Midjourney

By Minel Gunesoglu, founder. I run the scoring benchmarks and read the community evidence behind every published score. Last updated July 2, 2026. This page is re-checked monthly and will be re-scored when our V8.1 benchmark run lands.

Midjourney holds two ratings that should not be able to coexist. On Trustpilot it sits at 1.6/5 (362 reviews, checked 2026-07-02). On G2 it holds 4.4/5 across 88 reviews. That is not noise, and it is not review-bombing. The two platforms are scoring two different things: Trustpilot reviewers are mostly judging Midjourney, Inc., the company that charges cards and decides refunds, while G2 reviewers are mostly judging the model, the image generator whose V8.1 became the default on 2026-06-10. This review keeps those two verdicts separate the whole way through, because collapsing them into one number is how a review of Midjourney ends up either gushing or ranting.

One caveat before anything else. That LOW confidence label is doing real work: the capability figure rests on v7-Alpha-era arena data, not on V8.1, and reliability has not been measured at all. How each dimension is built is public, and the gaps are stated on this page rather than papered over.

The score, dimension by dimension

Midjourney's composite is 60/100 (3.0/5), confidence LOW, from data collected 2026-06-17. Two flags ride with that number and neither is optional reading: a hard trust gate (n=359) and reliability unmeasured. Here is the full card.

Read the card with the two-entity split in mind. Capability, usability and value describe the model and the product around it, and they are decent-to-strong. Safety & trust at 41.0 describes Midjourney, Inc., and it is the reason the composite lands at 60 rather than in the high 70s: our model applies a hard trust gate when a consumer-trust record of this size (359 reviews at collection time) runs this negative, and the company offers no legal indemnification to offset it. The same tool with a boring, competent billing operation behind it would score meaningfully higher on identical output quality.

Two date-stamps matter here and must not be blurred. The capability number comes from arena preference data collected 2026-06-17, during the v7 Alpha era of that leaderboard. V8.1 became Midjourney's default model on 2026-06-10, and we have not yet re-benchmarked it (the section below explains exactly what is and isn't measured). If you want the mechanics behind the gate and the dimensions, the scoring rules spell them out; the short version is that we would rather publish a LOW-confidence 60 with its gaps labeled than a confident-sounding number we can't back.

Trustpilot says 1.6. G2 says 4.4. Both are right.

This is the question that brings most people to a Midjourney review in 2026, so here is the direct answer: the ratings diverge because the reviewer populations are judging different entities, and both records are broadly accurate about the thing they measure.

The Product Hunt record leans the same way as G2, and the contrast there is even starker. One reviewer wrote, "Midjourney isn't just an image generator — it feels more like a creative collaborator." (Product Hunt, April 2026, listed as "3mo ago" on 2026-07-02.) The people who love Midjourney are describing the model. The people who give it one star are, overwhelmingly, describing an invoice.

One more wrinkle for readers comparing numbers across this page: our trust-gate sample is n=359 because that is what the record held when score data was collected on 2026-06-17. The 362 figure is the same Trustpilot record re-checked on 2026-07-02. Same population, two dates, three new reviews.

What users keep saying

Before scoring this page I read the community record end to end: the Trustpilot profile, the r/midjourney refund and moderation threads, Hacker News, Product Hunt. It is an unusual body of evidence in that the complaints barely overlap with the praise. Almost nobody says the images are bad and the billing is fine; the anger and the affection point at different targets, which is the rating split again, visible one review at a time. Five themes carry most of the volume (synthesis dated 2026-07-02).

Billing and the 20-GPU-minute wall. This is the loudest theme by a distance, and it is aimed at Midjourney, Inc. "I discovered that Midjourney suddenly started charging me a monthly fee on 2023/09/21, and has been doing so for 18 months straight." (Reddit r/midjourney, 2025-04-13.) "they refused to refund me — because I had used more than '20 GPU minutes.'" (Reddit r/midjourney, 2025-04-11; inner quote marks rendered as single quotes, wording verbatim.) The darkest version of the complaint comes from Trustpilot: "They literally have incentives to make bad images so they can deny refunds in bulk." (Trustpilot 1-star review, 2026-05-06.) That last claim is an accusation, not an established fact, but the incentive structure it describes is real and covered in the refund section below.

"Hasn't kept up" since V7. The V7 launch in April 2025 drew a visible backlash aimed at the model: "How did we go from V6 with decent looking hands and fingers to complete trash in V7." (Reddit r/midjourney, 2025-04-04.) By mid-2026 the cooler version of that take reads as conventional wisdom on Hacker News: "Unfortunately it hasn't kept up on image quality, detail, or text rendering." (Hacker News, 2026-06-22.) A Trustpilot reviewer put it more plainly: "A lot of other AI improve their features very fast but not midjourney." (Trustpilot 1-star review, 2026-06-28.)

The aesthetic is still why people stay. The same Hacker News comment that says the model hasn't kept up also concedes: "MidJourney has better style than most other image generators, especially for artistic images." (Hacker News, 2026-06-22.) That internal contradiction, capability and aesthetics moving in opposite directions inside a single reviewer's head, is the most honest summary of the model's 2026 position that I found anywhere.

Prompt adherence is weak, and iteration is the tax. "The Midjourney AI will OFTEN just ignore clear direct prompts and do its own thing…" (Trustpilot 1-star review, 2026-05-04.) "getting the AI to output something worthwhile would usually take me hours of iterating over a prompt" (Hacker News, 2026-06-28.) On a metered plan this is a pricing problem wearing a workflow costume, and it is why the pricing section below counts GPU hours rather than dollars.

Moderation and suspensions. A distinct grievance from billing, and again aimed at the company: "Does anyone know if the Midjourney AI moderator has gone off the rails or something?" (Reddit r/midjourney, 2025-03-13.) "…without using it for a sec I got a message that my account is suspended due to automation, bot or third party." (Trustpilot 1-star review, 2026-05-20.) Paid accounts suspended without a human support channel to appeal to is a recurring 2026 pattern in the record.

Worth noting: even quality verdicts split by workflow. A 2026-05-28 Trustpilot review calls the output "extremely inconsistent and nowhere near the level people hype it up to be" while a 2026-05-18 five-star review from an artist calls it "excellent for an artist". One-shot prompters leave angry; iterate-and-edit users leave happy.

What's measured today, and what V8.1 testing will add

Honesty checkpoint: we have not yet run our hands-on V8.1 test battery. What this page can currently stand behind is the Artificial Analysis Image Arena preference data, collected 2026-06-17 during the v7 Alpha era, ELO 1070, plus the review-aggregate and pricing inputs on the score card. Any sentence on this page about V8.1 output quality would be invented, so there aren't any.

The planned battery targets the exact claims the community record raises: whether V8.1 follows explicit instructions better than the V7-era complaints suggest, whether hands and anatomy regressions are fixed, whether text inside images is still weak, and what a usable image actually costs on a metered Basic plan once retries are counted. Until those runs are published here, treat every capability statement on this page as dated 2026-06-17 and pre-V8.1. When they land, this page's modified date and score will change with them.

A note on video, since Midjourney sells that too. Midjourney, Inc. launched its V1 video model in June 2025; it animates a still image into short clips, priced at launch at roughly eight times the GPU time of an image job — real meter math on a Basic plan. This review scores the image model only: we have not tested video, and nothing here about it comes from measured data (stated 2026-07-02).

Pricing and the paper facts

Midjourney, Inc. sells four subscription tiers. There is no free tier of any kind. Prices below are as listed on midjourney.com, last verified 2026-06-17; the "billed annually" column is what produces the advertised from-$8 figure.

Does Midjourney have a free trial?

No. Midjourney, Inc. removed the free trial in March 2023 and has not restored it (checked 2026-07-02). Several pages that come up alongside this review still imply otherwise; they are out of date. The only escape hatch is the refund window covered in the next section, and it closes at 20 lifetime GPU minutes. The same goes for the "get Midjourney for free" methods promoted elsewhere: they are pre-2023 leftovers or workarounds that risk the account suspensions described above, and if free is a hard requirement, the free-tier alternative in the category ranking at the end of this page is the honest answer.

The number that matters on the cheapest plan is not $10, it is 3.3 GPU hours. Every generation and every retry draws that meter down, and the community record above says retries are the normal workflow, not the exception. A prompt that takes six attempts to land costs six attempts' worth of metered time, which is why a subscriber who prompts one-shot style can burn through a Basic month while feeling like they barely used the product. If you are budgeting, budget in GPU hours and assume an iteration loop; the honest unit of cost here is the usable image, not the month.

That iteration tax is why one widely repeated claim deserves a correction. Reviews that come up alongside this page quote Basic as good for roughly 200 images a month (checked 2026-07-02) — a figure that counts every generation as a keeper. The community record says users "often need to try multiple times to get what they want" (Product Hunt review, May 2026, listed as "2mo ago" on 2026-07-02), and every retry draws the same meter, so the usable-image count on a Basic month lands well below 200. How far below is what the V8.1 cost-per-usable-image run will measure; until then, this page publishes no per-image figure at all rather than repeat an uncorrected one.

Two paper facts that don't fit the table. Stealth Mode, which keeps your generations out of the public gallery, is a Pro and Mega feature only; on Basic and Standard, everything you make is publicly visible, which matters more than it sounds if you produce client work. And there is no public API: developers evaluating programmatic image generation should look elsewhere in our image-generators table, because Midjourney's product surfaces are the web app and Discord, full stop.

One practical note on those two surfaces: the web app at midjourney.com is now the primary way to generate and manage images; Discord still works but is optional, a holdover from when it was the only way in (web access opened to all users in August 2024). Subscribing happens on the midjourney.com account page — the same page, as the next section covers, where you cancel.

Cancel, refund, and the 20-minute rule

This section comes before any purchase advice on purpose. If you remember one operational fact about Midjourney, Inc., make it this one: refunds are only granted to accounts that have used fewer than 20 GPU minutes, measured over the lifetime of the account. Not per billing cycle. Lifetime. On a Basic plan, 20 minutes is roughly a tenth of one month's allowance; most people cross the line during their first session, before they know the line exists. That single policy, colliding with auto-renewal, generates the plurality of the 1.6/5 record (362 reviews, checked 2026-07-02): surprise annual charges, renewals users say they never approved, and refund requests denied on GPU-minute grounds, with billing email support described as slow or unresponsive through spring 2025 and beyond.

The mechanics, stated plainly. Subscriptions renew automatically, monthly or annually, until cancelled. Cancellation happens from the account page on midjourney.com and takes effect at the end of the current billing period; it does not trigger a refund of that period. If you charged an annual plan by mistake and have already generated images, the written policy says you are past the refund line. Whether support makes exceptions is not something the record supports counting on.

Practical consequences if you subscribe anyway: pay monthly, not annually, until you are certain the tool has a place in your work; set a calendar reminder for the renewal date the day you subscribe; and treat your first 20 GPU minutes as the only trial you will ever get, because functionally, that is what they are.

License, copyright, and the $1M line

Three separate legal questions get blurred into "can I use this commercially?", and they have three separate answers. All judgments in this section concern Midjourney, Inc.'s terms, not the model.

First, the usage license. Paid subscribers get broad rights to use their generations commercially under Midjourney's terms of service. But there is a revenue line: companies grossing more than $1M per year are required to subscribe to Pro or Mega for commercial use. A solo creator on Basic is inside the rules; an agency that lands a big client may quietly no longer be.

Second, copyright, which is not the same thing. A license from Midjourney, Inc. tells you what the company permits. It cannot manufacture copyright: the U.S. Copyright Office has repeatedly declined registration for purely AI-generated images, which means work you make with Midjourney may be legal to sell yet impossible to protect from copying. For logos and brand assets, that distinction is the whole ballgame, and no subscription tier changes it.

Third, the lawsuit overhang. Disney and Universal sued Midjourney, Inc. over copyright in June 2025, and in February 2026 the company changed its terms of service in the shadow of that case. Meanwhile the company offers no IP indemnification at any tier (reflected in the 41.0 safety & trust score, data 2026-06-17): if a client is ever challenged over an image you delivered, Midjourney, Inc.'s terms leave that risk with you. Adobe Firefly exists as a category alternative largely because it takes the opposite position for enterprise customers.

Who should skip Midjourney

Is Midjourney worth it? A conditional answer, dated 2026-07-02. If your work rewards a strong default aesthetic, you already work iteratively, and you can absorb a metered retry loop on a Standard plan, the model's output still earns its reputation, and the arena data (v7-Alpha era, 2026-06-17) backs that. If any item on the list below describes you, the current evidence says walk away.

Skip Midjourney if you are:

1. A one-shot prompter on a budget, because weak prompt adherence plus 3.3 metered GPU hours on Basic is a cost trap documented across three review platforms.
2. A team lead who needs indemnification, because Midjourney, Inc. offers none at any price.
3. Someone whose images need reliable text rendering, a weakness the community record flags as of mid-2026 and which we will re-test on V8.1.
4. A developer needing an API, because there is no public one.
5. A refund-sensitive subscriber, because the 20-GPU-minute lifetime rule plus the 1.6/5 (362 reviews, checked 2026-07-02) billing record is exactly the combination that fills Trustpilot.

And if you cannot use a Discord- or web-only workflow, nothing here will change that constraint.

Ranked against its category

Midjourney is scored under the same rules as every tool in the image-generators category, where the full comparison table lives. Every composite below comes from the same 2026-06-17 collection run as Midjourney's own 60/100, confidence labels included. The one-line differences against its siblings:

• Ideogram, at 78.8/100 (confidence low, on thin review coverage; 2026-06-17), is the pick when text inside the image has to be right, which is Midjourney's most-flagged weakness.
• Adobe Firefly, at 69.2/100 (confidence low; 2026-06-17), trades some aesthetic ceiling for enterprise IP indemnification, the exact thing Midjourney, Inc. refuses to offer.
• Leonardo AI, at 75.9/100 (confidence high, the group's only; 2026-06-17), is the cost-control alternative, with a free tier where Midjourney has none.
• Krea, at 82.2/100, the category's current high mark (confidence low, on thin review coverage; 2026-06-17), is built around real-time generation and editing rather than a queue-and-retry loop.
• Recraft, at 72.7/100 (confidence low; 2026-06-17), targets vector and brand-asset output, a lane Midjourney does not seriously contest.

That makes Midjourney's 60/100 the lowest composite of the six — and it is the trust gate, not the model's output, that separates it from the pack.

The closing verdict follows the page's own split. The model remains a genuinely strong image generator with the category's most recognizable aesthetic, weighed down by capability questions that only a V8.1 re-test can settle. Midjourney, Inc. runs a billing and support operation that has earned its 1.6/5 (362 reviews, checked 2026-07-02) and shows no public sign of fixing it. Our 60/100 (confidence LOW, hard trust gate n=359, reliability unmeasured, data 2026-06-17) is what happens when you refuse to average those two facts into a comfortable middle: the number is the tension, on purpose.