Midjourney CEO David Holz announced via Discord on Wednesday that the AI image generator will finally be available to all users, not just paying subscribers, through its website.
The text-to-image generator made its debut in 2022 and was originally hosted on a Discord server. The company developed and launched a website last year that mirrored the Discord bot’s functionality, though it was originally reserved for users who had already generated at least 10,000 images through the bot. As of now, anybody can give Midjourney a try by visiting its website. You will need either a Discord or Google account in order to sign up.
While you will be able to try the image generator for free, you will not be able to use it in perpetuity. The company is instead offering a free trial of 25 images to all users. Once you work through those 25 freebies, you’ll have to sign up for one of Midjourney’s paying subscription packages. The $10/month Basic plan starts off with 3.3 hours of GPU time monthly and up to three image generations running concurrently, and goes up from there until you hit the $120/month Mega plan that offers 60 hours per month of Fast GPU time, unlimited hours of “Relax” GPU access, and the ability to generate up to 15 images at the same time.
The Midjourney web experience is now open to everyone. We're also temporarily turning on free trials to let you check it out. Have fun! pic.twitter.com/rcmP0UD8PV
— Midjourney (@midjourney) August 21, 2024
This news comes barely a week after the company had rolled out its unified web editor in mid-August. While the website originally offered its users a slightly shallower learning curve compared to Discord, its user interface still proved a challenge with popular and often-used tools spread across multiple menus and submenus.
The new web editor condensed those menus into a more streamlined process enabling users to more seamlessly switch between various functions like expanding and auto-filling an image’s canvas, adding new assets to an image, or even manipulating existing elements.