AI Image Generator Pay Per Use: Stop Paying for Images You Don't Make

Here's a pattern most people know too well: you sign up for MidJourney at $10/month, generate a burst of images the first week, then forget about it. Three months later you notice you've spent $30 on maybe 40 images. That's $0.75 per image — for a service that could've cost you a fraction of that.

Subscriptions make sense if you generate hundreds of images a week. For everyone else, they're a bad deal. And in 2026, you finally have real alternatives.

The Subscription Tax

Let's look at what the major platforms charge:

• MidJourney: $10/month (Basic, ~200 images) to $60/month (Mega). No free tier.
• DALL-E 3 via ChatGPT Plus: $20/month. You're paying for GPT access too, and image generation has rate limits that aren't published anywhere.
• Adobe Firefly: $4.99/month for 100 credits. After that, $0.05 per credit — and a single image costs 1-4 credits depending on resolution.
• Leonardo AI: Free tier exists (150 tokens/day) but the good models require $12/month.

The common thread: you pay whether you generate or not. Miss a week? Still paying. Only need 10 images this month? Still paying the same as someone who needs 200.

How Pay-Per-Use Actually Works

Pay-per-use is simple. You add credits to your account. Each generation costs a specific amount. When you run out, you buy more. No recurring charges, no cancellation dance, no surprise renewals.

On Myjourney, the math looks like this:

That's not a typo. Three cents per image with Flux.

Real-World Cost Scenarios

The occasional creator: You make social media thumbnails, maybe 20 images a month. On Myjourney, that's $0.60-$1.00 total. On MidJourney, you're paying $10/month minimum.

The weekend hobbyist: You spend Saturday afternoons experimenting with AI art, generating roughly 50-80 images per session, 4 sessions a month. That's 200-320 images. On Myjourney with Flux at $0.03 each: $6-$9.60. MidJourney's Basic plan gives you about 200 images for $10, so it's comparable — but you're locked into paying every month even when you skip weekends.

The freelance designer: You need AI images for client work — maybe 15-20 high-quality generations per project, 3-4 projects a month. Call it 70 images. On Myjourney with Imagen 4: $2.80. On MidJourney: $10/month (and you need Standard at $30/month if you want commercial rights for every use case).

The "I just need one image" person: You want a custom header for a blog post. On Myjourney: $0.03-$0.05. On any subscription service: $10-$20 for this month, then remember to cancel, then fight the "are you sure?" page, then check next month to make sure it actually cancelled.

The Model Access Problem

Here's the other thing subscriptions lock you into: a single model. MidJourney gives you MidJourney's model. DALL-E gives you DALL-E. If you want to compare outputs across different architectures, you need multiple subscriptions.

On Myjourney, you pick the model per generation. Flux for one image, Imagen 4 for the next, GPT Image 1 for a third. Same account, same credits, different models. You're paying for output, not access.

This matters because different models are better at different things. Flux handles stylized illustrations well. Imagen 4 does photorealism. GPT Image 1 is better at text-in-image rendering. Having all three available without separate subscriptions saves real money.

Who Shouldn't Use Pay-Per-Use

Honest answer: if you're generating 500+ images a day for production work, a subscription with unlimited or high-volume pricing will be cheaper. MidJourney's Pro plan at $30/month with "fast" hours and unlimited "relax" generation is hard to beat at that volume.

But most people aren't generating 500 images a day. Most people generate a handful of images, maybe a few dozen, and then don't touch it for a while. For that pattern — which is probably 80% of users — pay-per-use wins every time.

The Hidden Benefit: No Cancellation Anxiety

This sounds small but it's not. Subscription services know that inertia keeps people paying. That's the entire business model. You sign up intending to use it "a lot," usage drops off after the first month, but you keep paying because cancelling feels like a chore or you think "I'll use it more next month."

Pay-per-use removes that entirely. Your credits sit there until you use them. No monthly drain. No "should I cancel?" calculations. No annual plan that saves 20% but commits you to $120 upfront.

Getting Started

If you want to try pay-per-use generation right now, Myjourney lets you generate 5 images completely free — no account required, no credit card. After that, credits start at $5 and carry over indefinitely.

You can also browse what other people have made in the Explore gallery to get a sense of what's possible before spending anything. Each image shows the model and prompt used, so you can estimate what your own projects would cost.

The subscription model made sense when AI image generation was new and expensive to run. In 2026, generation costs have dropped enough that charging per image is viable — and for most people, it's significantly cheaper. Your wallet will thank you.