Midjourney plans and GPU time

Midjourney plans and GPU time describe what a customer actually buys. Midjourney explains that subscribers are buying time on its graphics processors and compares it to the data in a phone plan.^[1] The four plans (Basic, Standard, Pro, Mega) set the monthly Fast time, whether Relax time is available and how many jobs can run at once.

Editions

All rows are from the plan comparison page.^[2] Catalog rows: Basic plan (monthly), Standard plan (monthly), Pro plan (monthly) and Mega plan (monthly), with yearly equivalents Basic plan (yearly), Standard plan (yearly), Pro plan (yearly) and Mega plan (yearly). The comparison page notes that every plan uses “General Commercial Terms”, with a requirement for Pro or Mega for companies above USD 1,000,000 in gross yearly revenue.^[2] A queue holds at most 10 jobs on every plan, extended to accommodate repeat and permutation jobs.^[2]

Metrics

Fast GPU time

Fast time is the set amount of GPU time received with the subscription each month. Each renewal resets it, and unused time does not carry over.^[1] This applies to monthly and yearly plans alike: unused Fast time vanishes at the end of each month of a yearly plan too.^[3] A customer can check the balance on the Manage Subscription page, or with the info command in Discord.^[1]

What a prompt costs

Midjourney says a standard image prompt takes about one minute of GPU time and a video prompt about eight, with variation by task, aspect ratio and model version.^[1] Approximate costs on its page:

These are approximations and the page itself warns that tasks can use more or less.^[1]

Relax GPU time

Relax time is unlimited, so a customer can generate as many images as it wants without drawing on Fast time. The trade-off is waiting: prompts queue as GPUs free up, with waits of 0 to 30 minutes that depend on how much the customer has used Relax compared with others.^[1] Relax is limited by plan (images on Standard, Pro and Mega; SD video on Pro and Mega) and excludes permutation prompts, the repeat parameter, HD video and the legacy Max Upscale.^[1] The Terms add that Midjourney may rate limit a customer on an unlimited plan to prevent quality decay or interruptions to others.^[4]

Turbo mode

Turbo mode draws on Fast time and uses a high-speed GPU pool that can generate up to four times faster, but it uses double the Fast time for each image. Midjourney describes it as experimental, so availability and costs may change, and notes that it is not currently supported in V8.1.^[1] See Turbo mode usage.

Counting / floors

Extra Fast time. A customer that runs out of Fast time can buy more on the Manage Subscription page. Purchased hours expire after 60 days, require an active subscription to be used and cannot be refunded.^[5] The list price is USD 4 an hour on every plan.^[2]

Free Fast time. The top 2,000 members who rate the most images each day receive an extra hour of Fast time, and surveys sometimes award time. Awarded time needs an active subscription and expires 30 days after it is given.^[6]

Plan changes. An upgrade can happen immediately or at renewal. An immediate upgrade is discounted by the unused Fast time of the current plan, resets the subscription immediately, grants the new plan’s Fast time and sets the next renewal one month or one year after the upgrade. Moving from a yearly plan to an upgraded monthly plan cannot be done on the website and needs billing support.^[7]

Virtualization & partitioning

Not applicable. Use is counted in GPU time on Midjourney’s infrastructure. Concurrency limits (for example 12 Fast prompts on Pro and Mega) cap how many jobs run at once and so act as a throughput limit rather than a licence quantity.^[2]

Cloud / BYOL

Not applicable. No bring-your-own-licence or marketplace route is described in the documentation reviewed.

Programs

Video. A single image becomes a five second video, which can be extended by four seconds up to four times to a maximum of 21 seconds, and an extension costs the same GPU time as the original generation. All plans can generate video in Fast mode; Pro and Mega can use Relax for SD video; Standard, Pro and Mega can use HD video, in Fast mode only. By default four videos are generated per prompt, and a batch size of one or two reduces the cost.^[8] The Terms also say that Image Editor and Video content is the customer’s responsibility.^[4]

Yearly billing. Yearly billing is selected by default at checkout and the full year is paid upfront. Checkout uses Stripe.^[9]

Free trial. A limited trial exists only on the niji journey mobile app.^[10]

Contract terms

Plans renew automatically.^[2] A customer can cancel at any time on the Manage Subscription page; the cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing cycle and access to remaining Fast time continues until then.^[11] The Terms add that the current period is not refunded.^[4] Midjourney reserves the right to modify or discontinue any part of the service, including pricing and features, at any time.^[4] See Midjourney Terms of Service, billing and organisations.

Audits and compliance

There are no audit mechanics for GPU time; Midjourney meters it. The relevant management tasks are forecasting (will a team exhaust the Fast time before renewal, and is a Turbo or HD video habit doubling consumption), choosing the correct tier (Relax and Stealth needs) and tracking the 60-day expiry of any purchased hours.

Out of scope

• Discord command syntax and prompt parameters other than those that change GPU consumption.
• Model version differences beyond the V8.1 Turbo note.
• Prices in other currencies; the Payments articles describe currency handling but are not analysed here.
• Enterprise or custom pricing, which the documentation does not describe; bulk billing is offered only from 50 yearly Pro or Mega plans.^[12]