Midjourney is a subscription-based AI image and video generation service from Midjourney, Inc., accessed through its website and via Discord. Unlike most competitors, it has no free tier and no public API: every user needs one of four paid plans, starting at $10/month, to generate images at all.
Who builds it
Midjourney, Inc. develops and operates the service as a closed, subscription-funded product rather than an open platform with tiered free access. Generation happens either on midjourney.com or through Discord bot commands, a distribution choice that set Midjourney apart from browser-first competitors when it launched and still shapes how many users interact with it today. There is no self-serve API: Midjourney's own Terms of Service address API access directly, and the service does not offer one to the general public.
What it does
Midjourney turns text prompts into images, and its models are also capable of rendering legible text inside generated images, a feature the company documents separately from general image generation. Editing is supported through Midjourney's own Editor, which allows users to modify a generated image rather than only producing new ones from scratch. Image output tops out at 2048x2048 resolution, a fixed ceiling that Midjourney documents explicitly rather than varying by an underlying model choice, since Midjourney does not expose multiple third-party model options the way some competitors do. That combination — a single house style refined across model versions, built-in text rendering and an in-house editor — is a large part of why Midjourney retains a dedicated following despite requiring payment from the very first image.
Pricing
Midjourney is paid-only: there is no ongoing free tier, and Midjourney's own documentation on free trials confirms that trial access is not a standing feature of the service today. Access requires one of four paid subscription plans, with pricing starting at $10/month for the entry-level plan and rising for tiers with more generation capacity or usage rights. Because there is no metered API and no pay-as-you-go option, the subscription itself is the only way to use Midjourney.
Rights and provenance
Midjourney's commercial terms sit in the "commercial with limits" category: both its plan comparison page and its Terms of Service describe usage rights that are broad but conditional, meaning the specific commercial permissions depend on which plan a subscriber holds rather than being identical across all four tiers. On ownership, Midjourney's Terms of Service state that subscribers own the assets they create. There is no published content-provenance or watermarking standard, such as C2PA labeling, in the sources behind this profile, so teams with compliance requirements around visible AI labeling should check Midjourney's current Terms of Service directly. Put together, Midjourney's proposition is narrower but more predictable than open, freemium rivals: a single, closed subscription model, Discord- or web-based access, no API to integrate elsewhere, but a distinctive visual style, built-in text rendering, and image editing bundled into every paid plan from $10/month.