No public API for Midjourney
Midjourney has never shipped a public API. Nothing, including Sistava, can legitimately route an image request through Midjourney on your behalf.
Midjourney or DALL-E Not Working in Your Country?
How-to — — by Mahmoud Zalt
Midjourney and DALL-E block regions differently. See how each one gates access, and get DALL-E-based image generation without OpenAI's account gate.
The fastest fix: get the image, skip the block
You've probably already looked at a VPN, or wondered if a friend's Discord invite link would somehow get you past whatever is actually failing. Neither one tells you which block you're fighting, and picking the wrong fix for Midjourney versus DALL-E wastes a weekend on the wrong problem.
If the thing you actually need is DALL-E-style image generation and OpenAI's account gate is what's blocking you, you don't need direct access to ChatGPT to get it. Sistava's AI Employees carry a real image_generation tool built on DALL-E, running through Sistava's own account instead of yours, so a block on your OpenAI sign-up never becomes a block on your actual work. That parallel only holds for DALL-E: Midjourney has no public API, nothing including Sistava routes through it, so if Midjourney itself is what's blocked, this isn't the fix, the diagnostic steps below are.
How do Midjourney and DALL-E actually check your region?
The two tools fail for genuinely different reasons, and mixing them up is why so much VPN advice online is wrong for one of them. Midjourney and DALL-E were never built the same way, so the fix that works for one usually does nothing for the other.
Midjourney has no country block list of its own. It runs through Discord, and since 2026 also through its own website at midjourney.com with direct Google sign-in, so plenty of new users never touch Discord at all now. What actually stops people is Discord or Google being unreachable at the network level, with China, Iran, the UAE, and Egypt commonly cited, and that block sits with the network or the platform Midjourney rides on, not with Midjourney's own policy.
DALL-E works differently because it isn't really a separate product anymore. OpenAI has spent 2026 folding DALL-E into ChatGPT's own native image tools, so generating a DALL-E-style image now means having a working ChatGPT account first. That account inherits every restriction ChatGPT already has: a country list of roughly 20 places including Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, China, and Russia, plus the same phone-verification and payment checks that block ChatGPT sign-up for everyone else.
| Tool | How it gates access | What a VPN actually fixes |
|---|---|---|
| Midjourney | Runs through Discord, or midjourney.com with Google sign-in; no country list published by Midjourney itself | Gets you past a Discord or Google network block; usually doesn't change anything on Midjourney's side, because there isn't a Midjourney-side restriction to change |
| DALL-E (via ChatGPT) | Lives inside a ChatGPT account, so OpenAI's country, phone, and payment checks apply the same way they do to ChatGPT text | Gets you to the sign-up page; the account still needs a phone number and billing details OpenAI accepts, so the block often reappears at checkout |
Midjourney vs DALL-E: the real differences
Benefits
DALL-E ships through an API
OpenAI's image models are available through the OpenAI API, which is how Sistava's image_generation tool reaches DALL-E on your behalf.
Midjourney's block is usually network-level
Access problems trace back to Discord or Google being unreachable on your network, not a Midjourney country policy.
DALL-E's block is account-level
Access problems trace back to your ChatGPT account's country, phone, and payment details, the same gate as ChatGPT itself.
None of this makes one tool easier than the other, it just means the fix has to match the actual gate. Treating a network block like an account block, or the reverse, is why so many VPN attempts fail without anyone understanding why.
Why do these tools end up blocked at all?
Discord gets blocked in a handful of countries for reasons that have nothing to do with Midjourney or AI policy at all, it's usually part of a broader block on foreign chat and social platforms. When Discord goes down in a country, Midjourney effectively goes down with it, even though nobody at Midjourney made that call.
OpenAI's restrictions follow a more familiar pattern: export-control rules, sanctions law, data-residency requirements, and unfinished payment or tax registration in a given country. Because DALL-E now lives inside the ChatGPT account rather than its own signup flow, it picked up that entire policy stack instead of carrying a lighter one of its own.
That's also why switching tools sometimes beats fighting either block. If your country sits on Discord's unreachable list or OpenAI's excluded list, no amount of troubleshooting changes a decision made above the product layer, the honest move is picking a path that already works where you are.
Once image generation is one task inside a broader AI Employee instead of a single blocked app, a region problem on any one underlying tool stops being a full stop. The employee still has other ways to move the work forward, because it was never married to one vendor's login page in the first place.
Does Sistava replace Midjourney or DALL-E?
Sistava's image_generation tool lets an AI Employee create logos, illustrations, and visuals from a text prompt on demand, and it's available on every plan, including free. It's genuinely DALL-E-based under the hood, so if what you were chasing was DALL-E's specific output without OpenAI's account gate, this is a direct, honest parallel.
It is not a Midjourney substitute, and we won't pretend otherwise. Midjourney's rendering style, its Discord-native workflow, and its lack of a public API make it a genuinely different product on different technology, and no platform, Sistava included, can legitimately route a request through Midjourney on someone else's behalf. If Midjourney's specific look is what you need, the honest path is still Midjourney's own Discord or website, just from a network where it actually loads.
Frequently asked questions
FAQ
Is Midjourney banned in my country?
Almost certainly not by Midjourney itself, it has never published a country block list. What blocks people is Discord, or now Google sign-in, being unreachable on the local network. China, Iran, the UAE, and Egypt are the countries most commonly reported as affected, and the fix there is a network workaround for Discord or Google, not a Midjourney-specific one.
Can I use Midjourney without a Discord account now?
Yes. Since 2026, midjourney.com accepts a direct Google sign-in, so new users no longer need Discord at all. If you already made images through Discord, sign in with Discord at least once to keep your image history, but it is no longer required for a fresh account.
Why does DALL-E feel harder to get to than it used to be?
Because it effectively isn't a separate product anymore. OpenAI has been folding DALL-E into ChatGPT's own native image tools through 2026, so what used to be its own signup flow now requires a working ChatGPT account, with every restriction that comes with one.
Does a VPN fix Midjourney access?
Usually yes, because the block is almost always Discord or Google being unreachable on your network, and a VPN routes around that cleanly. That's a genuinely different situation from DALL-E, where a VPN gets you past sign-up but the account still carries your phone number and billing country underneath.
Does a VPN fix DALL-E or ChatGPT image generation access?
Partially, and only short-term. A VPN can get you through sign-up, but OpenAI's phone-verification and billing checks look at deeper signals than your current IP, so the same country mismatch that blocked you often resurfaces at checkout or on a later login. It also puts the account against ChatGPT's own terms of service for paid plans.
Is Sistava's image tool the same thing as Midjourney?
No, and we wouldn't want to overclaim that. Sistava's image_generation tool is built on DALL-E, not Midjourney's technology, and Midjourney has no public API for any platform to route through. It's a fair parallel for DALL-E-style output, not a Midjourney substitute.
What model actually powers Sistava's image generation tool?
DALL-E. It's listed plainly in Sistava's own feature catalog as an employee tool that generates images on demand via DALL-E, available on every plan including free, so there's no ambiguity about what's running underneath it.
Are there other image tools that work worldwide without this trouble?
A few, and it's worth checking each vendor's own supported-countries page before you invest time in an account. Availability shifts as tools add or drop regions, so what's true this month isn't guaranteed to stay true, the safest habit is checking directly rather than assuming last year's answer still holds.
The short version: name the block before you fix it. A Midjourney problem is almost always Discord or Google being unreachable on your network. A DALL-E problem is almost always your ChatGPT account's country, phone, or billing details, the same gate that blocks ChatGPT itself.
If DALL-E specifically is what you're chasing, an AI Employee with a working image_generation tool gets you the same underlying model without the account fight. If it's Midjourney's particular style you need, no shortcut replaces Midjourney itself, only a network where it actually loads. For the fuller picture on why these blocks exist across AI tools generally and how to diagnose one properly, the guide below walks through the full five-step sequence.
Image generation is one small piece of a much bigger AI toolkit, and treating a single blocked app as the whole problem is usually the expensive mistake. Pick the fix that matches your actual block, and keep the rest of your workflow moving regardless of which vendor's geo policy changes next.