you run still costs that much. Novoads doesn't offer Midjourney's models, so the two sides below are different tools.

Novoads' side, with a set we made

Novoads charges per image, in credits. A credit costs 7.5 cents on Starter and 4.9 cents on Plus, and every image model we sell has its own credit price.

• Nano Banana Pro at 1K or 2K costs 2 credits, which is 15 cents on Starter and about 10 cents on Plus. At 4K, it's 4 credits.
• GPT Image 2 and GPT Image 2.5 at low or medium quality cost 1 credit, and so does Seedream 5 Lite. That's 7.5 cents on Starter and about 5 cents on Plus.

We made this set on September 1, 2026, with Nano Banana Pro in Novoads, to advertise our own branded cap. It covers four ad formats, each with a Spanish headline, and we ran every prompt once. Every image is 4:5 at 2K. At the current rate, the four images cost 8 credits. That's 60 cents on Starter or about 39 cents on Plus.

Made in Novoads with Nano Banana Pro · our branded cap, four ad formats at 4:5 and 2K, every prompt run once · all four together cost 8 credits at the current rate · 2026-09-01

This set also appears in our guide to static ads, which shows how we make them in Novoads. We cover keeping the words inside an ad image readable in a separate post on Nano Banana Pro.

Where Midjourney costs less

On these numbers, Midjourney costs less per image than any image model we sell. A four-image SD prompt on monthly Basic is about 4 cents. Our cheapest image is 1 credit. That's 7.5 cents on Starter and about 5 cents on Plus. Even if only one image per prompt is usable, Midjourney still comes in under both.

No official API, and the resellers

We didn't find an official Midjourney API on any Midjourney page we could read. Midjourney's terms, in the October 23, 2026 copy, say you may not use automated tools to access the service or to generate through it, and you may not resell or redistribute access to it. CometAPI, the first of those two top pages, sells pay-as-you-go access to Midjourney through what it calls a proxy, and we wouldn't build an ad workflow on that.

Commercial use, privacy and what users say

Running Midjourney images in ads

Midjourney's pages agree that you can use what you make commercially, but they word the exception three different ways.

• The plan page's October 20, 2026 copy says that if you've subscribed at any point, you can use your images and videos in just about any way you want. It adds that a company making more than $1,000,000 a year in gross revenue must buy Pro or Mega.
• The commercial-use article, in a copy from July 31, 2026, says you own what you create even after you cancel, unless you upscaled another user's image, which stays theirs. It also says a business grossing more than $1,000,000 a year needs Pro or Mega to use the images for the company.
• The terms, in the October 23, 2026 copy, word it most broadly. They cover a company, or any employee of a company, over that line, and they tie the rule to owning your assets.

We read that as Pro or Mega for any company over the line, and the terms extend it to the company's employees. These lines don't settle a freelancer's case, and we won't guess at it.

Who can see your work

Midjourney's terms say your content is publicly viewable and remixable by default. Three more of its pages narrow what stays private.

• Stealth mode is how you keep work private, and the plan page lists it on Pro and Mega only.
• The Stealth article's June 12, 2026 copy says anything made in public Discord channels stays visible even with Stealth on.
• Midjourney's October 8, 2026 changelog says images made without Stealth can still show up on Explore and on profiles, even inside a private folder.

So for ad work, unreleased creative you make on Basic or Standard is public by default.

What users say

When we read Trustpilot on November 1, 2026, Midjourney's score there was 1.7. Of the 373 reviews behind it, 76% gave one star.

Who should use Midjourney for ads, and where Novoads fits

Where we'd use Midjourney

We think Midjourney fits ad work that needs lots of looks for little money, like mood boards, backgrounds, concept frames and stills you'll finish somewhere else. Standard's Relax mode works for high volume, if you can wait for it. A company over the revenue line starts at Pro, and so does anyone who needs to keep unreleased work private.

Where it fits less

It's a weaker fit when the ad needs more motion than a short clip, or when your team runs the workflow through code. Midjourney's clips top out at 21 seconds with extensions, HD video starts at Standard, and its terms rule out automated tools. If you're weighing other image tools, start with our roundup of Midjourney alternatives. We've also priced Canva and OpenArt for ad work.

Where Novoads fits

We built Novoads to make the finished ad. You can start from a product photo, have an AI actor read your script on camera, or make statics and video with the models we sell, and every job draws on the same credits. You pay for Novoads from the first month. Starter costs $15 a month for 200 credits and is billed monthly only. Plus costs $49 a month for 1,000 credits. Billed yearly, it's $39 a month. You'll find every plan, and what its credits make, on our pricing page.

Novoads pricing page on Monthly billing, as it looked on 2026-11-01