Is Midjourney Free in 2026? Pricing, Video, and Free Alternatives

“Can you use Midjourney for free?” is the most asked question about the tool. The short answer is no, not on the website or in Discord. The longer answer covers a limited mobile trial, four paid plans that sell GPU time rather than image counts, a video model billed at several times an image job, commercial terms that depend on your company’s revenue, and three open copyright lawsuits. This guide takes each in turn, links every number to its source page, and ends with the free alternatives, including Krea 2 and its honest limits.

Midjourney at a glance

How we checked

Every fact below comes from a page we loaded in September 2026: Midjourney’s plan comparison, free trials page, video documentation, V1 video launch post, terms of service (version effective May 27, 2026), and commercial use page, plus Krea’s pricing page. For the lawsuits we used NPR, Deadline, Artnet, The Art Newspaper, the CourtListener docket, and a litigation tracker. We generated nothing in Midjourney for this article. Every image is a single, raw Krea 2 Turbo output from the prompt printed beside it.

Can you use Midjourney for free?

No, not in the two places most people look. Midjourney’s free trials page states: “A limited trial is available on the niji · journey app, available for iOS and Android devices. No free trial is currently available in Discord or the midjourney.com website.” Midjourney paused its Discord trial in 2023 and has not restored it. The docs do not publish the size of the niji trial, so treat third-party image counts as unconfirmed.

Has the Midjourney free version ended? Yes, for the main product. To see the style before paying, your routes are the niji · journey trial, which runs the anime-tuned niji model rather than the main model, or one month of Basic at $10. The public gallery on midjourney.com is free to browse and shows prompts.

Where the free route stops: the niji trial is a different model with an anime bias, and browsing generates nothing. There is no way to make a Midjourney image on the web at $0.

What does Midjourney cost in 2026?

Midjourney’s plan comparison lists four individual plans. Annual billing is 20% cheaper.

Two things on that table trip up new subscribers. First, you buy GPU minutes, not images. A default image job uses well under a minute, so Basic’s 200 minutes is often quoted as “about 200 images,” but upscales, variations, and video draw from the same pool. Second, Basic has no Relax mode. When its 200 minutes are gone, generation stops until the next cycle.

Prompt for the image above (Krea 2 Turbo, 16:9, 1K):

Two hourglasses side by side on a dark slate table: the left one with bright glowing amber sand running fast, the right one with slow pale blue sand, dramatic low side light, macro product photography, black background, no text

A single, raw Krea 2 Turbo output, shown to illustrate Fast versus Relax. It is not a Midjourney image.

Fast versus Relax: Fast Mode runs your job now and deducts GPU time from your monthly allowance. Relax Mode queues your job behind Fast jobs and deducts nothing, so on Standard and above you keep generating images after your fast hours run out, at the cost of wait time. On Pro and Mega, Relax also covers SD video.

Where the pricing stops being simple: a heavy month on Basic ends early with no fallback, and Standard’s unlimited Relax covers images only. If you need private generations, the real entry price is Pro at $60, because Stealth Mode does not exist below it.

Can I generate videos on Midjourney?

Yes. Midjourney released its V1 video model on June 18, 2025, per the launch post. It is image-to-video: you make or upload a still, press Animate, and get a 5-second clip. The video documentation sets the rules:

• Length. A video starts at 5 seconds. Each extend adds about 4 seconds, up to four times, for a maximum of 21 seconds.
• Resolution. Videos render at 480p (SD). Standard, Pro, and Mega can render 720p (HD), “but only in Fast Mode.”
• Cost. The launch post says “about 8x more for a video job than an image job,” roughly “one image worth of cost per second of video.” The docs list GPU minutes by batch size: SD is 8 minutes for a batch of 4, 4 for 2, 2 for 1. HD is 26 minutes for 4, 13 for 2, 7 for 1.
• Plans. All plans can make video in Fast Mode. Only Pro and Mega can make video in Relax Mode, at SD only.
• Controls. Video accepts --motion low, --motion high, --raw, --loop, --end, and --bs #.

The arithmetic for Basic: 200 fast minutes divided by 8 minutes per SD batch is 25 video jobs a month, if you make nothing else. One HD batch on Standard costs 26 of its 900 fast minutes.

Prompt for the image above (Krea 2 Turbo, 16:9, 1K):

A single red paper lantern floating just above a still mountain lake at dusk, its reflection perfectly mirrored, thin fog on the water, dark pine forest silhouettes, deep blue sky with the first stars, photorealistic landscape photography, no text

A single, raw Krea 2 Turbo output. A still like this is the input Midjourney’s Animate button expects. It was not made or animated in Midjourney.

Variation tips: for a still you plan to animate, give the prompt one moving element (lantern, fog, water) and keep the rest static, so a low-motion setting has something to move.

Where Midjourney video stops: no text-to-video, 480p by default, HD only with Fast time on Standard or above, and no unlimited HD on any plan. For text-to-video or longer clips, see Krea Video and the best free AI video generators.

What is Midjourney used for?

Midjourney makes stylized still images from text prompts: concept art, illustration, moodboards, editorial and album art, film and game pre-visualization, and, since 2025, short animated clips from those stills. Its strengths are a distinctive default aesthetic, a public gallery to learn from, and style-reference tools. Its limits are no free tier, public generations below Pro, and a narrow toolset next to suites that add editing, upscaling, training, and 3D. For the workflow comparison, read Krea 2 vs Midjourney. If your question is “Is ChatGPT better than Midjourney?”, that head-to-head lives in ChatGPT vs Midjourney.

Can I use Midjourney images commercially?

Yes on every paid plan, with one revenue rule. Midjourney’s terms of service state: “You own all Assets You create with the Services to the fullest extent possible under applicable law.” The next clause is the one to read twice: “If you are a company or any employee of a company with more than $1,000,000 USD a year in revenue, you must be subscribed to a ‘Pro’ or ‘Mega’ plan to own Your Assets.”

Three more points from the commercial use page and the terms:

• You keep ownership “even if you decide to cancel your subscription.”
• If you upscale another user’s image, it belongs to the original creator, and you need their permission for commercial use.
• You grant Midjourney a “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license” over your prompts and outputs. Your images are public unless you are on Pro or Mega with Stealth Mode on.

This is a summary of published text, not legal advice. A freelancer on Basic can sell work. An employee of a company above $1,000,000 in revenue needs Pro or Mega, and client work under NDA needs Stealth Mode, which is also Pro or Mega.

What is the Midjourney controversy?

The controversy is a set of copyright lawsuits over how Midjourney trained its models and what they output. Three cases are on the record. We state what is filed and ruled, not who is right.

Prompt for the image above (Krea 2 Turbo, 16:9, 1K):

A neutral still life of a wooden gavel resting beside a neat stack of printed illustrations and a closed leather folder on a mahogany desk, soft window light, muted colors, documentary photography style, no text

A single, raw Krea 2 Turbo output, used as a neutral illustration. It depicts no real court or filing.

Disney and Universal v. Midjourney (June 2025). On June 11, 2025, Disney and Universal filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, docketed as Disney Enterprises Inc. v. Midjourney Inc., 2:25-cv-05275, before Judge John A. Kronstadt. NPR reported that the 110-page complaint alleges Midjourney trained on the studios’ works without permission and outputs their characters, naming Darth Vader, Shrek, Homer Simpson, and the Minions, and calls the service a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” The studios seek an injunction and damages. On August 7, 2025, Midjourney filed a 43-page answer asserting fair use and an “unclean hands” defense, per Artnet. In July 2026, The Art Newspaper reported Midjourney asked the court to review a ruling that denied it discovery into the studios’ own AI use. The docket shows a hearing on that motion on August 17, 2026, and a September 4, 2026 stipulation on the schedule for “Production of Training Data.” No ruling on the merits has issued.

Warner Bros. Discovery v. Midjourney (September 2025). On September 4, 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery filed a separate complaint in the same court, per Deadline, alleging direct and secondary copyright infringement over characters including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Scooby-Doo, and Bugs Bunny. The complaint states: “Midjourney thinks it is above the law.”

Andersen v. Stability AI (January 2023). Artists including Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz filed a class action on January 13, 2023, in the Northern District of California, case 3:23-cv-00201, against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt, and later Runway. Per the case tracker, Judge William Orrick dismissed most claims on October 30, 2023, then on August 12, 2024, let direct copyright infringement and Lanham Act claims proceed against Midjourney and dismissed the DMCA claims. A Third Amended Complaint was filed February 27, 2026, defendants answered March 13, 2026, and the tracker lists a trial date of April 5, 2027.

None of these cases has reached a verdict. For a subscriber, the practical point is the license section above: you own your outputs under Midjourney’s terms, and the courts have not yet ruled on the training claims.

Head-to-head: the same prompt in Midjourney and Krea 2

We did not run this prompt in Midjourney, so there is no Midjourney image here. Below is the settings recipe you would use there, and the raw result from the same words in Krea 2 Turbo.

Prompt:

A cinematic portrait of an elderly fisherman mending a net on a weathered wooden dock at golden hour, sea mist behind him, warm rim light on his face, shallow depth of field, 35mm film photography look, muted teal and amber palette, no text

Midjourney settings recipe (web or Discord):

1. Paste the prompt and add --ar 16:9.
2. Keep the default model version. Add --style raw for less of Midjourney’s house look.
3. Start at --stylize 100 for a literal read; raise to 250 for more painterly light.
4. Leave --chaos at 0 for four similar options; raise to 20 to widen the grid.
5. Upscale one of the four. Each step deducts fast GPU time.

Krea 2 settings: Krea 2 Turbo, 16:9, 1K, creativity low, no style reference. One run, no reroll.

A single, raw Krea 2 Turbo output from the prompt above. Midjourney will render the same words differently. No Midjourney output appears in this article.

Variation tips: the anchors are subject, one action, one light phrase, and one palette. Swap “golden hour” for “blue hour, cold overcast” to push both tools toward a documentary look; drop “35mm film” for a cleaner digital render.

Is there a free alternative to Midjourney?

Yes, several. The ranked list is in the 5 best Midjourney alternatives; here is the short version and where each stops.

Prompt for the image above (Krea 2 Turbo, 16:9, 1K):

An isometric illustration of four small creative workstations arranged in a row on a floating tile, each with a different colored monitor showing a different art style: a photo, a painting, a 3D render, and a pencil sketch, soft pastel palette, clean stylized 3D render look, no text

A single, raw Krea 2 Turbo output, made on the free plan’s model.

Krea 2 on Krea’s free plan

Per Krea’s pricing page, the Free plan is $0, gives 100 compute units a day, needs no credit card, and includes Krea 2 image generation, the Krea Agent, real-time models, limited LoRA training (50 images), and basic upscaling to 2K. Generations are private; there is no public feed.

Where Krea’s free plan stops: it is Krea 2 images only. It does not include the full image-model library, the video models, 3D or lipsync, Krea Nodes, or the commercial license, and video concurrency is 0. The 100 daily units are a real ceiling on a heavy day. The Basic plan opens most of that: $9/month, or $5/month billed yearly, for 5,000 units a month, which the pricing page describes as “64 Nano Banana 2 generations, 20 Seedance 2.0 videos” on selected video models. That undercuts Midjourney Basic and includes video, but Krea has nothing like Midjourney’s public gallery culture.

Try Krea 2 free, or read the Krea 2 Turbo notes for what the free model does.

Other free routes

• Nano Banana 2 (Google) is free inside Google’s apps within their daily limits. Strong at conversational edits and readable text; the free route is a chat window, not a studio.
• FLUX.2 (Black Forest Labs) ships open weights you can run locally at no per-image cost. You supply the GPU and the setup.
• ChatGPT’s free tier makes a few images a day; OpenAI does not publish a fixed cap.

For the wider field, see the best free AI image generators.

Which should you pick?

• You want Midjourney’s look and $10 a month is fine → Midjourney Basic, knowing images are public, there is no Relax mode, and video costs 8 fast minutes per SD batch.
• You want unlimited image generation and can wait → Midjourney Standard at $30; Relax covers images, not video.
• You need private generations, or your company is over $1,000,000 in revenue → Midjourney Pro at $60, the lowest plan with Stealth Mode and the plan the terms require above that threshold.
• You need a free, private start today with a photoreal model → Krea’s free plan: 100 units a day on Krea 2, no card. Move to Basic at $9 for video or the commercial license.
• You need text-to-video or clips longer than 21 seconds → not Midjourney. Compare Krea Video and the free AI video generators guide.

Prices, trial rules, and dockets all changed inside the last year. Check the linked pages before you commit.