Is Midjourney free? No free plan, and the cheapest plan is $4.99 a month

Is Midjourney free? Its own docs say yes to one of eight free questions

Midjourney's own pages say yes to one of eight "is it free" questions, and that yes is the niji journey app. We read its help center, its terms and the App Store listing on 10 November 2026, then put each question next to the line that answers it. Seven answers are no, or yes only after you pay:

The one yes is narrow. It's a trial in a separate phone app, built around the anime-style Niji models. The rest of this page covers what the table can't: why there's no free tier, how the refund rule turns a paid month into a test, and what you may do with images once you've paid.

Does Midjourney have a free plan or a free tier?

No, Midjourney has no free plan and no free tier. Every plan is a subscription that renews each month or year. Web plans start at Basic for $10 a month, then Standard at $30, Pro at $60 and Mega at $120, per Midjourney's plan comparison. The cheapest plan anywhere is the Mini Plan at $4.99 a month, which Midjourney, Inc. sells only inside niji journey, per its App Store listing.

The 20 niji journey generations are a trial, not a tier. They don't come back each month. One Google Play reviewer notes that "the free trial doesn't refill at all." The listing says accounts sync with Midjourney, so a plan you buy later works in both apps. Our Midjourney free trial guide walks through that app trial step by step, with App Store prices next to the web.

Free access has come and gone twice. Founder David Holz paused the Discord trial in late March 2023, citing "extraordinary demand and trial abuse," per The Business Standard. People had been opening throwaway accounts for free images. On 21 August 2024 Midjourney said it was "temporarily turning on free trials" as its web app opened to everyone, and Digital Trends reported 25 images per account. Neither offer is back.

Can a refund make Midjourney free to try?

Yes, if you stop early: Midjourney refunds a plan when the account has used less than 20 GPU minutes in its lifetime. Its refund article says you're eligible "only if you've used less than 20 GPU minutes throughout the lifetime of your account." That counts Fast, Turbo and Relax time.

Twenty minutes buys more than it sounds. Midjourney's GPU speed table puts a standard (SD) prompt at 0.8 minutes and an HD prompt at 1.3 minutes. So you stay under the line for 24 SD prompts (19.2 minutes) or 15 HD ones (19.5 minutes). The 25th SD prompt hits exactly 20.0, which isn't "less than 20." Each prompt returns four images, so 24 prompts is 96 images on V8.2, the default model since 24 July 2026.

Turbo mode uses "double the Fast time for each image," which halves that count. The same page says Turbo isn't supported on V8.1, so the risk is a setting carried over from an older version. Keep your speed set to Fast while you test.

If you decide Midjourney isn't for you, cancel from the website. Midjourney says the refund option appears on its own when you qualify: "If you don't see the refund option, we're unable to provide a refund." The money can take up to 10 business days to land. If you keep the plan, Basic gives 200 Fast minutes a month, per the plan comparison. Yearly prices and the bigger plans are on our Midjourney pricing page.

Is Midjourney free for commercial use?

Midjourney allows commercial use, but it isn't free, because the website makes no images until you pay. Its plan page says "If you have subscribed at any point, you are free to use your images/videos in just about any way you want." So one paid month covers the images you made in it. The terms add that "You own all Assets You create with the Services," and that ownership "persists even if in subsequent months You downgrade or cancel."

Bigger companies pay more. Midjourney says a company "making more than $1,000,000 USD in gross revenue per year" must buy Pro, at $60 a month, or Mega, at $120. The terms set no separate rule for the 20 free niji generations, while the plan page's commercial line speaks only to people who've subscribed. Treat those 20 as a test, not stock art.

Paying doesn't make your images private, either. The terms say "By default, Your Content is publicly viewable and remixable." Only Pro and Mega can switch on Stealth mode, so a Basic subscriber's images sit in public view.

Is Midjourney free for students, on Discord, or with free Fast time?

No to all three. Midjourney's student billing article offers no discount. It says "each student must have their own account and their own subscription." Schools can reimburse a student, but they can't buy a group plan.

Discord doesn't make it free either. Midjourney's Nitro article is blunt: "Having Discord Nitro won't give you access to Midjourney." Discord and the website share one account and one plan.

Free Fast time exists, but only for people who already pay. Each day the top 2,000 image raters earn an extra Fast hour, and surveys sometimes pay in Fast time. The earning article adds that "you'll need an active subscription to use any awarded time," and the time expires after 30 days.

Are free Midjourney sites and shared accounts safe to use?

No. A site that offers "free Midjourney" isn't Midjourney, and a shared login breaks its rules. Midjourney's Terms of Service say: "Only one user may use the Services per registered account." They also ban reselling access and using automated tools to generate images.

The penalty sits in the same document. Midjourney "reserves the right to suspend or ban Your access to the Services at any time, and for any reason." If someone sells you a seat on their account, you could lose it with no refund. Free sites that wrap other models are a different issue. They may work fine, but you aren't getting Midjourney's V8.2.

Where can you make AI images free instead?

ChatGPT and Gemini both make images on their free plans. OpenAI's Images in ChatGPT page says "ChatGPT Images is available on all tiers." Google's Gemini limits page ticks image generation with Nano Banana 2 for accounts without a Google AI plan. Neither company prints a free image count. Our ChatGPT image generation limit and Gemini image generation limit pages track what's known.

For a longer list of free tools, from Bing Image Creator to open weights you run yourself, see Midjourney alternatives. Best AI image generators compares them job by job.

Whizi, which publishes this page, doesn't run Midjourney. A free Whizi account makes 2 pictures a month with Nano Banana, Flux or Stable Diffusion. Pro at $29.99 a month makes 100, next to Claude, GPT and Gemini in the same chat (how image generation works in Whizi). If it's the Midjourney look you want, the niji trial and the Basic refund window are the honest ways to test it.