Midjourney does not publish a total number of paying users or audited annual accounts. Its current plans, model releases, and the member count shown for its official Discord server are documented. They measure different things and cannot be combined into a single growth curve.
Public revenue claims also differ in source and metric. Some refer to annual revenue, some are estimates, and others are annualized run rates. Each figure below is labeled with its period and evidence type.
- Midjourney describes itself as a community-funded research lab of 60 people. Company website checked October 7, 2026.
- Discord showed about 18.55M server members and 506,463 online on October 7, 2026. These are not Midjourney active-user or subscriber counts.
- V8.2 has been the default since July 24, 2026. The four plans cost $10 to $120 per month.
1. What is Midjourney?
Midjourney develops image and video models. On its own website, the company describes itself as a community-funded research lab of 60 people. Its careers page calls the team self-funded and distributed. These are company descriptions, not independently audited headcount or financing records. The site does not date the staff figure; it was checked on October 7, 2026.
The website lists image and video models alongside medical, software, and hardware projects. On July 23, 2026, Midjourney announced Co-Star as its first acquisition. Co-Star's founder and team were to help build Midjourney's product and design organization, while Co-Star itself would remain under its founder's direction.
Midjourney has no free plan or trial. Its current official FAQ says a subscription is required. The four paid plans and their included GPU time are listed below.
2. User Numbers and Community
Midjourney publishes no official totals for registered accounts, paying subscribers, or daily active users. One directly observable figure is the member count shown for its official Discord server. The Discord server directory displayed the following when checked on October 7, 2026:
- 18,548,947 server members
- 506,463 members shown as online
The online figure is a momentary count of Discord activity on that server. Neither it nor the total membership shows how many people are using Midjourney at that moment or paying for it.
Older third-party figures do not form a verified user series either. DemandSage reports 17.5 million Discord members in December 2023 and about 19.26 million at an unspecified point in 2024. The same page gives 19.94 million for December 2025, but elsewhere says 19.83 million for January 2026. It labels server membership as registered users and does not explain a consistent method for measuring daily Midjourney activity. Treat these as third-party claims, not counts of Midjourney accounts or active customers.
3. Revenue and Profitability
Midjourney does not publish audited annual accounts. Public revenue claims have different sources and metrics:
- 2023: A lawsuit filed by Disney and Universal companies in June 2025 attributes more than $200M in revenue to Midjourney. In March 2026, The Information reported that David Holz said 2023 revenue had significantly exceeded $200M and increased afterward. The full briefing is partly paywalled.
- 2024: The same complaint describes $300M as the reported revenue. This is a plaintiff statement in a legal filing, not an audited account.
- May 2025: Contrary Research estimated Midjourney's ARR at about $500M. ARR is an annualized revenue run rate, not the total revenue earned during calendar year 2025.
These figures do not make a comparable annual revenue series. The complaint repeats plaintiffs' claims, Contrary publishes an ARR estimate, and Midjourney itself has released no audited financial statements. They do not establish confirmed 2025 revenue or a current revenue forecast.
In August 2022, David Holz told The Register that Midjourney was already profitable. In March 2026, The Information again reported that Holz described the company as profitable. These are statements attributed to the founder. They do not identify the first profitable month or disclose audited profit or margin figures.
4. Team Size and Business Model
Midjourney's current company website lists 60 people and describes the team as self-funded and distributed. Contrary Research estimated about 40 people in May 2025. These are figures from different dates and sources. The current company page does not give a separate measurement date for its headcount.
A reliable revenue-per-employee figure cannot be calculated from this evidence. That would require revenue and headcount for the same period and under consistent definitions. The revenue inputs here include a plaintiff claim, estimates, and ARR. A comparison with other tech companies would be similarly unsupported.
5. Pricing and Plans
5.1 Current Pricing Table
Midjourney's official plan comparison lists four paid subscriptions. The prices and features below were checked on October 7, 2026.
Midjourney says annual billing saves 20 percent compared with twelve monthly payments, and the full annual amount is charged upfront. The monthly equivalents are $8, $24, $48, and $96. Companies with more than $1,000,000 in gross annual revenue must subscribe to Pro or Mega under the plan terms. The official FAQ says there is no free tier or trial.
5.2 Video, Privacy, and Alternatives
All four plans can generate videos in Fast Mode. Standard, Pro, and Mega can generate HD video in Fast Mode. Relax video in SD is limited to Pro and Mega. Stealth, which can make creations private on the website, is also limited to Pro and Mega. Midjourney says prompts and images are public by default.
Current alternatives include ChatGPT Images 2.5, introduced by OpenAI on September 8, 2026, and Google's Nano Banana 2, introduced on February 26, 2026. These are examples, not a ranking. Pricing, access, and usage terms differ by product.
Sources: Midjourney's plan comparison and its official FAQ, both accessed October 7, 2026.
6. Model Versions
Midjourney's official version documentation lists V8.2 as the current default. For older models, the dates below distinguish releases from the periods when a version was the default. The table reflects company documentation checked on October 7, 2026.
V8.0 was an early alpha and has not been available since July 24, 2026, according to the version documentation. The launch claim of five times faster generation referred to that alpha, not a current model comparison. V8.1 was also first released as an alpha. Its launch claims about speed and GPU cost referred to that early version. Current documentation lists HD at 1.3 GPU minutes per image and standard resolution at 0.8 GPU minutes.
Sources: the official version guide, legacy version documentation, V8 Alpha announcement, V8.1 Alpha post, and V8.2 release post.
Midjourney's V1 video model launched on June 18, 2025 as an image-to-video feature. One prompt produces four five-second clips by default. The announcement said each clip could be extended four times by about four seconds. Current help documentation lists 8 GPU minutes for four SD videos and 26 GPU minutes for four HD videos. These are GPU time amounts, not monetary prices. Video Relax is available only on Pro and Mega.
Sources: the V1 video announcement from June 18, 2025 and the current video help page, accessed October 7, 2026.
7. Market Position and Competition
A reliable global market share cannot be calculated from the public data available here. A valid comparison needs a defined measure, such as revenue, paying users, active use, downloads, or a representative survey. Midjourney does not publish these totals.
AIPRM lists a 26.8 percent share for image-generation tools but does not explain the underlying sample or a consistent measurement method. DemandSage repeats the figure as a forecast. Discord membership and website visits are not market share. The claim that Midjourney demonstrably holds 26.8 percent of the global market is therefore not substantiated.
These current product announcements are examples, not a quality ranking:
- Midjourney V8.2, default since July 24, 2026
- ChatGPT Images 2.5, introduced by OpenAI on September 8, 2026
- Nano Banana 2, introduced by Google on February 26, 2026
8. Availability
Midjourney's official FAQ lists its website and Discord bot as access routes. The bot can be used in direct messages or on a private Discord server. The company's instructions say every person on a private server needs their own Midjourney subscription.
The current official FAQ does not list a separate general-purpose iOS or Android app as an access route. Its documented routes are the website and Discord. A private Discord server does not automatically make images private on midjourney.com. Stealth is limited to Pro and Mega, and images in public Discord channels remain visible to members of those channels.
9. Founder and History
David Holz founded Midjourney and previously co-founded Leap Motion. In an August 2022 interview, he described Midjourney as a self-funded team of about ten people with no investors and said it was already profitable. That statement documents the company at the time. It does not show the month when profitability began.
On October 7, 2026, Midjourney's website described a community-funded research lab of 60 people. In July 2026, the company also announced Co-Star as its first acquisition. The two staff figures refer to different dates and source descriptions. They are not enough to calculate an exact growth rate.
10. Which Figures Are Still Missing?
A complete business statistics picture would require more company data. By the cutoff date, Midjourney had not published audited annual revenue and profit series, counts of paying or daily active users, subscriber numbers by plan, or a consistent global market-share measure. Unknown does not mean zero.
Estimates cannot be combined at will. Annual revenue, ARR, a Discord counter, and a headcount from different years measure different things. Without matching periods and definitions, division or growth charts do not produce reliable efficiency or demand metrics.
11. Lawsuit and Meta Partnership
Disney companies and companies connected with Universal and DreamWorks sued Midjourney on June 11, 2025. The complaint alleges copyright infringement. These are plaintiffs' allegations, not a court finding. Warner Bros. companies filed a separate suit on September 4, 2025. On November 4, 2025, the court ordered both cases consolidated for all purposes, including trial, with the Disney case as the lead case.
On September 29, 2026, Magistrate Judge A. Joel Richlin approved a joint protocol for producing training data. It requires Midjourney to provide a complete copy of the image and video data used for models V4 through V8 and its video model in a cloud project controlled by the plaintiffs. The protocol also calls for a machine-readable file manifest, a mapping of datasets to model versions, a declaration under penalty of perjury, and checksum verification. The parties share transfer costs. This order governs discovery. It does not find that the data contain any specific copyrighted works or that Midjourney infringed copyright.
A public docket index showed further entries through October 6, 2026 when checked the next day, including a transcript notice. The index says its feed is not the complete case history. The free public materials reviewed here show no decision on the copyright claims by the cutoff date.
On August 22, 2025, Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang announced a partnership under which Meta would license Midjourney's “aesthetic technology” for future models and products. Public reports do not state the license terms. On July 7, 2026, Meta introduced Muse Image as the first image-generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. Meta's announcement does not explain whether or how Muse Image relates to the Midjourney license. It does not establish that Muse Image replaces that technology.
Sources: the Warner Bros. docket with the November 4, 2025 consolidation order, the court-approved training-data production protocol filed September 29, 2026, the public docket feed checked October 7, 2026, reporting on Meta's August 22, 2025 announcement, and Meta's July 7, 2026 Muse Image announcement.
