Midjourney Review 2026: Best AI Art Generator?

Midjourney occupies a strange position in the AI tool landscape. It produces some of the most visually striking AI-generated images available anywhere, yet it has historically been one of the least accessible tools to actually use. No standalone app, no traditional web interface for the longest time — just a Discord bot. You typed prompts into a chat server alongside thousands of other users and waited for your results to appear in a stream of other people’s creations.

That has changed substantially in the past year. Midjourney now has a polished web interface, a completely rebuilt image generation model (V7), video generation capabilities, and a faster workflow that makes the old Discord-only days feel primitive.

But has it changed enough? With DALL-E 3 built into ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion offering free open-source generation, and tools like Leonardo AI and Ideogram nipping at its heels, Midjourney needs to justify its subscription price with results.

I have been using Midjourney since V4, generating thousands of images across different styles, subjects, and use cases. This review covers the current state of the platform in 2026, from the V7 model quality to the pricing structure and everything in between.

What Is Midjourney?

Midjourney is an AI image generation platform that creates images from text descriptions (prompts). You type a description of what you want — a landscape, a portrait, a product mockup, an abstract concept — and the AI generates images matching your description.

The platform was created by David Holz (co-founder of Leap Motion) and launched in open beta in July 2022. Since then, it has become one of the most popular AI art tools globally, known particularly for its aesthetic quality and the distinctive “Midjourney look” that many users find more visually appealing than competing tools.

Midjourney operates primarily through two interfaces:

Discord bot — the original method, where you interact with the AI through commands in Discord chat channels

Web interface — a newer, more polished option available at midjourney.com that provides a gallery, editor, and generation tools in a traditional web app layout

Both interfaces require an active paid subscription to generate images.

Midjourney Pricing (2026)

Midjourney has no free tier. After suspending its free trial in April 2023 due to abuse, the platform requires a paid subscription to generate any images. Here are the current plans:

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per month)	Fast GPU Hours	Relax Mode	Stealth Mode	Max Concurrent Fast Jobs
Basic	$10/month	$8/month ($96/year)	~3.3 hrs	No	No	3
Standard	$30/month	$24/month ($288/year)	~15 hrs	Unlimited	No	3
Pro	$60/month	$48/month ($576/year)	~30 hrs	Unlimited	Yes	12
Mega	$120/month	$96/month ($1,152/year)	~60 hrs	Unlimited	Yes	12

Understanding the Pricing

Fast GPU hours vs. Relax Mode is the key distinction. Fast Mode processes your prompts immediately with priority GPU access. Each plan comes with a limited monthly allowance of Fast hours. Relax Mode, available on Standard and above, queues your generations and processes them as GPUs become available — typically 1 to 10 minutes per image. Relax Mode does not consume your Fast hour allowance.

This means the Standard plan at $30/month is the practical sweet spot for most users. You get 15 hours of Fast generation for time-sensitive work and unlimited Relax generation for everything else. You can generate thousands of images per month in Relax Mode without hitting any cap.

The Basic plan ($10/month) works for light hobbyists who generate a handful of images per week. Once your 3.3 Fast hours are gone, you cannot generate more until the next billing cycle — there is no Relax Mode fallback.

The Pro plan ($60/month) adds Stealth Mode, which prevents your images from appearing in Midjourney’s public gallery. This matters for commercial work where you do not want competitors or clients seeing your creative process. Pro also doubles your concurrent Fast job limit from 3 to 12.

The Mega plan ($120/month) is designed for studios and heavy commercial users who need maximum throughput. The 60 Fast GPU hours and 12 concurrent jobs support production-scale workflows.

Commercial use is included in all paid plans. You can use Midjourney-generated images for business purposes on any tier. However, companies with over $1 million in annual gross revenue are required to subscribe to the Pro or Mega plan.

Midjourney V7: The Current Model

V7 represents the most significant update in Midjourney’s history. Released in alpha on April 3, 2025, and set as the default model on June 17, 2025, V7 is not an incremental improvement over V6.1 — it is a complete rebuild of the underlying model architecture.

Image Quality

The quality jump from V6.1 to V7 is noticeable across every category:

• Hands and fingers — the longstanding challenge of AI image generators. V7 renders human hands with dramatically improved accuracy. Five-fingered hands are now the norm rather than the exception, and finger positioning looks natural in most poses.
• Faces — more detailed, more expressive, and less prone to the “uncanny valley” effect that plagued earlier versions. Skin textures look realistic without appearing over-processed.
• Text rendering — V7 can now render text within images with reasonable accuracy. This was essentially impossible in earlier versions and is a genuine breakthrough for design and marketing use cases.
• Complex scenes — multiple objects, characters, and environmental elements maintain logical placement and perspective. Earlier models often struggled with spatial relationships; V7 handles them much more reliably.
• Artistic consistency — when you choose a particular style, V7 maintains it throughout the entire image rather than mixing styles across different elements.

New Features in V7

Draft Mode — generates images up to 10 times faster at half the GPU cost. The quality is lower than standard generation, but it is excellent for rapid iteration. You can quickly explore different compositions and concepts before committing to full-quality renders.

Personalization — V7 introduced much faster personalization of image generation preferences. Previously, you needed to generate about 200 images and rate them to calibrate personalization. Now the process takes about five minutes. Personalization is enabled by default in V7, and the AI adapts to your aesthetic preferences over time.

Omni-Reference (–oref) — lets you maintain consistent characters and objects across multiple images. Upload a reference image of a character, and Midjourney can place that character in different scenes while maintaining visual consistency. This is valuable for storytelling, marketing campaigns, and any project that requires character continuity.

Voice Mode — you can speak your image description aloud, and Midjourney converts your speech into a text prompt. It supports multiple languages and handles natural language surprisingly well.

Improved Prompt Understanding — V7 handles shorter, more conversational prompts better than previous versions. You no longer need highly detailed, keyword-stuffed descriptions to get good results. A simple sentence often produces better output than a long list of style modifiers.

Niji 7

Released January 9, 2026, Niji 7 is Midjourney’s anime and Eastern art-focused model. It brings V7-level quality improvements to anime, manga, and illustration styles, with much better coherency in character poses, clothing details, and action scenes.

Video Generation

Midjourney launched its V1 Video Model in June 2025, enabling users to convert static images into short animated clips. The feature is still early, but it signals Midjourney’s expansion beyond still images into motion content.

The Discord Workflow

Midjourney’s Discord workflow is either a charming quirk or a frustrating barrier depending on your perspective.

How it works: You join the Midjourney Discord server, navigate to one of the generation channels, and type /imagine followed by your prompt. The bot processes your request and posts the results as a grid of four images. You can then upscale individual images, create variations, or reroll for entirely new results — all through Discord button clicks.

The advantages: Discord provides a built-in community. You can see what other people are creating, learn from their prompts, and get inspired by styles you had not considered. The interface is fast for rapid iteration — typing prompts and clicking buttons takes seconds.

The disadvantages: Discord is noisy and chaotic. Your images appear in a stream alongside everyone else’s generations, making it easy to lose track of your work. The interface was never designed for image generation, so the workflow feels bolted on. Managing large numbers of images, organizing projects, or reviewing your generation history is cumbersome.

For serious work, most experienced Midjourney users have migrated to the web interface and use Discord primarily for community interaction and inspiration.

The Web Interface

Midjourney’s web interface at midjourney.com is a significant improvement over the Discord-only experience. It provides:

• A clean generation interface — type prompts, adjust parameters, and view results in a traditional web application layout
• Image organization — browse and manage your generation history with filtering and sorting
• Gallery browsing — explore community creations with search functionality
• Parameter controls — adjust aspect ratio, style, quality, and other settings through a visual interface rather than memorizing command-line flags
• Image editing tools — basic editing capabilities including inpainting and outpainting

The web interface makes Midjourney accessible to users who have no interest in Discord. It is more intuitive, better organized, and provides a workflow that feels professional rather than experimental.

That said, the web interface is still missing some features that power users rely on in Discord, and the community aspect is less prominent. It is a trade-off between usability and community engagement.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Best-in-class image quality — V7 produces images that consistently look better than competing AI art generators, especially for photorealistic and artistic styles
• Relax Mode provides unlimited generation — on Standard and above, you can generate as many images as you want without hitting a cap
• Strong community and inspiration — the Discord server and web gallery provide constant exposure to creative prompts and techniques
• Draft Mode enables rapid iteration — 10x faster generation at half cost makes exploration practical
• Personalization adapts to your taste — the AI learns your aesthetic preferences and calibrates output accordingly
• Commercial use included in all plans — no need for separate commercial licenses
• Text rendering actually works now — V7 handles text in images with reasonable accuracy
• Omni-Reference maintains character consistency — valuable for projects requiring consistent characters across scenes

Cons

• No free tier or trial — you must pay to try the tool, with no way to evaluate quality before committing
• No official API — developers and automation-focused users cannot programmatically access Midjourney’s generation capabilities
• Discord workflow is unintuitive — despite the web interface, many features still require Discord knowledge
• Steep learning curve for prompting — getting great results requires understanding Midjourney-specific parameters, styles, and techniques
• Limited editing capabilities — inpainting and outpainting exist but are basic compared to dedicated editing tools
• Privacy requires Pro plan — if you do not want your images publicly visible, you need the $60/month Pro plan for Stealth Mode
• Copyright and ethical concerns remain unresolved — like all AI image generators, Midjourney was trained on existing artwork, which remains a point of contention among artists

Who Should Use Midjourney?

Midjourney is a strong fit for:

• Designers and art directors looking for concept art, mood boards, and visual exploration. V7’s quality makes it a practical tool for professional creative work.
• Marketing teams that need custom illustrations, social media visuals, and campaign imagery. The commercial license on all plans and text rendering capability make it viable for marketing content.
• Hobbyists and art enthusiasts who enjoy creating images for personal projects. The Standard plan’s unlimited Relax Mode makes it one of the most cost-effective ways to explore AI art.
• Storytellers and world-builders — Omni-Reference and character consistency features support ongoing creative projects.

Midjourney is less ideal for:

• Developers who need programmatic image generation — the lack of an official API is a significant limitation.
• Users who need precise control — while V7 follows prompts better than previous versions, you still cannot achieve pixel-perfect control over compositions.
• Budget-conscious users who want to try before buying — the lack of a free tier or trial means a $10/month minimum commitment to evaluate the tool.
• Commercial work requiring full privacy — if you cannot have your images visible publicly, you need the Pro plan at $60/month minimum.

Midjourney vs. the Competition

Feature	Midjourney Standard	DALL-E 3 (ChatGPT)	Stable Diffusion	Leonardo AI
Monthly price	$30/month	$20/month (with ChatGPT Plus)	Free (open source)	$12/month
Image quality	Excellent	Very Good	Variable (model dependent)	Good
Unlimited generation	Yes (Relax Mode)	No (limited by plan)	Yes (local hardware)	No (token-based)
Text rendering	Good (V7)	Excellent	Poor to Fair	Fair
Web interface	Yes	Yes (via ChatGPT)	Third-party UIs	Yes
API access	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Customization	Moderate (parameters)	Limited	Extensive (full control)	Moderate
Community	Large (Discord)	None	Large (open source)	Growing

Midjourney leads on raw image quality, particularly for photorealistic and artistic styles. DALL-E 3 is more accessible (built into ChatGPT) and has better text rendering. Stable Diffusion offers maximum control and is free to run locally but requires technical knowledge and powerful hardware. Leonardo AI provides a good middle ground with lower pricing but does not match Midjourney’s output quality.

Rating: 8.5/10

Midjourney earns an 8.5 out of 10 in 2026. V7 represents a genuine leap forward in AI image generation — the quality is stunning, the new features (Draft Mode, Personalization, Omni-Reference) add real utility, and the web interface finally makes the platform accessible to non-Discord users.

The main marks against Midjourney are the lack of a free trial (which makes it hard to evaluate), the absence of an official API (which limits integration possibilities), and the fact that privacy requires a more expensive plan. The copyright debate surrounding AI art training data is also an ongoing concern that affects the entire industry.

For anyone who creates visual content — whether professionally or as a hobby — Midjourney V7 sets the current standard for AI-generated image quality. The Standard plan at $30/month (or $24/month annually) with unlimited Relax Mode generation offers exceptional value for the quality you receive.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Midjourney free to use?

No. Midjourney discontinued its free trial in April 2023 and currently requires a paid subscription starting at $10/month (Basic plan) to generate any images. You can browse the community gallery and interact on the Discord server without paying, but image generation is locked behind a subscription.

Can I use Midjourney images commercially?

Yes, all paid Midjourney plans include commercial usage rights. You can use generated images for business purposes, including marketing materials, product designs, and client work. One restriction: companies with over $1 million in annual gross revenue must subscribe to the Pro ($60/month) or Mega ($120/month) plan.

How does Midjourney V7 compare to V6?

V7 is a complete rebuild rather than an incremental update. Key improvements include dramatically better hand and face rendering, accurate text within images, improved prompt understanding (shorter prompts work better), faster personalization, and new features like Draft Mode and Omni-Reference. The overall image quality and coherence are noticeably superior. V7 also handles complex scenes with multiple subjects much more reliably.

Do I need Discord to use Midjourney?

No, you can now use Midjourney entirely through the web interface at midjourney.com. The web UI provides image generation, gallery management, and editing tools without requiring a Discord account. However, some users still prefer Discord for its community aspects and faster prompt iteration workflow. Both interfaces are fully functional for generating images.

Which Midjourney plan should I choose?

For most users, the Standard plan ($30/month or $24/month annually) is the best choice. It provides 15 hours of Fast generation for quick results and unlimited Relax Mode for unlimited generation at slightly slower speeds. The Basic plan works if you only generate a few images per week, but the lack of Relax Mode means you are capped at your Fast hour allocation. The Pro plan is worth it if you need Stealth Mode for privacy or if you consistently max out Standard’s Fast hours.