Midjourney vs DALL·E 3Historical comparison
Two catalogue entries side by side. Not a benchmark: we have not tested these products against each other.
Catalogue checked September 23, 2026.
One of these entries is no longer offered in full or in part. The status row says which surface changed and when.
Midjourney
Plan price reference: Basic $10/month, or $96 billed yearly
- No free tier; a subscription is required
- No public API for regular subscriptions, and automation is prohibited
DALL·E 3not a current option
- Removed from the OpenAI API on 12 May 2026
- The official DALL·E GPT was retired on 30 August 2026
Monthly and annual billing are different commitments: the annual figure is a prepayment, and an annual equivalent is not a monthly price. Nothing on this page is a test of output quality, and the list below names the official sources this entry uses with the date each was read - check them against the plan and the use you have in mind.
| What you are deciding | MidjourneyMidjourney | DALL·E 3OpenAIRetired |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Still available |
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| What it is for | AI image and video generation via web and Discord | A retired OpenAI image model |
| Typical tasks |
| Not verified on this site |
| Pricing model | Paid | Not verified on this site |
| Plan pricing referenceFrom the vendor page listed, for the plan named. Not the lowest price worldwide: billing cycle, region and taxes change it. | Basic $10/month, or $96 billed yearly | No plan price stated on a vendor page we could read |
| Where it stops |
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| Price | Not establishedThe registered record gives plan amounts and billing cadence, but the applicable purchase market/region and full account/channel conditions were not established. These are not asserted as a current global purchasable quote.Source: Midjourney docs - Comparing Midjourney Plans | Not establishedCurrent purchasable pricing is not established for this retired entry. The registered records describe closed or retired surfaces; no historical price is presented as a current offer.Source: OpenAI API - DALL·E 3 model page · OpenAI Help Center - ChatGPT release notes |
| Availability | Not establishedMidjourney: supported client entry points and geographic access conditions were not established by the registered source statements. No contrary conclusion about the capability is inferred. | Documented"DALL·E 3 has been deprecated and removed from the API." Its snapshot is listed as deprecated.Source: OpenAI API - DALL·E 3 model page |
| Commercial use | DocumentedMidjourney’s commercial-use guide permits commercial use of a user’s own generated images and videos, including after cancelling a subscription. A company with annual revenue over US$1 million, or its employee acting for it, needs Pro or Mega for company commercial use. Upscaling another user’s image does not transfer ownership and needs the original creator’s permission; third-party rights and the Terms still apply.Source: Midjourney - Commercial use of images and videos | DocumentedHistorical DALL·E 3 launch statement: OpenAI allowed users to use, reprint, sell and merchandise their DALL·E 3 images without its permission. This records that historical product statement; it does not establish a currently available DALL·E 3 generation service or waive applicable third-party rights.Source: OpenAI - DALL·E 3 announcement (vendor claims at launch) |
| Training on your data | Not establishedMidjourney’s training summary says user interaction data, including inputs and prompts, has been used to train its models. The privacy policy covers prompts/uploads and personal-data controls, but whether a particular subscriber’s input/output is included and the subscriber’s model-training opt-out conditions remain unestablished. Stealth visibility and advertising-sharing choices do not establish training exclusion.Source: Midjourney - Public Summary of Training Content | Not establishedHistorical training use of the account’s inputs/outputs and applicable opt-out conditions were not established by this retired entry’s registered source statements; no current usable service is inferred. |
| API billing | Documented"With a few rare exceptions that are explicitly granted, Midjourney does not provide an API, nor provide third-party apps or scripts, and automating interactions with Midjourney service is strictly prohibited."Source: Midjourney docs - Community Guidelines | Documented"DALL·E 3 has been deprecated and removed from the API." Its snapshot is listed as deprecated.Source: OpenAI API - DALL·E 3 model page |
| Export formats | DocumentedFor generated videos, Midjourney’s web Create or Organize menu lists Download for Social as MP4, Raw Video as MP4, and GIF download; Discord provides the raw video download. This evidence is limited to video downloads and does not establish image or layered-document export formats.Source: Midjourney - Video downloads | Not establishedHistorical specific downloadable output file formats and applicable surface/plan boundaries were not established by this retired entry’s registered source statements; no current usable service is inferred. |
| Usage limits | DocumentedUnlimited Relax image generation is listed from Standard up, while unlimited Relax SD video generation needs Pro or Mega; Stealth is listed on Pro and Mega; higher tiers carry more Fast GPU hours, and a footnote states that organisations with more than $1M in annual revenue need Pro or Mega.Source: Midjourney docs - Comparing Midjourney Plans | Not establishedHistorical numeric task allowances and applicable reset/carryover rules were not established by this retired entry’s registered source statements; no current usable service is inferred. |
| Facts |
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| Where to check |
Entry read against its sources on September 23, 2026. |
Entry read against its sources on September 23, 2026. |
What the listings already say
Taken from this site's own entries, so the wording follows the vendors' terms rather than ours; it is our summary of their published material, not their text.
The contrast quoted below was taken from the listings as written. Where a status change came later, the status row above and the dates it names take precedence.
How did DALL·E 3 compare with Midjourney?
What survives is a difference in availability rather than in style: DALL·E 3 is a retired OpenAI image model that generated images and short text inside them, described by OpenAI at the time as following literal prompts closely, while Midjourney still sells subscriptions for image and video generation through its own site and Discord and, by its own guidelines, offers no API to regular subscribers. We did not benchmark image quality, so this page does not rank the two.