Midjourney vs Qwen (Alibaba)
Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.
Midjourney
Industry-leading AI image generation with stunning artistic quality
Qwen (Alibaba)
Alibaba's open-weights family -- Qwen3.5, Qwen3-Coder-Next, Qwen3-VL, Qwen3-Max. Apache 2.0 flagship sizes.
| Category | Midjourney | Qwen (Alibaba) |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 6.0 | 7.0 |
| Output Quality | 10.0 | 9.0 |
| Value | 7.0 | 10.0 |
| Features | 8.0 | 9.0 |
| Overall | 7.8 | 8.8 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Midjourney | Qwen (Alibaba) |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | No | Yes |
| Starting Price | $10 | $0 |
Benchmark Head-to-Head
Qwen3.5-397B MoE benchmarks — Midjourney has no published benchmarks
| Benchmark | Description | Score |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | Harder multi-subject reasoning | 83.5% |
| GPQA Diamond | Graduate-level science questions | 78.2% |
| AIME 2025 | 87% | |
| HumanEval | Python code generation | 92.5% |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 69.4% |
Which Should You Pick?
Pick Midjourney if...
- ✓Higher output quality (10 vs 9)
Artists, designers, and content creators who need the highest quality AI-generated images and don't mind the Discord workflow.
Visit MidjourneyPick Qwen (Alibaba) if...
- ✓Easier to use (7 vs 6)
- ✓Better value for money (10/10)
- ✓More features (9 vs 8)
- ✓Has a free tier
Developers who want frontier-tier open weights with Apache 2.0 licensing. Qwen3-Coder-Next is arguably the best local coding model; Qwen3.5-397B is a top-3 open generalist.
Visit Qwen (Alibaba)Our Verdict
Qwen (Alibaba) is the clear winner here with 8.8/10 vs 7.8/10. Midjourney isn't bad, but Qwen (Alibaba) outperforms it across the board. Pick Midjourney only if artists, designers, and content creators who need the highest quality ai-generated images and don't mind the discord workflow.