Midjourney vs DALL-E vs Stable Diffusion: Image Generation Pricing, Worked at 100, 1,000, and 10,000 Images a Month

Three vendors sell the same output — a finished image from a text prompt — on three meters: Midjourney sells fast GPU hours by the month, DALL-E sold images by the picture until OpenAI retired the model, and Stability AI sells credits at one cent each. The cheapest route at 100 images a month is not the cheapest at 10,000.

The decision in one table

The DALL-E problem first: the model in the title is retired

A DALL-E price list is a retired model's price list. OpenAI's deprecations page states it plainly: "On November 14th, 2025, we notified developers using DALL·E model snapshots of their deprecation and removal from the API on May 12, 2026." Both shut down on that date, GPT Image named as the replacement. DALL-E 3's last published prices — $0.04 standard 1024×1024, $0.08 HD, $0.08 standard wide or tall, $0.12 HD wide or tall, $0.02 for DALL-E 2 — are kept here as the benchmark, per five 2026 trackers. They are history, not a live quote.

The current OpenAI image route is the GPT Image family. On the live API pricing page today, GPT Image 2.6 Sunburst and Flare list image input $8.00 per 1M tokens, image output $30.00, cached input $2.00, text input $5.00. No flat per-image figure is published for 2.6. The last derived figure for the family is GPT Image 1 at roughly $0.011 low, $0.042 medium, $0.167 high — shut down October 23, 2026.

The subscription route survives the retirements. ChatGPT includes image creation on every plan, including Free with limits described in words, not numbers. Plus costs $20 a month with Thinking; Pro starts at $100 across $100, $200, and $500 tiers and is the only plan with unlimited and faster image creation. Plus is a chat bundle — its $20 cannot be compared with a $0.04 per-image price.

Midjourney: four plans, one meter, and a hard ceiling on the cheapest

Midjourney's own pricing page blocks automated reads — a 403 to every request this cycle — so the figures below rest on four independent 2026 pricing guides that agree to the dollar, each checked against Midjourney's plan comparison.

Annual billing takes 20 percent off every tier, charged up front. Extra fast GPU time costs $4 an hour on every plan, expires after 60 days, and is non-refundable. No free tier, no free trial, no per-seat price. Default model is V8.2, since July 24, 2026.

The image counts are approximations: Midjourney sells hours, and the hours are the contract. Guides convert 3.3 hours to about 200 images at roughly one minute per image; Midjourney's own GPU table prices a standard prompt at 0.8 minutes (Basic stretches to about 250) and an HD prompt at 1.3 minutes (shrinks to about 152). Worked math below uses the one-minute rule.

Effective per-image cost at each plan's fast cap, monthly billing:

On annual billing the same caps cost $0.04 on Basic and $0.027 on the other three. On Standard and above, every image past the fast cap costs $0 and a wait in the Relax queue.

The trap is Basic, the only plan with no Relax mode. When its 3.3 hours are gone, generation stops until renewal or a top-up at $4 an hour — about 60 images, $0.067 each, more than DALL-E 3's $0.04. Past 200 images, buy Standard, not a top-up.

Stability AI: credits at a cent, and the cheapest image in the comparison

Stability's pricing is the most transparent of the three, published as a credit table: one credit equals $0.01, and new accounts start with 25 free credits.

The conversion is one multiplication per row — 8 credits at $0.01 is $0.08. No subscription, no monthly minimum, no volume tier. The 25 free credits buy three Ultra images with one credit left over, ten Flash images exactly, or 27 SDXL images with 0.7 credits left over.

Two facts keep Stability from winning on price alone. First, the cheapest service is also the oldest model: SDXL 1.0 is the legacy base model, and $0.009 buys the previous generation's quality, not the flagship's. Ultra, the flagship, costs $0.08 — twice DALL-E 3 standard. Second, the API is a developer contract: no chat window, only code, a key, and a bill per call. A non-developer buys them through a third-party app, which sets its own price on top.

The worked math: three profiles, three volumes

All figures below use 1024×1024 standard quality: Midjourney at the one-minute rule, Stability from the credit table, DALL-E 3 at its last published prices.

Profile 1: solo creator, 100 images a month

DALL-E 3 standard: 100 × $0.04 = $4.00. Ultra: 100 × $0.08 = $8.00. SDXL: 100 × $0.009 = $0.90. Basic: $10.00 flat, about 200 images. Cheapest honest route is the Stability API at SDXL quality; cheapest without code is DALL-E 3 at $4.00.

Profile 2: small studio, 1,000 images a month

Annualised: SDXL $108, Standard $288, DALL-E 3 $480, Ultra $960. Switching 1,000 images a month from DALL-E 3 to SDXL saves $31.00 a month, $372.00 a year. Switching to Standard on annual billing saves $16.00 a month, $192.00 a year — and trades per-image billing for a queue.

Profile 3: agency, 10,000 images a month

DALL-E 3 standard: 10,000 × $0.04 = $400.00. SDXL: 10,000 × $0.009 = $90.00. Ultra: 10,000 × $0.08 = $800.00. Mega: $120.00 flat if the agency accepts Relax queueing for the 6,400 images past its 3,600 fast budget. Ten thousand images need 10,000 minutes of fast GPU time, or 166.67 hours; Mega includes 60, so all-fast means 106.67 extra hours:

At the 0.8-minute rate the same month costs $413.33 — a $133.34 sensitivity. SDXL at $90.00 is cheapest at this volume by a wide margin; Midjourney Mega at $120.00 flat is second, if the agency accepts Relax queueing; DALL-E 3 at $400.00 is third.

The break-even lines

Three lines decide the subscription question against DALL-E 3 standard, $0.04:

Each line sits below its plan's fast cap, so every break-even is clean: below 750, pay-per-image wins; above 750, Standard wins. Basic has no break-even worth naming: at its 200-image cap it costs $10 against DALL-E 3's $8.00, and past the cap the $0.067 top-up image is dearer.

Against Stability, SD 3.5 Turbo costs $0.04 — exactly DALL-E 3 standard — so the two tie at every volume. Ultra at $0.08 is twice DALL-E 3 and must win on the image itself. SDXL at $0.009 undercuts DALL-E 3 by $0.031 per image at every volume: $31.00 a month at 1,000 images, $310.00 a month at 10,000.

Ownership and commercial use: three contracts, two revenue gates

OpenAI's Terms of Use, effective January 1, 2026: "you (a) retain your ownership rights in Input and (b) own the Output. We hereby assign to you all our right, title, and interest, if any, in and to Output." No revenue threshold, no tier gate. Stability's Terms of Service: "Subject to your compliance with our Terms, we assign to you all of our right, title, and interest (if any) in the Outputs. So as between Stability and you, you own the Output (to the extent permitted by applicable law)." Midjourney's Terms of Service, effective May 27, 2026: "You own all Assets You create with the Services to the fullest extent possible under applicable law," and: "If you are a company or any employee of a company with more than $1,000,000 USD a year in revenue, you must be subscribed to a 'Pro' or 'Mega' plan to own Your Assets." Ownership on Midjourney survives a downgrade or cancellation.

Midjourney's gate is a plan requirement: a company above $1,000,000 generating client work on Basic or Standard does not own the assets it bills for — it must be on Pro or Mega first. Stability's gate is a license requirement: the Community License covers commercial use under $1,000,000; above that, an Enterprise license is required. SD 1.5 sits under CreativeML OpenRAIL-M and SDXL 1.0 under CreativeML Open RAIL++-M, neither of which carries a revenue limit. OpenAI has no gate.

Stealth is the second Midjourney dividing line. Generations on Basic and Standard are public by default on Midjourney's gallery; only Pro and Mega include Stealth Mode. An agency generating unreleased client work on Standard is publishing its client's campaign to a public gallery.

Who should pick what

Solo creator, under 100 images: Basic at $10 for the Midjourney look, or DALL-E 3's $4.00 or SDXL's $0.90 a month through an API if the workflow allows code. Chat plus images in one subscription is ChatGPT Plus at $20.

Small studio, 1,000 images: Standard at $30 if your artists work in Midjourney's style and can tolerate Relax, or SDXL at $9.00 through the API if your pipeline is code and accepts the legacy model. DALL-E 3 only as a legacy integration — never as a new build.

Agency, 10,000 images: budget the GPT Image API per token for hard deadlines, run SDXL at $90.00 if the look passes client review, or hold Mega at $120 and plan the queue — 3,600 fast for deadline work, Relax for the rest. Over $1,000,000 in revenue, buy Pro or Mega and an Enterprise license before delivering a client file.

Buy in this order:

1. Count last month's images. Under 750, skip the subscription.
2. Check the revenue line. Over $1,000,000 a year, price Pro or Mega and Enterprise on Stability.
3. Test the look on the cheapest route first — 25 free Stability credits, or a month of Basic — before committing a pipeline.
4. Confirm the model is live. DALL-E 3 is retired; GPT Image 2.6 is current.

The bill lands on a company card either way. An LLC, an S-Corp, or a C-Corp buying API credits treats them as an ordinary software expense, and the CPA booking the month needs the invoice, not the model name. Keep the vendor invoice with the month's generation log: the IRS does not care which model made the image, but the finance team needs to know whether the $400 was DALL-E 3, Ultra, or SDXL when the same count costs $90 elsewhere.

Sources

AI search pricing: Perplexity vs ChatGPT vs Claude AI search pricing. Design tools: Canva vs Figma vs Adobe Express design tool pricing. Run the numbers: profit calculator.