Midjourney Trust Audit: The Most Solvent Company in AI Art Has the Harshest Terms in the Business

What it actually costs

There are four plans, and there is no free tier and no standing free trial — the cheapest first image costs $10.

• Basic: $10/month, or $96/year ($8/month). Buys ~3.3 hours (200 minutes) of Fast GPU time.
• Standard: $30/month, or $288/year ($24/month). 15 Fast hours, plus unlimited slower “Relax” generations.
• Pro: $60/month, or $576/year ($48/month). 30 Fast hours, Relax, and Stealth Mode.
• Mega: $120/month, or $1,152/year ($96/month). 60 Fast hours, Relax, and Stealth.

Annual billing takes 20% off — if you prepay a full year upfront. What you are actually buying is not images but metered GPU minutes, and the meter has teeth:

• Fast hours never roll over. Unused time expires every cycle. On Standard, an idle month burns $30 of nothing.
• Basic has no Relax mode. When its 200 Fast minutes are gone, your choices are buying extra Fast time at $4 an hour or waiting for renewal. The plan that looks like the cheap trial is engineered to run dry.
• Privacy is a paid upgrade. Keeping your generations out of the public gallery (Stealth Mode) starts at Pro — $60 a month, not the $10 on the homepage.
• Business size changes your rights. Under the terms, if your company takes in more than $1 million a year, you must be on Pro or Mega for your asset ownership to hold.
• Extra Fast time is $4 an hour on every plan — a fixed subscription that quietly becomes a variable one.

Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. Midjourney’s terms also reserve the right to “modify or discontinue any aspect of the Service, including pricing and features, at any time.”

Your data: public by default, licensed forever

Midjourney is built as an open community, and its terms say so in so many words: “By default, Your Content is publicly viewable and remixable.” Every prompt you write and every image you generate is visible to other users in the community gallery, and other members can build on it. There is no private-by-default tier at any price.

What you sign away is broader still. By using the service you grant Midjourney “a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license” over everything you input and everything produced — prompts and images alike — and “this license survives termination of this Agreement by any party, for any reason.” Cancelling does not claw it back. There is no opt-out short of not using the service.

Stealth Mode, on Pro and Mega, softens the visibility, not the licence: Midjourney agrees to “make best efforts” not to publish Stealth assets. Best efforts is a promise to try, and the terms add that anything made in a shared space like a Discord chatroom is viewable by everyone there regardless of Stealth.

Two partial credits where due. You do own the assets you create as a paying subscriber, and that ownership “persists even if in subsequent months You downgrade or cancel Your membership.” And if you leave entirely, Midjourney documents a straightforward process: account and associated data deleted within 30 days of a deletion request, with a 7-day window to change your mind. Note, though, that these deletion rights cover your account data — the irrevocable licence over already-created content is written to outlive it.

Don’t confuse owning with excluding, either: purely AI-generated images carry weak-to-no copyright protection under current US practice, so a competitor can often copy your Midjourney artwork quite legally. The terms themselves advise consulting your own lawyer about IP law.

Refunds & cancellation

Midjourney’s refund policy is the strictest in this series, and it isn’t close. From its official help documentation: “You’re eligible for a refund only if you’ve used less than 20 GPU minutes throughout the lifetime of your account.” Lifetime. Fast, Turbo and Relax all count. Twenty GPU minutes is on the order of a few dozen generations — barely enough to learn the interface. If you qualify, the refund option appears automatically when you cancel; if it doesn’t appear, “we’re unable to provide a refund.” No refund at all applies if your account was suspended for a terms violation. Processed refunds can take up to 10 business days.

Cancellation itself is simple and, to be fair, clean: cancel any time, keep using the plan until the end of the paid period, and no charges afterwards — and your gallery stays accessible even after the subscription lapses. But the current period is never refunded, and purchased extra Fast time is non-refundable too.

So the real-world advice is blunt: because the annual discount requires a year upfront and the refund door closes after 20 minutes of use, always start monthly. The 20% “saving” is Midjourney buying your commitment before you’ve had a fair chance to test what you’re committing to.

Company risk

Here the story flips. Midjourney has taken zero venture capital. Founder David Holz has repeatedly declined outside investment; the company runs with roughly 40 employees, and reporting by The Information put its annual revenue above $200 million, with profitability along the way. There is no funding round to miss and no plausible shutdown scenario. Of the three companies in this series, this is the one least likely to disappear with your subscription money.

The same independence cuts the other way. A ~40-person, founder-controlled company with no outside shareholders answers to nobody, and its documents reflect that: service provided “as is” with no warranties, a right to change pricing and features at any time, and a right to suspend or ban accounts at any time for any reason. Support is thin and community-driven. There is also open legal exposure around training data — Disney’s litigation against Midjourney is a live industry story — and the terms place responsibility for the legality of your outputs squarely on you. Independence means stability; it also means every protection you have is the contract, and the contract is one-sided.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you produce visual work for clients and treat generations as drafts the world may see anyway; you’ll genuinely use Standard’s unlimited Relax mode; or you’re a studio that can justify Pro/Mega for volume plus Stealth, and you’ve read the licence grant and accept it.

Skip it if: your work is confidential or pre-launch and $60-a-month “best efforts” privacy isn’t good enough (it isn’t, for NDA work); you like to test tools before committing — there is no trial, and the refund window closes before evaluation starts; you churn subscriptions casually; or you need artwork you can legally stop others from copying.

Bottom line

Trust score 4/10 — the lowest in this series, despite the strongest balance sheet. A trust audit scores the deal, not the company, and Midjourney’s deal is: pay first, evaluate within 20 GPU minutes, publish everything by default, and hand over an irrevocable licence that outlives your account. Professionals who go in knowing all four points can get fair value. Everyone else: start monthly, and assume every generation is public.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Midjourney. This audit is written from Midjourney’s own terms of service, subscription documentation and help centre, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Midjourney Terms of Service, docs (effective May 27, 2026 — ownership and the $1M Pro/Mega rule; perpetual irrevocable licence grant; public-by-default and Stealth; cancel anytime, no refund for current period; right to change pricing/features): https://docs.Midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/32083055291277-Terms-of-Service
• Midjourney Docs, “Requesting a Refund” (20 GPU-minute lifetime eligibility; refund at cancellation; 10 business days): https://docs.midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/25386088618253-Requesting-a-Refund
• Midjourney Docs, “Data Deletion and Privacy FAQ” (deletion within 30 days; 7-day reconsider window): https://docs.midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/32084462534541-Data-Deletion-and-Privacy-FAQ
• Krater, Midjourney Pricing 2026 (plan prices, GPU minutes, no rollover, $4/hr extra Fast time, no free tier): https://krater.ai/blog/midjourney-pricing
• Dev.to, Midjourney Pricing Explained 2026 (20% annual discount prepaid; Fast hours by tier; commercial terms from Basic up): https://dev.to/stimlau/midjourney-pricing-explained-standard-pro-and-mega-in-2026-33n8
• AIAlleyway, Midjourney Pricing (no free trial per Midjourney’s help page; checkout and refund-window pitfalls): https://aialleyway.com/midjourney-pricing/
• Terms.Law, Midjourney Commercial Use Policy 2026 (licence analysis; public default; “ownership” vs copyright limits): https://terms.law/ai-output-rights/midjourney/
• AIForAutomation, “Midjourney Hits $200M Revenue With Zero Investors” (The Information reporting; ~40 employees; no VC): https://aiforautomation.io/news/2026-03-30-midjourney-200m-revenue-no-investors
• WebProNews, “Midjourney’s Quiet Cash Machine” (~$200M revenue; founder-controlled, no outside investors): https://www.webpronews.com/midjourneys-quiet-cash-machine-how-a-40-person-startup-blew-past-200-million-without-venture-capital/