Comparison
Midjourney Free Alternative: What Midjourney Costs and What to Use Instead
Midjourney has no free plan, and its docs list four paid ones from $10 to $120 a month. Plans checked on Oct 19, 2026, plus an alternative on reRAW AI that has a limited free tier, with measured image edit times and two text-to-image samples and their prompts.
Published November 6, 2026
Midjourney has no free plan. Its help docs list four paid plans, Basic at $10 a month, Standard at $30, Pro at $60 and Mega at $120, and say that no free trial is currently available in Discord or on midjourney.com. A limited trial exists only in the niji · journey app on iOS and Android. If you want pictures without a subscription, reRAW AI has a free tier with limits; the pricing page lists them.
What Midjourney costs
The prices below are from Midjourney's own help docs, read on Oct 19, 2026. Check Midjourney's site for the price at checkout.
| Plan | Per month | Per month, annual billing | Fast GPU time | Relax mode | Also |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $10 | $8 | 3.3 hours | None | Extra Fast time at $4 an hour |
| Standard | $30 | $24 | 15 hours | Unlimited images | Extra Fast time at $4 an hour |
| Pro | $60 | $48 | 30 hours | Unlimited images and SD video | Stealth Mode |
| Mega | $120 | $96 | 60 hours | Unlimited images and SD video | Stealth Mode |
The docs describe two routes to free Fast time, and both need a paid plan. Each day the top 2,000 members who rate the most images receive an extra hour of Fast time, and occasional surveys award some. Awarded time expires 30 days after it is given. A company with more than $1,000,000 in gross revenue a year must use the Pro or Mega plan, the docs say.
What decides whether a free image tool is usable
Four things decide it: how many images you can make per day, whether the picture carries a watermark, how large the file can be, and what you may do with it afterwards. A free tier that fails on one of them can be fine for a mood board and useless for a client. Check these on any tool before you build on it, ours included.
Image models on reRAW AI
reRAW AI is an all-in-one AI video and image studio. Trending effects turn a single photo into a video or picture in one tap: change outfits, turn a portrait into a cartoon, make a photo dance. For brands, it makes video ads, UGC-style ads, posters and product photos. For full control, the pro studio has top models like Veo, Seedance, Kling and Nano Banana, with reference-to-video, motion control, extend and upscale, plus face swap and background, object and watermark removal. Videos run up to 4K and 30 seconds, half are ready in under a minute, and downloads carry no visible watermark. It works in the browser in eight languages and is free to start.
The image models on reRAW AI include:
- GPT Image 2.5 makes images from a prompt and edits uploaded photos at 1K, 2K and 4K, with readable text in the picture.
- Nano Banana 2 is Google's model, known for following editing instructions closely, at 1K, 2K and 4K in ten aspect ratios.
- Seedream 5.0 Lite offers sixteen fixed sizes up to roughly 4K.
- reRAW Image and Wan 2.7 Edit are also available for photo edits.
A free account is limited in what it can make. The pricing page lists what it includes.
Speed and cost for photo edits, measured on reRAW AI
Midjourney is known for text-to-image, and we do not have a table of measured text-to-image runs we can stand behind. What we do have is photo edits, where you upload a picture and describe a change. The runs below happened on reRAW AI between Sep 19 and Oct 18, 2026 (UTC), timed from pressing Generate to the finished image. At most 10 runs per person per model are counted. A failed run is a model error, a timeout or an unexplained failure on the model's side, counted over the last 9 days (Oct 10 to Oct 18).
| Model | Runs (people) | Median time | 90th percentile | Failed runs, last 9 days | Credits per edit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| reRAW Image | 2,270 (644) | 27 s | 52 s | 1.9% | 3 |
| GPT Image 2 Edit | 519 (214) | 81 s | 226 s | 4.1% | 2 today (promotion, list price 10) |
| Wan 2.7 Edit | 136 (53) | 18 s | 41 s | 0% | 6 |
Over the full 30 days GPT Image 2 Edit failed on 18.9% of runs, almost all in two bursts of timeouts on the model's side, around Sep 28 and Oct 5 to 7. From Oct 10 it ran near normal, which is why the table uses the last 9 days. At the entry pack rate of $0.0327 a credit, 2 credits is about $0.07 and 3 credits about $0.10.
Text-to-image samples, with the prompts
These two pictures were made with GPT Image 2 from a text prompt, at 2K, and are samples we produced ourselves. The first prompt asks for two exact strings of text and the second asks for none.
A minimal brand advertising poster, portrait 3:4. A matte ceramic coffee cup in warm oat color with a thin wisp of steam, on a sunlit linen surface, soft morning shadows. Large clean sans-serif headline in the upper area reads exactly: "Made for mornings". Small brand wordmark at the bottom reads exactly: "MOSSWICK". Only these words. Editorial ad photography, correct spelling.
Advertising hero shot of a cold unbranded glass bottle of peach sparkling soda with a plain cream label, condensation droplets, dramatic splash of fizzy liquid and peach slices around it, backlit, vibrant warm orange backdrop, frozen motion, commercial beverage photography. No text, no logos.
How to choose
Midjourney is a subscription built around Fast hours, and on Standard and above Relax mode gives unlimited images, according to its docs. If you make images every day, that structure can work out well. If you make them now and then, want to start without paying, or want to pick between several models for the same prompt, reRAW AI fits better.