Quick answer · Pricing checked 13 November 2026
● Best overall: Suno — $10/month, or $96 for the year. Commercial rights from the first paid tier.
● Best for release on Spotify: Suno or ElevenLabs Music. Several tools on this list forbid it or require you to alter the track first.
● Best free tier: ElevenLabs Music, 10,000 credits — but personal use only. Sunos free tier gives you no commercial rights and no downloads.
● Best if you must own it outright: Stable Audio 3 — open weights, run it yourself, you own the output.
● The trap: AIVA keeps the copyright on its free and Standard tiers. Only Pro at €33/month transfers ownership to you.
The question that actually decides this
Not which one sounds best. Every tool here makes a passable track, and which one you prefer is taste. The question that costs people money is who owns the song, and where are you allowed to put it — and the answers differ far more than the audio does.
One tool on this list keeps the copyright unless you pay its top tier. One forbids registering your track with Content ID. One lets you distribute to streaming services only after you have modified the beat enough that it sounds clearly different from what it gave you. One takes your music offline if you cancel.
None of that is hidden — it is all in the published terms. It is just not in the comparison tables, so start here.
Rights, side by side
| Tool |
Free tier rights |
Paid from |
Who owns the output |
Streaming release |
| Suno |
None — no commercial use, no downloads |
$10/mo or $96/yr |
You, on paid tiers |
Yes |
| Udio |
Limited credits |
$10/mo |
See current terms |
Check terms |
| ElevenLabs Music |
Personal use only |
$6/mo Starter |
You, on paid tiers |
Not on Starter |
| Stable Audio 3 |
Open weights, run locally |
Free weights; API for Large |
You |
Yes |
| SOUNDRAW |
Trial |
Subscription |
Licence to use, not ownership |
Only if you modify it |
| AIVA |
3 downloads, non-commercial |
€11/mo Standard |
AIVA, until Pro |
Pro only |
Read the fourth column twice. Two of these six do not transfer ownership at the tier most people buy.
The six, in order
1. Suno
Verdict: The default, and the only one here whose cheapest paid tier gives you commercial rights with no asterisk.
Suno runs three models: v6 and v6-wild on paid tiers, v6-mini on free. The free plan gives 50 credits a day, which is generous for experimenting and useless for anything else — it carries no commercial rights and no song downloads at all. You can make music on it; you cannot keep or use it.
Pro is $10/month, or $96 billed annually which works out near $8. That gets 2,500 credits a month, 20 downloads, both advanced models, commercial rights and two stem separation types. Premier at $30/month or $288 annually raises that to 10,000 credits, 60 downloads, three stem types, 30-minute uploads and Suno Studio.
The detail that catches people: subscription credits do not carry over, not from day to day and not from month to month. Purchased top-up credits do not expire, but they stop working if your subscription lapses. Budget on what you will use this month, not on accumulating a balance.
Best for: Most people, most of the time. View listing →
2. ElevenLabs Music
Verdict: The strongest free tier here and the only one built on stated licensing deals with artists, labels and publishers.
Eleven Music runs on Music v2, which adds section-level inpainting — regenerate just the bridge without touching the rest of the song — plus genre transitions inside a single continuous track and reusable voices and styles taken from your own work or their libraries.
Free gives 10,000 credits and is personal use only, with no API. Starter is $6/month and 30,000 credits, with commercial use that excludes streaming. Creator is $22/month and 121,000 credits. Pro is $99/month, 600,000 credits and up to six stems. The first month is discounted on the lower tiers — $1 on Starter and $11 on Creator.
Honest limitation: the Starter tier is the one most people will reach for and it is the one that will not let you put the track on Spotify. If release is the plan, price Creator instead and do not discover this after you have made the album.
Best for: Anyone who wants to edit sections rather than reroll the whole song. View listing →
3. Stable Audio 3
Verdict: The only one you can run on your own hardware, and the cleanest answer to the ownership question.
Stability ships a family: Small SFX for sound effects and Small for full composition, both designed to run on-device, plus Medium for higher musicality and longer tracks. All three are open weights, published on Hugging Face and usable in ComfyUI. Large, the highest-quality model, is not open and runs through the Stability API or enterprise self-hosting.
Length runs to two minutes on Small, 6:20 on Medium and past six minutes on Large. Generation length can be set to the second. Editing covers single and multi-segment inpainting plus extending audio past its endpoint, and Stability publishes LoRA fine-tuning documentation for Small and Medium.
Under the Stability AI Community License you own your outputs and can distribute and commercialise them. Stability states the models were trained on fully licensed data.
The threshold to know: organisations over $1M in annual revenue need the Enterprise License, which adds commercial coverage and legal indemnification. Below that line the Community License covers you.
Best for: Anyone who needs the model on their own machine, or who wants indemnification. View listing →
4. Udio
Verdict: Credit-based and cheap per clip, but check the current terms before you plan a release.
Udio prices in credits. Its own subscription announcement sets Standard at $10/month for 1,200 credits — roughly 1,200 clips of about 30 seconds — and Pro at $30/month for 4,800 credits, with 20% off annual billing. The free tier is 100 credits refreshed monthly plus 10 daily top-up credits that expire the same day.
A caveat we would rather state than hide: those figures come from Udios own announcement rather than from a live reading of its current pricing page, which we could not retrieve. Treat them as the published plan structure and confirm the number before you commit.
Commercial rights are not addressed in that announcement at all, which matters more here than the price. Our view on how Udio and Suno compare on exactly this question is in Suno vs Udio after the label deal.
Best for: High-volume short clips, once you have read the terms. View listing →
5. SOUNDRAW
Verdict: Built for creators who need background music and never want a copyright claim — with rules you genuinely have to follow.
Every plan allows commercial use: client work, social media, YouTube, video games, radio, TV and use in one physical store. Crediting SOUNDRAW is optional. For a YouTube channel that needs beds and stings without copyright strikes, that is the whole proposition and it works.
The restrictions are specific and worth reading properly. You may not use the music in video content you do not own, which rules out movies, TV and ads made for someone else. You may not register a track with a Content ID system. You may not distribute tracks unmodified. You may not sell modified beats on stock audio platforms. Theatre and other synchronised uses need a separate sync licence.
Artist Plans do allow distribution to streaming services — but only if you modify the beat first, and SOUNDRAWs wording is that the final song must sound clearly different from the track you downloaded. Meditation, lo-fi and relaxation content can use unmodified tracks, and here is the part to plan around: that content stays published only while your subscription is active.
Best for: YouTube and client background music, where strike-free matters more than owning it. View listing →
6. AIVA
Verdict: Good orchestral and cinematic output, and the ownership terms are the most important thing on this page.
On the Free and Standard tiers, AIVA owns the copyright to the music you generate. Not you. That is stated plainly in their plan comparison and it is the single most commonly missed fact in this entire category.
Free gives three downloads a month, three-minute maximum length, non-commercial use only, and requires crediting AIVA. Standard at €11/month billed annually gives 15 downloads, five-minute tracks and drops the credit requirement — but monetisation is limited to YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and Instagram, and AIVA still holds the copyright.
Pro at €33/month billed annually is where it changes: 300 downloads, 5:30 tracks, full monetisation, and you own the copyright.
So the honest framing is that AIVA has one tier, not three. If the music is for anything you intend to own, Pro is the product and €33 is the price. The cheaper tiers are for people who want background music and do not care who holds the rights.
Best for: Orchestral and cinematic scoring — on Pro, not on Standard. View listing →
Four traps, stated plainly
| The trap |
What it costs you |
| AIVA keeps the copyright below Pro |
You cannot claim ownership of music you paid €11/month to make. Budget €33. |
| SOUNDRAW publication ends with your subscription |
Unmodified meditation and lo-fi content stays live only while you keep paying. |
| ElevenLabs Starter excludes streaming |
$6/month gives commercial use but not a Spotify release. Creator at $22 is the release tier. |
| Suno credits never roll over |
Unused monthly credits vanish. Paying for a big tier you use unevenly wastes most of it. |
Which one, concretely
If you want to release music commercially and keep it simple
→ Suno Pro at $10/month, or $96 for the year. Commercial rights from the first paid tier, no conditions attached.
If you need background music for YouTube without strikes
→ SOUNDRAW. Every plan allows it, crediting is optional, and that is exactly what it is built for.
If you need to own the copyright outright
→ Stable Audio 3 on open weights, or AIVA Pro at €33. Not AIVA Standard.
If you want to edit one section rather than reroll the song
→ ElevenLabs Music. Section-level inpainting is the feature, and Creator at $22 if you will release it.
If you are scoring film, games or anything orchestral
→ AIVA Pro. The output suits it and Pro is the only tier that gives you the rights.
If your data or your model cannot leave your machine
→ Stable Audio 3. Small and Medium run on-device with open weights.
If you are generating a very high volume of short clips
→ Udio on credits, after you have read the current commercial terms.
If you are on a budget and only experimenting
→ ElevenLabs free at 10,000 credits, or Suno free at 50 a day. Neither lets you use the result commercially.
Questions people actually ask
Can I sell music made with an AI music generator?
It depends entirely on the tool and the tier. Suno gives commercial rights from its $10 Pro plan. ElevenLabs Starter at $6 gives commercial use but excludes streaming. SOUNDRAW allows commercial use everywhere but forbids Content ID registration and requires you to modify the beat before distributing to streaming. AIVA does not transfer copyright at all below its €33 Pro tier. Read the tier, not the tool.
Which AI music generator has the best free tier?
ElevenLabs Music at 10,000 credits, but it is personal use only with no API. Suno gives 50 credits a day with no commercial rights and no downloads — you can make music you cannot keep. AIVA gives three downloads a month and retains the copyright. Free tiers in this category are demos rather than usable products.
Do I own the songs I generate?
Not always, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in the category. On Stable Audio 3 under the Community License you own your outputs. On Suno and ElevenLabs paid tiers you get commercial rights. On AIVA Free and Standard, AIVA holds the copyright and only Pro transfers it. SOUNDRAW grants a licence to use rather than ownership.
Can I put AI-generated music on Spotify?
On Suno paid tiers and Stable Audio, yes. On ElevenLabs you need Creator rather than Starter, since Starter excludes streaming. On SOUNDRAW only via an Artist Plan and only after modifying the beat so the result sounds clearly different from the downloaded track. On AIVA you need Pro. Platform policies on AI music also change, so check those separately.
Can I run an AI music generator on my own computer?
Stable Audio 3 is the one. Small SFX, Small and Medium are published as open weights on Hugging Face and run on-device, with Small reaching two minutes and Medium 6:20. Large is not open weights. Nothing else on this list offers self-hosting.
What happens to my music if I cancel my subscription?
Usually nothing, but check SOUNDRAW specifically: unmodified tracks used in meditation, lo-fi and relaxation content stay published only while your subscription is active. Suno purchased top-up credits also stop working without an active subscription, though they do not expire.
More: our Udio review · Suno vs Udio head to head · ElevenLabs vs Qwen-Audio on voice.
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