Midjourney Slow Generation Speed: How to Fix

If you queue a prompt in Midjourney and the progress bar remains stuck at 0%, or your images are taking minutes instead of seconds to render, you are experiencing slow generation speeds. This behavior is rarely a random glitch; it is almost always caused by billing tiers, queue congestion, or setting misconfigurations.

This guide walks you through the practical steps to diagnose why Midjourney is running slowly and how to restore normal processing speeds.

1. Check Your Fast GPU Hours

All paid Midjourney subscriptions come with a set number of "Fast" GPU hours. When you run out of these hours, your account automatically switches to "Relax" mode (unless you are on the Basic plan, which does not offer Relax mode and will simply block new generations).

In Relax mode, your jobs enter a dynamic queue. Depending on overall server demand, your images can take anywhere from 1 to 20 minutes to generate.

1. Go to any Discord channel where the Midjourney bot is present (or your Direct Messages with the bot).
2. Type /info in the chat box and press Enter twice.
3. Look at the status card sent by the bot.
4. Locate the line labeled Fast GPU Time Remaining.
5. If this number is 0.00/15.0 hours (or equivalent for your tier), your Fast hours are exhausted.

The Fix: You can either wait for your monthly subscription cycle to renew, purchase extra Fast hours via the /buy command, or continue using Relax mode. If you are using Relax mode, try generating during off-peak hours (typically late at night EST) when the queue moves much faster.

2. Force Midjourney Back into Fast Mode

Sometimes, your settings can accidentally toggle to Relax mode even if you still have plenty of Fast GPU hours remaining on your account.

1. Type /settings in the message bar and press Enter.
2. Look at the grid of options that appears.
3. Find the green button at the bottom. If Relax Mode is highlighted in green, your jobs are being throttled on purpose.
4. Click the Fast Mode button to toggle it back on.
5. Alternatively, you can bypass the settings menu by typing /fast directly into the chat and pressing Enter.

3. Clear Stuck and Queued Jobs

Midjourney limits the number of concurrent jobs you can run based on your subscription tier. If you have sent too many prompts in rapid succession, subsequent jobs will be placed in a "waiting to start" queue, which drastically slows down your apparent generation speed.

1. Run the /info command to see your current queue status.
2. Look at the Queued Jobs and Running Jobs counts.
3. If your queue is full, you must wait for current processes to finish, or cancel them manually.
4. To cancel a slow or stuck job, locate the generation in your chat history.
5. React to the message with the red cross emoji (❌). The Midjourney bot will immediately cancel the job and free up a processing slot.

4. Move to Direct Messages to Bypass Discord Lag

Sometimes Midjourney is generating your images at normal speeds, but high traffic in public Discord channels is causing a delay in how fast the images render on your screen.

1. Open your Discord member list on the right-hand panel of the server.
2. Find Midjourney Bot.
3. Right-click the bot's name and select Message.
4. Send your /imagine prompts directly to the bot in this private thread.

Generating in Direct Messages bypasses public channel noise and significantly reduces UI rendering latency.

5. Simplify Parameters and Aspect Ratios

Highly complex prompts and non-standard parameters require more GPU computational power, which can lengthen generation times.

• Aspect Ratios: Standard ratios like --ar 1:1 or --ar 16:9 render quickly. Extreme ratios (e.g., --ar 1:20 or --ar 20:1) require specialized canvas calculation and take longer to start.
• Image References: Prompts that use multiple Image Prompts, Style References (--sref), or Character References (--cref) require the system to parse external URLs before rendering. Try reducing the number of referenced images to speed up the queue.

When to Escalate

If /info shows you have Fast GPU hours remaining, your settings are set to /fast, you are using simple prompts in a Direct Message, and jobs still take over 5 minutes to generate, there is likely a server-side outage.

First, check the official status page at status.midjourney.com. If all systems are operational but you are still experiencing throttling, join the official Midjourney Discord server and check the #status channel for real-time announcements, or post your query in #member-support for help from community moderators.