Midjourney

Rating reflects Midjourney's documented plans and capabilities as of September 2026 plus our own sessions. Some vendor links on this site are affiliate links; they never affect a rating. See our disclosure and method.

What it does

Midjourney turns a text prompt into a grid of four images, and its whole reputation rests on how those four images look. Rivals compete on instruction following or text rendering; Midjourney competes on taste. An August 2026 comparison at Gizmo Times put it plainly: Midjourney V8.2 is the pick for stylized artwork, concept art and aesthetic exploration, while ChatGPT Images 2.0 wins conversational editing and text-heavy graphics, and Google's Nano Banana family wins for people already inside Gemini.

The model moved fast this year. V8.1 became the default on June 11, 2026, replacing V7 with better prompt adherence, better text and an HD mode that renders at twice the size and four times the resolution of V7, with SD images in about four seconds. V8.2 took over on July 24 with a focus on aesthetics, fewer random low-quality results and a much better personalization pass. Then on August 27 Midjourney opened testing of its first V8.2 edit model: edit an image with plain instructions, generate from up to four reference images at once (this replaces omni-reference), inpaint a region, or expand the canvas. It runs on the main site, on the alpha site, and in Discord with a parameter.

Personalization is the feature that separates a casual user from a good one. You rate pairs of images, Midjourney builds a profile of your taste, and every prompt leans toward it. V8.2 draws its rating pool from a larger, cleaner set of images, and a profile code made in V8.2 still works in V8.1 and V7. Rating images also earns free Fast GPU time on every plan, which tells you how valuable your taste data is to the company.

Video is an add-on to images, not a separate product. You pick a still you made or uploaded, choose low or high motion, optionally add a text prompt, and get four 5-second clips. Each clip can be extended four times in 4-second steps to a maximum of 21 seconds, with loop and end-frame options. Output is 480p on all plans; Standard, Pro and Mega can switch to 720p in Fast Mode. There is no text-to-video.

Where it wins

• Aesthetics. Nothing in the hearts suit produces a more striking first draft. Lighting, composition and texture arrive looking finished, and the stylize and raw controls dial the house look up or down.
• Personalization. Once you have a few hundred ratings under a profile, the model reliably makes your kind of image. A paid reviewer at Geeky Curiosity found the V8.2 rating pool a clear step up from V7's, with fewer three-armed distractions and faster payoff.
• The edit model. Instruction editing, multi-image references, inpainting and outpainting were the features Midjourney lacked against ChatGPT and Nano Banana. As of late August 2026 it has them, and they work inside the same personalization and style-reference system.
• Relax Mode economics. On Standard and above, image generation in Relax Mode is unlimited. If you can wait a few minutes per grid, $30 a month buys as many images as you care to make.
• Commercial terms that are easy to read. Subscribe at any tier and you can use your images and videos commercially. The single carve-out, a Pro or Mega plan for companies over $1 million in annual revenue, is stated on the plans page.

Where it loses

• No free tier. ChatGPT, Gemini, Canva and every other creative card in this deck let you try before you pay. Midjourney ended its trial in March 2023, briefly reopened it for about 25 images in August 2024, and has been paid-only since. You cannot test it on your own brief before spending $10.
• Public by default. Everything you make is viewable and remixable by the community unless you have Stealth Mode, which costs $60 a month on Pro. Client work on Basic or Standard is visible to anyone who looks.
• Your content, licensed forever. The terms grant Midjourney a perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable license to your prompts and outputs, and the privacy policy lists data collected through model training. There is no toggle to opt out. Cursor, Descript and Notion in this deck offer a switch; Midjourney does not.
• Video is a finishing step. Image-to-video only, 480p unless you are on Standard or higher and in Fast Mode, and a four-clip SD batch costs 8 minutes of Fast GPU time (26 minutes in HD). A guide at AI Video Sensei that ran eleven passes on one still got four clean clips, four usable ones and three with visible warping. It animates an image; it does not make a film.
• Legal weather. Disney and Universal sued Midjourney for copyright infringement in 2025 and Warner Bros. followed. In July 2026 the fight was over discovery, with Midjourney arguing that training on copyrighted characters is fair use. Nothing has been decided and nothing stops you using the tool, but a cautious legal team will ask.
• Interface churn. The web app is far better than Discord ever was, but the alpha site was rebuilt in August 2026 and the changelog for the next two weeks is a long list of fixes: settings that reset, Relax flipping back to Fast, Upscale buttons that vanished.

Plans and pricing, September 2026

GPU time is the currency. Fast Mode spends your monthly hours and returns a grid in seconds; Relax Mode queues your job at lower priority and, on Standard and above, costs nothing for images. Pro and Mega extend Relax to SD video. Every plan can buy more Fast hours at $4 an hour; blocked jobs never cost GPU time. Annual billing is a 20% discount, paid up front.

Score breakdown

Alternatives

• Canva if you need images inside a design workflow, with a free tier and clearer data controls.
• ChatGPT if you want conversational editing, legible text in images and a free way to start.
• Gemini if you already pay Google and want its Nano Banana models bundled with storage and a chatbot.

Quick answers

Is Midjourney free?

No. Midjourney ended its free trial in March 2023 and, as of September 2026, the cheapest way in is the Basic plan at $10 a month or $96 a year. You can browse the public gallery without an account, but you cannot generate anything without paying.

Can I use Midjourney images commercially?

Yes, on any paid plan, under what Midjourney calls General Commercial Terms. The exception is companies with more than $1 million a year in gross revenue, which must be on Pro or Mega to own their images. Note that everything you make is public by default unless you pay for Stealth Mode on Pro or Mega.

Does Midjourney make video?

Only from a still image. Midjourney animates an image you generated or uploaded into a 5-second clip that you can extend four times to 21 seconds. Output is 480p on every plan and 720p on Standard and above in Fast Mode. There is no text-to-video, so it is a finishing step for images rather than a rival to a full video model.

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