What is Midjourney?
Midjourney produces the most striking, artistic AI images of any mainstream tool — its default aesthetic is gorgeous, and it excels at illustration, concept art and mood. Version by version it has improved coherence, faces and prompt-following. The trade-offs: there is no free tier, and while it now has a web app, its roots are in Discord, which can feel unusual at first. If you care most about image quality and style it is worth the subscription; if you want free or quick utilitarian images, start elsewhere.
Step-by-step: How to use Midjourney.
Best for: Beautiful, artistic images where style and quality matter most.
Midjourney pricing
| Plan | Price | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $10/mo | About 200 images a month in Fast mode. There is no free tier — trials ended years ago, so this is the real entry price. |
| Standard | $30/mo | Around 15 hours of Fast time plus unlimited Relax generations, which is what most regular users actually need. |
| Pro | $60/mo | More Fast hours and Stealth mode, which keeps your generations private. |
Prices checked 27 July 2026. Vendors change limits often — treat the caps as indicative and confirm on the pricing page before you buy.
What Midjourney is good at
- Concept art, mood boards and visual direction
- Stylised imagery where aesthetic quality beats literal accuracy
- Iterating on a look by varying one image repeatedly
- Editorial and marketing visuals that need to feel designed
Develop a consistent visual style
- Generate a broad prompt and pick the one image closest to the feeling you want.
- Use it as a style reference on your next prompt rather than starting over.
- Change one variable at a time — subject, lighting, or composition. Changing three tells you nothing.
- Save the prompts that worked. Your prompt library is the real asset, not the images.
Who should skip Midjourney
- Anyone needing text inside the image — it is still the weakest of the major generators at this. Use Ideogram.
- People who want a free option. There isn’t one, and this catches out most newcomers.
- Precise, literal briefs. It interprets rather than obeys, which is the point and the frustration.
What's good
- Best-in-class image aesthetics
- Excellent for art, concept and mood
- Strong style-consistency features
- Fast-moving development
Watch-outs
- No free tier
- Discord-first workflow takes adjusting
- Less literal for exact layouts than some rivals
Midjourney FAQ
- Is Midjourney free?
- No. Free trials ended years ago and there is no free tier — the entry plan is $10/mo. This is the single most common misconception about it.
- Is Midjourney better than DALL·E?
- For aesthetic quality and stylised work, most people say yes. DALL·E follows literal instructions more reliably and is bundled with ChatGPT, so it is cheaper to reach.
- Can Midjourney put text in images?
- Badly. It has improved but still garbles words. For anything with readable text, use Ideogram.
- Do I still need Discord?
- No — there is a full web app now. Discord remains an option rather than a requirement.
The verdict
Midjourney earns a 5/5 from us. It’s a paid tool that earns its price for the right user. Stunning, artistic AI images from a text prompt.