AI Music Generator Cost Per Song: 11 Apps Measured

Making a song on Suno Pro costs 2 cents. Downloading it costs 50 cents, 25 times as much, because the $10 plan makes up to 500 songs a month but lets you download only 20. Mureka charges exactly the same $10 and lets you download every one of its 500 songs, and ElevenMusic's free plan allows more downloads a month than Suno's paid one.

We read the pricing pages, help centers and app store listings of 11 AI music apps: Suno, Udio, Mureka, ElevenMusic, ElevenLabs, Stable Audio, AIVA, Soundraw, Google Gemini (Lyria 3.5), Adobe Firefly Generate Music and Beatoven.ai. For each one we worked out two prices: what it costs to make a song, and what it costs to keep one, meaning a file you can download and use in a video, a podcast or a release. Prices are in US dollars as listed on November 11, 2026, billed monthly unless we say yearly. Here is what the numbers say.

Key Findings

1. On Suno, keeping a song costs 25 times what making it costs

Suno Pro is $10 a month for 2,500 credits, which Suno's own plan data describes as "up to 500 songs": 5 credits a song, 2 cents each. Since September 3, 2026, though, Suno counts downloads separately. Its help center says "Pro plan subscribers will receive 20 download credits per month" and Premier subscribers 60. Divide the plan price by the downloads and every song you take out of Suno costs 50 cents, on Pro and on Premier alike.

That is the number that matters to creators. A song you cannot download cannot go under your YouTube video, into your podcast or onto a distributor. On Pro you make 25 songs for every one you can keep; on Premier ($30, 10,000 credits, up to 2,000 songs) the ratio is 33 to 1. Yearly billing ($96 or $288 a year) brings the download price to 40 cents. Suno's pricing page says paid plans can buy "additional credits and downloads" but does not say what an extra download costs.

2. Mureka charges Suno's prices and lets you download everything

Mureka's plans line up with Suno's almost exactly. Pro is $10 a month ($96 a year) for "up to 500 songs", and Premier is $30 ($288 a year) for "up to 2,000 songs", the same prices and the same song counts as Suno Pro and Premier. The difference is the download. Mureka's subscribe page promises paid members "full commercial rights and unlimited downloads in all formats."

So on Mureka the cost to keep a song is the cost to make it: 2 cents on Pro, 1.5 cents on Premier, against Suno's 50 cents. Whether Mureka's V9.5 model sounds as good as Suno v6 for your genre is a question for your ears, and both have free plans to test it (Mureka gives 4 songs a day, Suno 10). On paper, if you need files, Mureka is 25 times cheaper per kept song at the same plan price.

3. Udio is the cheapest app for making songs and does not let you download them

Udio has the lowest price to make a song of any app we checked. Its help center says every Create returns two songs and a pair of 130-second songs costs four credits, two credits each. Standard is $10 for 2,400 credits, so a song costs under a cent ($0.008); Pro is $30 for 6,000 credits ($0.010).

None of those songs can leave Udio. When Udio partnered with Universal Music Group on October 29, 2025, it raised its credit limits and, in the words of its help article (updated February 17, 2026), "downloading of audio, video, and stems has been disabled." Udio is now a place to make and share songs on Udio. If your song needs to end up in an editing timeline, it is the wrong app at any price.

4. ElevenMusic's free plan downloads more than Suno's paid plan

ElevenLabs runs its consumer music app, ElevenMusic, separately from its credit-based platform. When it launched Music v2.5 on September 11, 2026, its announcement said: "On the Free plan you get five lossless downloads a day, and you can use what you make commercially as long as you credit ElevenMusic. On Pro, you get 400 lossless downloads per month." Five a day is about 150 in a 30-day month, more than seven times Suno Pro's 20, for $0.

ElevenMusic Pro costs $9.99 a month or $95.90 a year in the App Store. At 400 tracks a month that is 2.5 cents a song, 2 cents on yearly billing. One catch: the ElevenLabs help center describes the same Pro plan as "400 tracks per month" with "HQ WAV downloads (10 per month)". If you need studio WAV files rather than the lossless downloads in the announcement, check which number your account shows before you plan a month of releases around it.

5. Pay by the minute and a song costs about 50 cents again

The main ElevenLabs platform, where creators also make voiceovers and sound effects, does not sell songs. It sells credits, and its pricing FAQ lists Eleven Music at "900 credits per minute." Starter is $6 a month for 30,000 credits, about 33 minutes of music, and Creator is $22 for 121,000 credits, about 134 minutes. A 3-minute song takes 2,700 credits: 54 cents on Starter, 49 cents on Creator.

That lands within a cent or four of a Suno download, with two differences. There is no separate download cap, because the credits are the limit, and unused credits roll over for up to two months while you stay subscribed. Music commercial use starts on Starter; the free plan's 10,000 credits are for trying it out. Short cues are where per-minute pricing wins: a 30-second intro sting is 450 credits, about 9 cents on Starter.

6. Background-music apps price by the download, and the license changes with the plan

Three apps aimed at video creators work differently. Stable Audio sells "full-mix generations" of any length up to 6 minutes: Solo is $12 for 660 credits, "About 165 full-mix generations", 4 credits each, about 7 cents a track. Every Stable Audio plan carries a commercial license, including the free one (50 credits, about 12 generations).

AIVA counts downloads, and prices them in euros plus VAT. Standard is €15 a month (€11 on yearly billing) for 15 downloads, €1 each, but AIVA keeps the copyright and you can monetize only on "Youtube, Twitch, Tik Tok and Instagram." Pro is €49 (€33 yearly) for 300 downloads, 16 cents each (11 cents yearly), and the copyright is yours. Soundraw skips per-song pricing altogether: its Creator plan has "Unlimited Monthly Track Downloads" for background music, on sale at $12.99 a month (normally $19.99) or $11.04 a month billed yearly.

7. Only two free plans give you a song you can use commercially

Every app here has a free way in, but most free plans are for listening. Suno Free makes 10 songs a day with "No commercial rights", and new accounts get no monthly downloads. Udio Free downloads nothing. AIVA Free gives 3 downloads a month, but the copyright stays with AIVA, there is "No monetization" and you must credit AIVA. On the ElevenLabs platform, music commercial use starts with the paid Starter plan.

The two exceptions are Stable Audio, whose free plan includes a commercial license on about 12 tracks a month, and ElevenMusic, whose free plan allows five lossless downloads a day for commercial use as long as you credit ElevenMusic. For a creator who needs a few tracks a month for social videos, either can mean paying nothing.

8. Three of 11 apps give you no way to work out what a song costs

We could put a price on a song for 8 of the 11 apps. The other three do not publish one we could read. Google's Gemini app makes tracks up to three minutes with Lyria 3.5, but its limits page moved to compute-based limits that refresh every five hours up to a weekly cap, and says only that media generation will "consume more of your usage." There is no track count per plan. Adobe's Firefly Generate Music page says free accounts get "free daily generations" and paid plans get "higher-volume access", but not how many credits a track uses, and Adobe's help center refused our requests.

Beatoven.ai's homepage links to a pricing page that returns "Page Not Found". Mureka's homepage pricing link returns a 404 too; its plans load at /subscribe instead. Soundraw shows prices in the visitor's local currency, so a Canadian reader sees different numbers than an American one, and the USD prices above come from the plan data behind its page.

9. Yearly billing takes 15% to 33% off

Suno, Udio and Mureka all take 20% off for yearly billing ($96 instead of $120, $288 instead of $360), which brings a Suno download from 50 to 40 cents. ElevenLabs bills a year at "monthly price × 10", two months free, or about 17%. ElevenMusic's $95.90 a year is 20% off twelve months at $9.99. AIVA's yearly discount is 26% on Standard and 33% on Pro. Soundraw's Creator plan is $11.04 a month billed yearly against $12.99 monthly, 15% less, while both prices are on sale. Stable Audio lists monthly prices only.

Trend Analysis

Rising: downloads as the thing you pay for. Suno's September caps, ElevenMusic's daily downloads and AIVA's per-download plans all price the file, not the generation. Making songs is close to free everywhere; taking them away is where the plans differ.

Rising: label-licensed walled gardens. Udio disabled downloads as part of its UMG partnership, and ElevenMusic's announcement says "Downloads are blocked on tracks that reference other artists' songs." Expect more music apps where some songs can be streamed in the app but never exported.

Stable: $10 and $30 as the price points. Suno, Udio and Mureka all sell at $10 and $30, with ElevenMusic at $9.99. Competition is moving to what the plan includes, not the sticker.

Declining: published per-song prices. Google's switch to compute-based limits and Adobe's missing credit rate mean the two biggest companies in this list give no per-track number at all.

Predictions

Suno publishes a price for extra downloads, or raises the caps, by mid-2027. A 25-to-1 gap between songs made and songs kept is the first thing a comparison shows, and Mureka sells the same plan without it.

At least one more music app adds a monthly download cap in the next six months. Suno's caps arrived with its new terms on September 3, and Udio's deal with Universal Music Group ended its downloads altogether.

ElevenMusic's Pro download figure gets corrected in one of its two places. A help center saying 10 HQ WAV files and a launch post saying 400 lossless downloads cannot both describe the same plan for long.

Udio does not restore general downloads before its licensed platform launches. Its help center has said downloads are disabled since February 2026, and the UMG partnership is built around keeping songs inside the service.

What This Means for Creators

If you make music for your own videos and podcasts: start on a free plan that allows commercial use. ElevenMusic Free (credit ElevenMusic) and Stable Audio Free cover a few tracks a month at $0. Move to Mureka Pro or ElevenMusic Pro at about $10 when you need more than that.

If you release songs on Spotify and Apple Music: count the songs you plan to release, not the songs you plan to make. Twenty releases a month fits Suno Pro at 50 cents each; more than that, Premier costs the same per song and adds Suno Studio. Read the distribution rules in our guide to AI music on Deezer, Spotify and Tidal before you pick.

If you need short cues, stings and intros: pay by the minute. On ElevenLabs Starter a 30-second cue is about 9 cents, and the same credits make your voiceover.

If you need background music with clear rights: Soundraw's flat fee or AIVA Pro, where the copyright is yours, are simpler than generating vocal songs. Avoid AIVA Standard if you plan to monetize anywhere beyond YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and Instagram.

If you are on Udio: listen and share there, and make anything you need as a file somewhere else.

Full Data

Cost to make a song is the plan price divided by the songs its credits buy, using each vendor's own count (Suno and Mureka state songs per plan; Udio 2 credits per 130-second song; Stable Audio "about" N generations; ElevenLabs 900 credits per minute, for a 3-minute song). Cost to keep a song is the plan price divided by its monthly downloads where downloads are capped, and the same as the cost to make one where they are not. Udio counts each of the two songs a Create returns as a song. ElevenMusic's download figure is from its September 11 announcement; its help center says 10 HQ WAV downloads. AIVA prices are in euros plus VAT, and Soundraw's are sale prices in USD. We did not subscribe to any plan; every figure is the vendor's published number.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to make a song with AI?

Under 3 cents on most music apps. Suno Pro and Mureka Pro make up to 500 songs for $10 (2 cents each), Udio Standard about 1,200 for $10, and ElevenMusic Pro 400 for $9.99. Keeping the song as a file is what varies: 50 cents a download on Suno, nothing extra on Mureka.

How many songs can I download on Suno Pro?

Twenty a month on Pro and 60 on Premier, since September 3, 2026. Downloads do not depend on how many songs you make, and Suno sells extra downloads without publishing their price.

Can I download songs from Udio?

No. Udio's help center says downloading of audio, video and stems has been disabled since its partnership with Universal Music Group. You can make, play and share songs inside Udio only.

What is the cheapest AI music generator for commercial use?

Free: ElevenMusic (five lossless downloads a day, credit ElevenMusic) and Stable Audio (about 12 tracks a month). Paid: Mureka Pro at $10 for up to 500 songs with unlimited downloads, about 2 cents a kept song.

Is Suno's free plan good for YouTube videos?

Not for monetized videos. Suno Free has no commercial rights and no monthly downloads for accounts created on or after September 3, 2026, and Suno says trial downloads are not eligible for commercial use.

How much does ElevenLabs music cost per minute?

Eleven Music uses 900 credits a minute. That is about 18 cents a minute on the $6 Starter plan and 16 cents on the $22 Creator plan, so a 3-minute song costs about 49 to 54 cents.

This research was produced by Creative AI News.

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