Is the Midjourney API available to the public?

No, there is no publicly available Midjourney API at this time and they currently have no plans of making their AI art generator available to a public API in the near future.

Are there any good alternatives to a Midjourney API?

As you may know, OpenAI has recently released DALL-E 2 to the public. They have now also released their core DALL-E API product into public beta as well. You can easily set up an account an create your own API key to test it in your own application.

How to Get Access to the Midjourney API

Are you looking for information on the Midjourney API?

Perhaps you’ve been blown away by how powerful Midjourney’s AI is and are keen to build new applications directly tapping into the Midjourney API?

Tons of developers have been asking how they can get access to their proprietary API, so we decided to dig deeper into the topic.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about API access to Midjourney’s AI art generator.

Let’s dive right in.

Table of Contents Show

Does Midjourney Have an API?

Infographic explainig that Midjourney doesn't have a public API. — Infographic explainig that Midjourney doesn’t have a public API.

UPDATED on 13 January 2023 to reflect Midjourney’s (now obvious) plans to release an API. If you go to the “Manage Subscription” page and click the “Manage Plan” button next to “Plan Details”, you’ll notice that there is an item called “Manage API Keys”. While it’s unclear wether the API will necessarily be used for image generation (statements from their support seems to suggest otherwise), but we believe it’s safe to assume that it’s only a matter of time until they do.

It is absolutely beyond doubt that the Midjourney has some sort of internal API for their AI art generator.

Nowadays it is common practice to build applications with an API-first approach.

What that means is that whatever you are building should ideally not interact directly with your database, but rather via an API layer.

This is important because it not only provides more structure and control over how your data is stored and manipulated, but it also makes it considerably easier to reuse whatever you have built.

And it also allows you to scale your product by allowing others to interact with your resources.

Since Midjourney uses a Discord bot as a form of command line prompt, you can absolutely bet that there is an internal Midjourney API which the bot interacts with.

However, at this point in time, there is no public Midjourney API that you can access as a developer.

Key Points (tl;dr)

One of the most common questions from developers who have experimented with Midjourney is whether a public API is available or in the works.
In the past, Midjourney has stated that they have no plans. However, recent revelations indicate that they actually do.
Even though Midjourney may not be an option right now, there are other alternatives available which we discuss in this article. The most prominent one is the DALL-E API by OpenAI.

Will the Midjourney API Be Made Public?

Infographic showing that Midjourney has no plans of releasing a public API.

Many developers who have experimented with Midjourney have been asking how they can get access to the API.

Others have been asking when the company plans to release its API to the public.

As you can see in the screenshot above, these questions are being asked both on Reddit and inside the official Midjourney Discord.

And the question is essentially being asked on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, the official statement from Midjourney still is that they currently have no plans for an API in the near future.

While this is obviously disappointing for many of the developers within the community, it’s quite understandable given how experimental the technology still is.

That being said, hints in the Midjourney web app do indicate that they will be releasing an API product at some point.

What remains to be seen is whether it will be used for image generation or simply to integrate your Midjourney account with other SaaS applications.

We suspect the latter.

Even though there are no official plans for public Midjourney API access that anyone would be able to subscribe to right now, we do believe that the team is open to private API access deals.

Let’s face it, this is potent technology that has so many potential use cases in various industries.

If the right company with sufficient authority and deep pockets come around the corner, you can bet that Midjourney will be willing to talk.

And given the fact that Midjourney is mostly self-funded and finances itself via partnerships as well, we’re certain that some of those partnerships include large corporations.

Do Any Alternatives to Midjourney Have an API?

Infographic listing some alternatives to the Midjourney API.

So now that a Midjourney API is no longer in the picture, are there any alternatives that you can use?

Just to be clear, text-to-image generators are not new and have been around for quite some time already.

In fact, there are even open-source solutions such as the DALL-E Mini codebase that do something very similar.

However, AI models require significant amounts of training data until they become even remotely useful and many of these free options usually lack the depth of services such as Midjourney.

That being said, one of Midjourney’s primary competitors is DALLE-2, which was created by OpenAI.

Originally, there was no official public API for DALL-E 2, but some clever developers managed to build an unofficial DALL-E 2 API client built with Python.

As far as we understand, this unofficial API client basically tries to emulate what the DALL-E 2 browser client does and bundles it into a nice and easy-to-use library.

So, if you’re not too picky and open to using options that are similar to Midjourney, make sure to check out the DALLE2 Python library.

Just bear in mind that OpenAI doesn’t officially permit this and it is against their Terms of Use.

However, there’s even better news because OpenAI finally announced the release of the DALL-E API into public beta in early November 2022.

So, if you’re a developer, your best bet right now is the DALL-E 2 API which gives you access to 3 core endpoints that allow you to generate images, edit images, and also create variations.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Before we close off this guide, let’s quickly address some of the most common questions related to the Midjourney API.

Does Midjourney have an API?

Yes, Midjourney most certainly has an internal API. The Discord bot that you sent your prompts to is, without a doubt, interacting with some sort of API on the other end.
Is the Midjourney API available to the public?

No, there is no publicly available Midjourney API at this time and they currently have no plans of making their AI art generator available to a public API in the near future.
Are there any good alternatives to a Midjourney API?

As you may know, OpenAI has recently released DALL-E 2 to the public. They have now also released their core DALL-E API product into public beta as well. You can easily set up an account an create your own API key to test it in your own application.

Conclusion

As Midjourney and AI art generators in general, gain more and more popularity, entrepreneurial developers starting to see the potential use cases of the technology.

More and more developers have been asking whether Midjourney has a public API or plans to release one anytime soon.

Unfortunately, official statements from Midjourney have been relatively clear on this and the company currently has no plans of releasing an API in the near future.

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