Midjourney vs Stability AI
We give Midjourney a 2.0 GPA and Stability AI a 1.8, out of 4.0. Midjourney grades higher on value for money, features and ease of use. Stability AI grades higher on the free plan and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Midjourney
Image and short-video generator run on monthly GPU time
Stability AI
Stable Diffusion image models to self-host or call through an API
How we grade them
| 2.0GPAMidjourneyFair | 1.8GPAStability AIWeak | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | BBasic is $8 a month on yearly billing ($10 monthly), inside this category's cheaper quarter of $9.99. It buys about 200 minutes of fast GPU time and no slower Relax mode. The price is from a third-party summary, as Midjourney's own pages turned our reader away. | CNothing a person can subscribe to. The models are free to run yourself under $1M yearly revenue, which takes your own hardware, and the API charges $0.025 to $0.08 an image at a cent a credit. Fair, but there's no plan to set against this category's. |
| Free plan and trial | FNo free plan and no trial on record, so the cheapest way in is $8 a month. And Basic's fast minutes don't roll over if you have a quiet month. | CThe Community License lets people and companies under $1M a year run the core models free, commercial use included. That needs your own hardware, and the API's free start is 25 credits. |
| Features | BV8 text-to-image, an edit model that fills, swaps and extends with up to four reference images, image-to-video with loops and end frames, and style profiles and moodboards. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in making images. | DStrong building blocks: SD 3.5 models, editing, upscaling, sketch and style control, and 3D. But there's no app for a person, and the image page's Start creating link goes to enterprise partnerships, so it needs code or another product to be useful. |
| Ease of use | CNo app-store rating on record. It runs on the website or as a Discord bot, and it's sold in GPU hours rather than images, so it takes a while to know what a month buys. | DNo app and no rating. Using it means calling an API from code or running the models on your own hardware. |
| Platforms and integrations | CThe midjourney.com website and a Discord bot, and that's it. No phone or desktop app of its own, and no API in the listing. | BAn API plus the models on Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker JumpStart and Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, and downloads for your own machines. No phone or desktop app. |
| Best for | stylised images with a distinctive look | developers building on open image models |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Midjourney and Stability AI. How we grade
Where they differ
- Stability AI has a free plan. Midjourney does not.
- Stability AI is self-hostable, according to its own site.
At a glance
| Midjourney | Stability AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Paid | Free plan |
| Starts at | $8 per month, billed annually ($10 billed monthly) | Not published |
| Free plan | None | Community License: free self-hosted use of the core models, commercial use included, for people and organizations under $1M in yearly revenue. |
| Free trial | None listed | 25 free API credits on sign-up |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Midjourney | Stability AI Ltd |
| Price read from | eesel.ai (not the vendor's own page) | stability.ai |
| Checked | Oct 17, 2026 | Oct 17, 2026 |
Who each one suits
Midjourney
- Artists and designers who want a distinctive, stylized look
- Heavy users who can wait for jobs in the unlimited Relax mode
- Turning still images into short animated clips
Stability AI
- Developers adding image generation and editing to their own apps
- Small companies that want to run open image models on their own servers
- Teams already building on Amazon Bedrock or Azure
Worth knowing
Midjourney
- Midjourney's own pricing and help pages turned away our reader, so plan details come from a third-party summary edited June 5, 2026.
- Basic has no Relax mode, so every job draws on its monthly fast time, and unused fast hours do not roll over.
- Private generation (Stealth Mode) starts at Pro; on Basic and Standard, images appear in the public gallery.
- Companies with more than $1 million in yearly gross revenue must be on Pro or Mega to use images commercially.
Stability AI
- The API is pay per use: 1 credit is $0.01, an image costs 2.5 to 8 credits, and the Creative Upscaler costs 60 credits per image.
- Organizations with more than $1M in yearly revenue need an Enterprise License, priced only through sales.
- The API price list has image, 3D and audio services but no video; Stable Video Diffusion is offered for self-hosting only.
- There is no image app sold to consumers: the image page's "Start creating" link leads to the enterprise partnerships page.
Key features
Midjourney
- Text-to-image with V8 models
- V8.1 became the default model in June 2026 and V8.2 followed in July, with an HD setting that renders at a higher resolution.
- Image editing
- The V8.2 edit model changes images from written instructions, fills or replaces chosen areas, extends the canvas and takes up to four reference images.
- Image-to-video
- Any image, including an uploaded one, can be animated into short clips that can be extended, looped or given a set end frame.
- Personalization and moodboards
- Rating images builds a personal style profile, and moodboards or style references steer new images toward a chosen look.
- Conversational mode
- A text and voice mode on the website takes requests in plain language and can use the reference images and settings already in place.
- Organize page
- Past jobs can be searched, filtered and sorted into folders on the website.
Stability AI
- Stable Diffusion 3.5 models
- Large, Large Turbo and Medium versions of the image model to download and run yourself; Medium is designed to run on consumer hardware.
- Image generation API
- Stable Image Ultra, Stable Image Core, the Stable Diffusion 3.5 family and SDXL, each billed per image in credits.
- Editing API
- Erase objects, inpaint, outpaint, remove or replace a background and relight, and find an object by name to recolor or replace it.
- Upscaling and control
- Creative, Conservative and Fast upscalers, plus sketch, structure and style tools that guide a new image from one you supply.
- Video and 3D models
- Stable Video Diffusion turns text into short clips for self-hosting; Stable Fast 3D and SPAR3D make 3D assets from one image through the API.
- Cloud partners
- The models are also offered on Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker JumpStart and Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, and in NVIDIA-optimized versions.
Plans
Midjourney
Basic$8
per month, billed annually ($10 billed monthly)
About 3.3 hours (200 minutes) of fast GPU time a month and no Relax mode; SD video only.
Standard$24
per month, billed annually ($30 billed monthly)
15 fast GPU hours a month plus unlimited image jobs in the slower Relax mode.
Pro$48
per month, billed annually ($60 billed monthly)
30 fast GPU hours, Stealth Mode for private images, unlimited SD video in Relax mode and 12 fast jobs at once.
Mega$96
per month, billed annually ($120 billed monthly)
60 fast GPU hours a month, with everything in Pro and more video jobs at once.
Stability AI
Community License$0
Run Stable Diffusion 3.5, SDXL Turbo, Stable Fast 3D and Stable Audio 3.0 on your own hardware; for those under $1M in yearly revenue.
Enterprise LicenseCustom
Commercial use above $1M in yearly revenue, with implementation support; custom model training and consulting cost extra.
