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Diagnostic built across Midjourney v7, v6.1, the web app, and the Discord bot · Last updated May 15, 2026
From the first /imagine to the never-finishing job, the ten reasons Midjourney stops generating in 2026, with the exact action that clears each.
First, the two-second check
/info returns your plan, Fast hours remaining, queue size, and visibility setting in one message. About half of all stuck-job reports are silently “out of Fast minutes”, and that one command tells you in two seconds.
How we tested this
We reproduced each failure mode on both surfaces, the Midjourney Discord bot on the official server and the web app at midjourney.com, across Basic, Standard, and Pro plans, in Fast and Relax modes.
Pricing, plan limits, and model timelines were cross-checked against the official Midjourney pricing page, the public documentation at docs.midjourney.com, and dated announcements on the Midjourney blog. Every dated claim is anchored to a public source.
Ordered by how often each step resolves the issue. Top to bottom.
Midjourney publishes service health at status.midjourney.com. The dashboard separates Discord bot health from web app health from billing. Verify before troubleshooting locally. Cross-check downdetector.com/status/midjourney for user-reported spikes.
/info returns your current plan, Fast hours remaining, Relax mode availability, queue size, and visibility setting in one message. On midjourney.com, the account page surfaces the same data. "Out of minutes" is the most common silent reason jobs hang, /info confirms it in two seconds.
midjourney.com → Manage Subscription. Confirm a green Active status and that the next-charge date is in the future. A failed Stripe charge silently disables generation, Midjourney does not show a banner until you submit a new /imagine.
If you have burned through Fast hours but still have a subscription, run /relax. Jobs queue for 1-10 minutes instead of seconds but cost no Fast time. Basic plan ($10/month) has no Relax pool, Standard ($30/month) is the entry point for unlimited Relax.
Prompts over 60 words, extreme aspect ratios (--ar > 8:1 or < 1:8), and chained parameter sets raise failure rates. Strip stylize values over --s 750, exotic seeds, and the --tile flag if not specifically needed. A minimal prompt confirms whether the system is healthy.
Midjourney's banned-word policy is documented at docs.midjourney.com under Community Guidelines. Strip references to public figures, weapons, NSFW concepts, and protected IP. A blocked prompt does not always return an explicit "banned" message, sometimes jobs simply never start.
If Discord is broken, generate from midjourney.com (which has been the primary surface since the 2024 web app launch). If the web app is broken, fall back to Discord. The two surfaces share GPU pools but use different transport stacks, so a failure on one is rarely a failure on both.
midjourney.com → avatar (top-right) → Sign out. Sign back in via Discord OAuth. A stale Discord OAuth token is the second-most-common cause of "web app is wedged" reports after a stale service worker.
Chrome: chrome://settings/cookies → "See all site data" → search "midjourney" → Delete. Then Cmd+Shift+R / Ctrl+Shift+F5. Resolves persistent blank-canvas and Upscale-button-missing issues after Midjourney frontend deploys.
help.midjourney.com → Submit a ticket. Include /info output, the exact prompt, the timestamp in UTC, and a screenshot. Average response time for non-billing tickets is several days; billing tickets are typically resolved within 24-48 hours.
Plan picked from midjourney.com/account. Knowing your tier's caps is the fastest way to diagnose “why is mine stuck”.
| Plan | Price | Fast hours | Relax | Concurrent Fast | Concurrent Relax | Commercial use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $10 / month | 3.3 hours | Not included | 3 jobs | 0 | Yes (per Terms of Service) |
| Standard | $30 / month | 15 hours | Unlimited | 3 jobs | 3 jobs | Yes |
| Pro | $60 / month | 30 hours | Unlimited | 12 jobs | 3 jobs | Yes + Stealth mode |
| Mega | $120 / month | 60 hours | Unlimited | 12 jobs | 3 jobs | Yes + Stealth mode |
Pricing and limits sourced from the official Midjourney plans page; verify the live page for the current quote in your region.
What you see → what is really happening → exactly what to do.
| Error / symptom | Severity | Root cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job queued… (never starts) | Low | Out of Fast GPU minutes on a Basic ($10/month) or Standard ($30/month) plan, jobs are auto-shifted to Relax mode on Standard and above, but Basic has no Relax pool | Check /info in Discord or the web app's account page. If Fast hours are at 0 and you are on Basic, you have hit your monthly cap until renewal. Upgrade to Standard ($30/month) or wait. Standard and above auto-fall back to Relax, no action needed but jobs take 1-10 minutes instead of seconds. |
| Banned prompt / blocked subject | Medium | Prompt contained a term on Midjourney's banned-words list or referenced a public figure with restricted likeness rights, Midjourney publishes the policy at docs.midjourney.com | Rephrase. Strip references to public figures, copyrighted characters, gore, NSFW terms, and any word the docs flag as restricted. The same scene described abstractly usually generates without flagging. |
| Internal error / job failed | Low | Transient backend failure, typically appears during peak weekday evenings (US-time) when GPU pools are saturated | Re-run the prompt with the same parameters. Failed Fast jobs are not deducted from your minute pool. If it fails three times in a row on the same prompt, simplify the prompt, extreme aspect ratios (--ar 21:1, --ar 1:21) and very long prompts raise the failure rate. |
| Subscription required | High | Your Midjourney subscription has lapsed or your Stripe payment failed at renewal, Midjourney uses Stripe for billing and a failed card stops generation immediately | Open midjourney.com → Manage Subscription. Update the card in Stripe. Reactivation is immediate after a successful charge. No free trial since 2023, a paid plan is required to generate. |
| You have no GPU time remaining | Medium | Fast hours exhausted (Basic plan: 3.3 hours/month, Standard: 15 hours/month per the public pricing page) | Switch to Relax mode with /relax (Standard, Pro, Mega plans only). Or buy a Fast-hours top-up at midjourney.com → Account → Buy More Fast Hours. Top-ups are paid one-time and stack with subscription hours. |
| Discord bot not responding to /imagine | Medium | Midjourney Bot lost its websocket connection in your server, OR you are typing /imagine in a channel where the bot has been removed | Send the command in a thread inside the Newcomer rooms on the official Midjourney Discord, or DM the bot directly. Confirm the bot avatar appears in the channel's member list. If using your own Discord server, re-invite the bot. |
| Web app shows blank canvas | Low | midjourney.com frontend bug or stale service worker, most common after Midjourney pushes a UI update on the web app, which is the primary surface as of 2025 | Hard refresh: Cmd+Shift+R on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+F5 on Windows. Clear cookies for midjourney.com if it persists. Drop back to the Discord workflow as a temporary workaround. |
| Upscale / Vary / Region buttons missing | Low | Buttons render only after the four-grid generation completes, if the job timed out, the action row never appears | Re-roll the job. If buttons appear but do nothing on Discord, the bot's interaction token expired (24 hours after generation), copy the seed and re-run in a new /imagine. |
Four events explain why a tutorial from 2023 might no longer match your screen.
| Version / Event | Launched | Why it matters (source) |
|---|---|---|
| v7 | 2025 | Default model for new accounts; improved photographic realism and prompt adherence (per Midjourney announcement on the web app changelog) |
| v6.1 | Jul 30, 2024 | Final v6 line; introduced higher-resolution upscaling and personalization improvements (per official Midjourney blog) |
| Web app GA | Aug 2024 | midjourney.com opened to all subscribers (no longer Discord-only); changed where most jobs are submitted |
| Style Reference (--sref) | 2024 | Lets prompts reference a style image; changed which prompts fail, since incompatible --sref values now error rather than ignore |
Takeaway: Many older tutorials still demonstrate /imagine inside the Discord Newcomer rooms. That still works, but the official primary path since the August 2024 web app launch is midjourney.com. If a tutorial does not mention the web app, treat it as outdated.
Identify the bucket; the fix follows.
The most common silent failure. /info confirms it. On Basic, you wait until renewal or upgrade. On Standard or above, switch to Relax with /relax.
A failed Stripe charge silently disables generation. midjourney.com → Manage Subscription. Update the card. Reactivation is immediate after a successful charge.
Prompt hit Midjourney's Community Guidelines. Strip names of public figures, copyrighted characters, weapons, gore, and NSFW terms. Then re-run.
Discord bot websocket dropped, or the web app's service worker is stale. Hard refresh, switch surfaces, clear cookies. Last resort: ticket via help.midjourney.com.
Each runs on an independent stack, so a Midjourney incident has no effect on them.
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The questions readers ask most when Midjourney refuses to generate.
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