Midjourney says V9 could double its cost per image
The self-funded lab is asking subscribers to accept twice the per-image cost for quality, the same week MiniMax open-sourced a 4K model whose license skips the US and the EU. The answer will price every credit-metered image AI, Adobe's included.
Vincent Jiangthree-minute read
Subscribers get the bill for a bigger V9
At Midjourney's office hours on November 11, founder David Holz scoped V9 for release within 30 days, bundling a new base model, a new upscaler and a rebuilt style-reference system 1. The cost per image could double, no final price is set, and a stronger version of the new Thinking mode could cost about ten times more 1. "I think I want to favor clearly superior quality," Holz said, in remarks translated from the session notes 1. Real-time generation, which would let users iterate cheaply before a final render, may not make V9 at all 1.
The bill lands on subscribers, who pay $10 to $120 a month plus $4 an hour for extra fast GPU time 2, and on Midjourney itself: the lab calls itself community-funded, self-funded and 60 people strong 3, profitable since 2022 by its founder's account 4. A mispriced V9 lands on its own books, with no investor to absorb the miss 234.
The free 4K rival is fenced out of Midjourney's markets
The same week, MiniMax, a Shanghai company listed in Hong Kong since January 5, released the weights of H3-Image, whose 33.1-billion-parameter image transformer renders about 16 megapixels directly, with no upscaler, in six sampling steps and up to 16 reference images 6. The launch post claims a 4K image in under 10 seconds 7. The license does the fencing: it applies everywhere except the European Union, the United Kingdom, South Korea and the United States, demands MiniMax's prior written permission above $1 million in annualized revenue or for any hosted service, and bars outputs from leaving the permitted territory 8.
MiniMax drew that million-dollar fence where Holz drew Midjourney's years ago 13. The free download arms developers in Japan and other permitted countries 11; in Midjourney's home markets the rival is MiniMax's paid API, about $0.022 a 1K image and $0.069 at 4K 9, beside OpenAI's$1.18T — OpenAI, private, latest valuation $1.18T Images 2.6, shipped November 4 with 50 percent faster generation 10.
A 4K image now lists between 7 and 61 cents on rival APIs
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| MiniMax H3-Image (paid API) | $0.07 |
| Google Nano Banana 2.1 | $0.11 |
| BFL FLUX 3 Image | $0.61 |
Four billion images a week, and a seven-cent floor
Quality still sells at volume: OpenAI says users now generate more than 4 billion images a week, up from 3 billion eight weeks earlier 10. The floor still disciplines the ceiling: MiniMax's own chart puts median 4K text-to-image at 10.3 seconds even in its fast tier, above the advertised claim, and no independent timing had been published as of November 11 115.
Watch the 30-day clock on quality pricing
V9 is due by about December 11, with Niji, the anime model, hoped within a week; Holz called both the lab's last big model releases targeted this year, with V10 and video framed for next year 1. Adobe+1.18% — Adobe, up 1.18 percent today meters Firefly generation through monthly credit allocations in paid plans 12 and faces the same question at scale. If beauty still bills, every credit meter holds its price; if not, the floor is seven cents a 4K image 12.
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