Midjourney licensing is the way Midjourney, Inc. sells access to its text-to-image and image-to-video service. The Terms of Service say the agreement is between Midjourney, Inc. and the person or entity using the service through the website, any Discord server or any other means, and that the Subscription Plans page and the Community Guidelines form part of a single binding agreement.[1] There is no software to install and no licence key: a customer buys a subscription and receives GPU time. Rights to the output are set in the Terms, not in a product licence, and one of those rights depends on the size of the customer.
Editions
Midjourney offers four subscription tiers: Basic, Standard, Pro and Mega. All are subscriptions that renew automatically on a monthly or yearly basis unless the customer sets the plan to cancel.[2]
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly (per month equivalent) | Fast GPU time per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | USD 10 | USD 96 (8) | 3.3 hours (200 minutes) |
| Standard | USD 30 | USD 288 (24) | 15 hours |
| Pro | USD 60 | USD 576 (48) | 30 hours |
| Mega | USD 120 | USD 1,152 (96) | 60 hours |
The figures are from the plan comparison page. Committing to a yearly plan, with the full year paid upfront, gives a 20 per cent discount.[2] The page adds that plan availability and features are subject to change and that the Terms apply to all subscriptions.[2]
Differences other than allotment follow the tier. Unlimited Relax image generation needs Standard, Pro or Mega; unlimited Relax video needs Pro or Mega; and Stealth Mode, which keeps images and videos private, is available only on Pro and Mega.[2] The detail is in Midjourney plans and GPU time and Midjourney commercial use, ownership and Stealth Mode.
Metrics
The unit a customer buys is GPU time. Midjourney describes it as the time the service’s graphics processors spend on the customer’s jobs, comparable to the data allowance of a phone plan, and not the time spent on the website or waiting.[3] Three measures matter:
- Fast GPU time (Fast GPU time): a monthly allowance that is reset on renewal and does not carry over.[3]
- Relax GPU time (Relax GPU time): queued time that is unlimited on the tiers that include it.[3]
- Annual gross revenue (Annual gross revenue (Pro or Mega threshold)): the one customer attribute the Terms use, with a threshold of USD 1,000,000 a year.[1]
Beyond those, accounts are the user count: only one user may use the Services per registered account, and each user may have only one account.[1] See Account (one user).
Counting / floors
The revenue threshold. A company, or any employee of a company, with more than USD 1,000,000 a year in revenue must be subscribed to a Pro or Mega plan to own its Assets.[1] The help pages phrase it as gross revenue and as the condition for using images commercially for the company.[4] The Terms do not say how revenue is measured across affiliates, so a group should treat the test conservatively. See Companies above USD 1M revenue must subscribe to Pro or Mega.
Accounts. Midjourney does not offer seat or admin management, SSO, terms and policy negotiation or participation in vendor security processes. It will discuss bulk billing only for organisations that need 50 or more yearly Pro or Mega plans, with no discount beyond the yearly price.[5]
Virtualization & partitioning
Not applicable. The service is hosted. The related control is the account rule above: sharing one account between several people, or one person holding several accounts, is outside the Terms.[1]
Cloud / BYOL
Not applicable. Midjourney is accessed through its website and Discord. The documentation treats Discord and the website as synchronised: changes to settings in one place, including generation speed and Stealth Mode, change the other.[3]
Programs
- Subscription plans (Midjourney subscription plans).
- Annual billing at a 20 per cent discount (Annual billing discount).
- Stealth Mode for Pro and Mega (Stealth Mode).
- Earning free Fast time: the top 2,000 daily image raters receive an extra hour of Fast time, which needs an active subscription (Earning free Fast time).[6]
- Group plans and bulk billing (Group plans and bulk billing) and educational use (Educational use), described in Midjourney Terms of Service, billing and organisations.
- Free trial: a limited trial exists only on the niji journey mobile app; none is available on Discord or the website.[7]
- Video model (Midjourney Video model): billed in GPU time.[8]
Contract terms
The Terms disclaim warranties, tell users not to create dependencies on the service or its assets and let Midjourney suspend or ban access at any time.[1] They require binding arbitration under the American Arbitration Association’s International Centre for Dispute Resolution in Santa Clara County, California, after 30 days of good faith talks, limit Midjourney’s liability to the amount paid in the preceding 12 months, require the customer to indemnify Midjourney and bar claims brought more than a year after they arise.[1] A customer grants Midjourney a perpetual, worldwide, sublicensable and irrevocable copyright licence over its inputs and assets, and that licence survives termination.[1]
Audits and compliance
No licence audit right appears in the Terms or the plan pages. Midjourney may investigate complaints and take action it considers appropriate, including disclosing user information to law enforcement or regulators.[1] For a customer the practical controls are: record which accounts belong to the organisation and who uses each; compare the organisation’s annual revenue with USD 1,000,000 and move users of the service to Pro or Mega when it applies; track renewal dates because Fast time expires monthly; and decide whether Stealth Mode is needed for confidential work.
Out of scope
- Negotiated or custom commercial agreements: Midjourney says it does not offer terms and policy negotiation.[5]
- Litigation about the training data used for the models, which this article does not summarise.
- Merchandise, magazine subscriptions and store orders.
- Privacy and data deletion policies.