Can I Sell Midjourney Art? Everything You Need to Know

What to know

  • You can sell your Midjourney artworks for money only if you’re using the paid tier of the service, i.e., you’re subscribed to one of Midjourney’s Basic, Standard, or Pro plans. 
  • Free users on Midjourney cannot use their art creations commercially; they can only use them for personal or non-commercial purposes. 
  • Midjourney has a non-exclusive license on anything you create using their AI tool which may restrict you from selling your AI art on websites that only trade exclusive content. 
  • There is a multitude of options for selling your Midjourney art – you can host them on stock image websites, sell them as NFTs, create personalized products by printing your creations, or trade-in your input prompts. 

Midjourney is one of the most preferred tools for generating AI artwork using text-based descriptions. While it’s fun to use, many people have now started selling their AI art online which begs the question – can you sell images you create on Midjourney? In this post, we’ll explain to you whether or not Midjourney images can be commercially used, where you can sell your AI creations and the things you need to consider before selling them. 

Does Midjourney allow users to sell art?

Ideally, there’s no reason why you cannot sell AI art as art generators like Midjourney are just means to create art but it’s your input that generates the picture. However, what you can sell depends on the art you created and the platform you used to make it.

In the case of Midjourney, users can use their creations wherever they want to make money provided the art was created with a paid Midjourney account. Free users on Midjourney cannot sell their AI art as these images aren’t commercially licensed as per Midjourney’s terms of service

Related: How to Upload an Image to Midjourney

Can you use Midjourney images commercially?

You can use images that you create on Midjourney commercially, provided that you create them as a paid member of the platform. When you subscribe to Midjourney’s Basic, Standard, or Pro plans, you get a commercial license for any images you create.

Free users get a Creative Commons Noncommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0) Attribution International License for which they’re free to use the generated images for personal and non-commercial purposes but they don’t own them. This license only allows you to copy, remix, and redistribute the images you create as long as you clearly mention the license type and provide appropriate attribution. 

If you create AI art using any of Midjourney’s paid plans, you can sell them for free. If you or your company generates more than $1,000,000 a year in gross revenue, you are bound to purchase the “Pro” plan to avoid giving them a cut. 

Related: Midjourney Cheat Sheet: Become a Pro at Using Midjourney!

How and where can you sell AI art created on Midjourney?

If you own the license to the images you have created on Midjourney, there are a bunch of ways you can use these images to make money. 

1. Sell your artwork as stock images

The easiest and least cumbersome way to sell the AI artwork you made using Midjourney is to share them on stock image websites and platforms that let you trade art as NFTs. Every stock photo company has a different approach toward AI art, some may allow you to upload any AI art while others may require you to have an exclusive license to publish.

Since Midjourney itself doesn’t give out an exclusive license (your art can be sold but Midjourney can use it royalty-free for promotional purposes), you may not be able to sell your Midjourney art on websites that require an exclusive license. 

We’ve compiled a list of websites where you can sell AI-generated images for money but since the terms and copyright agreements may differ based on the platforms you use, you will have to research them on your own before narrowing down on your platform. 

Here’s a list of stock image hosting websites that you can use to sell your AI art from Midjourney:

Besides stock image companies, you can also check out the following NFT marketplaces where you can trade your Midjourney creations: 

Related: 6 Best Free AI Logo Generators [April 2023]

2. Create products with your artwork to sell

Selling art generated using AI doesn’t have to be restricted to just digital content. You can also make money with the art you generate on Midjourney by creating physical goods out of your art creations. You can print your AI art onto T-shirts, coffee mugs, frames, notebooks, postcards, jigsaw puzzles, and more. Unlike digital artwork, however, you may require an initial investment to print your art onto your desired products but doing so may be more profitable than simply selling your digital art. 

Some websites allow you to sell products with your artwork without you needing to create them personally. If you have images that you created on Midjourney and you want to sell them as physical goods without making them yourself, you can check out the following websites:

If you wish to print your artwork on products on your own without depending on any print-on-demand services, you can check out the following marketplaces where you can sell these products:

3. Sell input prompts for your AI creations

If you’ve created images using Midjourney, by now you know what “prompts” are but in case you don’t, they are sets of instructions that tell the AI what you want to create. Although you can generate artwork with simple prompts, being more precise and descriptive with your prompts will result in better-looking images that are unique to you.

In many ways, selling prompts is essentially a way to teach others your expertise in creating AI images using Midjourney. Since creating a good piece of art can be a time-consuming process that requires you to throw multiple ideas to get the desired result, you can sell prompts instead as this will help interested parties save time creating their own image. 

Trading your Midjourney prompts can also be a good alternative to selling your AI art digitally if you aren’t sure about the ownership of the art generator you used and which site actually supports the license and copyright agreements of your images. 

Here’s a list of websites that allow you to sell your prompts for money:

Tips to consider before selling your AI-generated art

When it comes to selling the art you generated using Midjourney or any other art generation tool, there are a few factors you need to consider before you can sell your creation online. 

  • Learn what rights you own: When you generate AI art using Midjourney’s paid plans, you own the license to trade the generated content across any platform to make money. Unfortunately, free users of Midjourney can only share their content for personal or non-commercial use (as per CC BY-NC 4.0) and do not own the rights to use their images commercially. You can also use alternatives like DALL-E, NightCafe, and StarryAI to generate images that you can sell for money. 
  • Check if you have exclusive ownership: Not all marketplaces treat their products the same way; some would require you to own exclusive rights to the product you want to sell on their platform. In the case of Midjourney, any art you generate on the platform is assigned as non-exclusive since Midjourney can use them for promotional purposes. This means you cannot host your Midjourney creations on websites that only host exclusive content. 
  • Find which website supports your content: The art you generate via Midjourney or other tools can be traded in various ways, either digitally or by selling them in the form of physical goods. Digital art is the easiest to sell as you don’t need to make any investments unlike when it comes to selling them in printed form. If your generated art is unique, you can try selling your input prompts instead of the art itself. 
  • Make sure your images are created at the highest resolutions: Regardless of how you sell your creations, it’s a good practice to generate images at the highest resolution, which in the case of Midjourney is 2048 x 2048 px. This is because stock photo companies and other marketplaces demand high-quality images and do not support lower-resolution images. 
  • Avoid using other people’s art or artistic styles: To legally own the content you create using Midjourney or any other AI art generator, you must avoid using others’ works as base images. Doing so may cause copyright infringement which may prevent you from hosting your art in any marketplace. Some websites also discourage the use of someone else’s artistic style when sharing your own Midjourney images to avoid copyright claims from the artists themselves. 

That’s all you need to know about selling Midjourney art. 

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Ambivalent, unprecedented, and on the run from everyone's idea of reality. A consonance of love for filter coffee, cold weather, Arsenal, AC/DC, and Sinatra.