Epidemic Sound, Artlist, Uppbeat and Soundstripe all sell "unlimited music" — but the subscription is not the license. What separates them is the fine print: whether client work is covered, whether ads and broadcast are included, and what happens to videos you already published when you cancel. This guide compares those terms side by side.
Creator plan, billed annually ($119.88/year). Monthly billing is $17.99/mo. 30-day trial.
Music & SFX Social, billed annually. The Pro tiers that cover client work are annual-only.
Free plan with a small download allowance. Essentials is $6.99/mo billed annually ($8.99 monthly).
Personal plan, billed annually ($19.99/mo on monthly billing). Pro is $239/year.
| Epidemic Sound | Artlist | Uppbeat | Soundstripe | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Creators publishing on their own channels, at volume | Video professionals whose client work may reach ads or broadcast | New and budget-conscious creators starting with a free tier | Freelancers mixing subscription work with one-off licensed projects |
| Free option | No free plan — 30-day trial | No free plan | Yes — small download allowance from about 25% of the catalog; a per-video credit code is required | No free plan |
| Entry plan (annual billing) | Creator $9.99/mo ($119.88/yr); $17.99/mo monthly | Music & SFX Social $9.99/mo ($119.88/yr); $14.99/mo monthly | Essentials $6.99/mo ($83.88/yr); $8.99/mo monthly | Personal $119/yr; $19.99/mo monthly |
| Client-work tier (annual billing) | Pro $16.99/mo ($203.88/yr); $39.99/mo monthly | Music Pro $16.58/mo (about $199/yr, music only) or Music & SFX Pro $24.92/mo ($299.04/yr); annual only | Pro $14.99/mo ($179.88/yr); $24.99/mo monthly | Pro $239/yr; $39.99/mo monthly |
| What the entry plan covers | Your own social channels (1 per platform), podcasts and websites, including sponsored posts on your own channels | Your own social channels (1 per platform) plus one podcast — personal use | Your own channels as an individual creator (1 safelisted YouTube channel on Essentials) | Personal and organic social / podcast use, with clearance for 1 YouTube channel |
| Client work (paid work for others) | Pro and above only | Pro tiers only | Pro and above only | Pro and above only |
| Paid digital ads | Pro and above (on your own channels, sponsored posts are already in Creator) | Pro tiers | Pro and above | Pro and above |
| Broadcast TV / OTT / radio / cinema | Not on Creator or Pro — higher sales-led tiers (Pro Plus / Enterprise) | Listed on the Pro tiers (broadcasts and TV) in published plan documents | Not on standard plans — custom license only | Not on self-serve subscriptions — Enterprise, or a single-use All Media license for one project |
| Claim-clearing system | Safelisting: link your channels (and videos) to your account | Clearlist: register channels, individual videos and URLs — editable only while subscribed | Safelist on paid plans (1 / 3 / 10 channels by tier); free downloads use a per-video credit code instead | Auto-clearance for allowlisted channels (1 on Personal, up to 5 on Pro) plus per-video clearance codes for client uploads |
| Catalog (as published) | 55,000+ tracks, 250,000+ SFX | Music, SFX, stems; footage and templates on higher bundles (Max) | Creator-focused music and SFX catalog, plus stock video and motion graphics on Creator tiers and up | 58,000+ tracks, 115,000+ SFX; stock video on Pro Plus |
| Trade-off to know | Monthly billing is expensive: Pro paid monthly for a year costs $479.88 vs $203.88 annually | Pro tiers are annual-only, and coverage is judged by publish date — an edited-but-unpublished video is not covered after expiry | The headline "downloads stay safe forever" comes with a terms clause banning stockpiling tracks for use outside the subscription period — read both before relying on it | Entry-plan naming differs across the vendor's own pages (Personal vs Creator), and broadcast is a custom/Enterprise conversation, not a checkout option |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. Epidemic Sound's pricing page localises prices by country, so the figure you see may differ from the US figures above. Plans and license terms change — always confirm the current price, and the license scope of the exact plan, on the vendor's site before you buy. Nothing in this table is legal advice; for a high-value campaign, check the license document itself.
Monthly sticker prices hide the two numbers that decide value: how many videos you publish, and whether your work is for clients. Both tables below are simple arithmetic on the annual prices above, assuming one track per video. Run your own output through the same division before you choose.
| Plan | Annual cost | Cost per video |
|---|---|---|
| Uppbeat Essentials | $83.88 | about $0.87 |
| Soundstripe Personal | $119 | about $1.24 |
| Epidemic Sound Creator | $119.88 | about $1.25 |
| Artlist Music & SFX Social | $119.88 | about $1.25 |
| Plan | Annual cost | Cost per project |
|---|---|---|
| Uppbeat Pro | $179.88 | about $7.50 |
| Artlist Music Pro (music only) | about $199 | about $8.29 |
| Epidemic Sound Pro | $203.88 | about $8.50 |
| Soundstripe Pro | $239 | about $9.96 |
| Artlist Music & SFX Pro | $299.04 | about $12.46 |
Two conclusions fall out of the arithmetic. First, the honest comparison range for client work is $179.88–$299.04 a year — every entry plan above excludes client work, so pricing a freelance business off a $9.99 headline is pricing it off a license you would not actually hold. Second, subscription versus buying tracks one at a time has a calculable break-even point. Soundstripe publishes single-use licenses from $49 (personal) and $199 (commercial digital use) per track, per project. Against its own Pro subscription at $239 a year, a commercial single-use license is the cheaper route for exactly one project a year — from the second project onward, the subscription wins. The same logic applies everywhere: low, irregular output favours per-track licensing; steady output favours a subscription.
Monthly billing changes the math sharply. Paid monthly for a full year, Epidemic Sound Pro totals $479.88 and Soundstripe Pro $479.88, versus $203.88 and $239 on annual billing. Uppbeat Pro totals $299.88 monthly versus $179.88 annually. If you only need a library for one production month, monthly billing is the flexible option — just do not let it roll.
All four services share one broad rule: work you published while subscribed stays licensed; new work after cancellation is not covered. The differences are in the details — which date counts, what you must register before you leave, and whether a downloaded file itself carries any rights.
| Question | Epidemic Sound | Artlist | Uppbeat | Soundstripe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do published videos stay licensed after you cancel? | Yes — content published and safelisted while subscribed stays cleared and monetisable | Yes — projects completed and published while subscribed keep their license | Published content stays covered; the vendor also markets its download licenses as perpetual (see the stockpiling note below) | Yes — its help centre states licensed projects remain fully licensed, permanently |
| Which date decides coverage? | Publish date, while the subscription is active | Publish date — explicitly not the download date. An edited video you publish only after expiry is not covered | Download-based licensing is the vendor's stated model, within its terms | Whether the project was created and licensed while the subscription was active |
| Can you reuse downloaded tracks in new projects after cancelling? | No — new uploads using its music after cancellation can be claimed and monetised by Epidemic Sound | No — downloaded assets cannot go into new projects after expiry | Not as a stockpile: the User Agreement prohibits downloading content to stockpile it for future use outside the subscription period, whatever the marketing headline suggests | No — previously downloaded music cannot be used in new projects that were not licensed while subscribed; resubscribe or buy a single-use license |
| Must-do before you cancel | Publish everything finished, and safelist every channel and video while you still can | Publish everything finished, and finalise your Clearlist — it cannot be edited after the subscription ends | Keep your license records and credits for published videos; do not build a "for later" folder of downloads | Finish and license any in-progress projects before the end date; keep your proof of license |
Practical rule that follows from all four sets of terms: if you plan to cancel, treat your last subscription month as a publishing deadline, not a downloading deadline. A folder of unused downloads is worth nothing under any of these licenses.
Epidemic Sound is a subscription library of 55,000+ tracks and 250,000+ sound effects, and the vendor states it owns its catalog outright — which is why its license can include public-performance rights without a separate collecting-society royalty for the subscriber. The Creator plan ($9.99/mo billed annually, $17.99/mo monthly) covers social platforms, podcasts and websites for your own content — including sponsored and boosted posts on your own channels — with monetisation for one channel per platform. Pro ($16.99/mo billed annually, $39.99/mo monthly) adds client work and digital ads, and clears three channels per platform. Business ($30/mo billed annually) adds seats for companies. Cinema, TV shows and TV ads sit outside Creator and Pro entirely, in higher sales-led tiers. Claim handling runs through safelisting: you connect your channels to your account so YouTube can recognise the license.
Artlist sells music and sound effects (with footage, templates and AI tools in higher bundles). Music & SFX Social ($9.99/mo billed annually, $14.99/mo monthly) covers one channel per platform and one podcast, for personal content. The Pro tiers are where the published terms widen: Music Pro ($16.58/mo billed annually, music only) and Music & SFX Pro ($24.92/mo billed annually) add client work, paid ads, websites and — unusually at this price — broadcasts and TV, across up to three channels per platform. Clearlist is its claim-clearing registry: you add channels, individual videos and URLs, and it can only be edited while your subscription is active. Coverage is judged by the date a project is published, not downloaded.
Uppbeat is a creator-focused library with a genuine free tier: a small download allowance from about a quarter of the catalog, where each download generates a credit code you paste into that video's description — one code, one video. Paid tiers remove the credit-code workflow in favour of channel safelisting. Essentials ($6.99/mo billed annually, $8.99/mo monthly) gives unlimited music and SFX downloads for your own channels, safelisting one YouTube channel. Creator ($8.99/mo billed annually) adds stock video, motion graphics and LUTs and safelists three channels. Pro ($14.99/mo billed annually, $24.99/mo monthly) is the freelancer tier: client projects and commercial digital use, ten safelisted channels. Business ($34.99/mo, annual billing only) covers teams and organisations. Broadcast TV, VOD, radio and cinema are custom licensing, not a plan feature.
Soundstripe is a Nashville-based library of 58,000+ tracks and 115,000+ sound effects. Personal ($119/year, $19.99/mo monthly) covers personal and organic social and podcast use with auto-clearance for one YouTube channel. Pro ($239/year, $39.99/mo monthly) is the commercial tier: client work, digital ads, stems for every track, workflow tools, and clearance for up to five channels plus unlimited per-video clearance codes for client uploads. Pro Plus ($399/year) adds a large stock-video catalog. Uniquely here, Soundstripe also sells single-use licenses per track — published from $49 (personal), $199 (digital/commercial), $399 (expanded) and $1,249 (all media, including broadcast) — so a one-off project can be licensed without any subscription. Broadcast on a subscription basis is an Enterprise conversation.
Write down your hardest use case first: client delivery, a paid ad, a TV or OTT placement. Then find the cheapest tier whose published terms actually cover it. On every service here, that tier is not the entry plan.
Take the annual price of that tier and divide by the number of videos or projects you will realistically publish in a year. Below roughly two commercial projects a year, per-track single-use licensing (from $199 per project at Soundstripe) can beat any subscription.
Monthly billing for a full year costs up to $276 more than annual on the tiers compared here. Monthly makes sense for one production block — set a cancellation reminder the day you start it.
Whichever you choose, register your channels immediately — safelisting (Epidemic Sound), Clearlist (Artlist), safelist (Uppbeat) or allowlisting (Soundstripe) — and keep your license records with each project. These systems reduce claim friction; no service can promise a claim will never appear, and an unregistered channel is the most common avoidable cause.
No. The tracks remain copyrighted works. Royalty-free describes the payment model: you pay for a license (here, a subscription or a per-track fee) and owe no additional royalty each time the video is played. Use outside your license — the wrong plan, a new project after cancellation, an unlicensed channel — is still unlicensed use.
Not on any of the four. Epidemic Sound's Creator, Artlist's Social, Uppbeat's Essentials/Creator and Soundstripe's Personal plans are all scoped to your own channels and personal or organic use in their published terms. Paid work for a client starts at each service's Pro tier — $179.88 to $299.04 a year on annual billing.
Under all four services' published terms, no — projects published (and, where required, registered) while your subscription was active keep their license after cancellation. What ends is the future: new uploads, new projects and new edits published after expiry are not covered, and on Artlist and Epidemic Sound the deciding date is when the video was published, not when you downloaded the track.
No service can honestly promise that, and none of the four does in its terms. What they provide is a clearing mechanism — safelisting, Clearlist, safelist or allowlist registration, plus license records — that is designed to prevent or resolve claims on licensed uploads. Claims can still appear, for example when a channel was never registered; keep your channel registered and your proof of license saved with each project.
On published self-serve terms, Artlist's Pro tiers list broadcasts and TV. Epidemic Sound places broadcast in higher sales-led tiers, Uppbeat sells it as custom licensing, and Soundstripe routes it to Enterprise — or to its single-use All Media license (from $1,249 per track, with its own term and territory limits) for a one-off project. For a single broadcast job, pricing that single-use route against a year of enterprise subscription is worth doing.
Probably not. Compare the subscription year against per-track licensing: Soundstripe's single-use licenses start at $49 for personal use and $199 for commercial digital use, per track, per project. One project a year is cheaper bought outright; from about two commercial projects a year, a Pro-tier subscription (from $179.88/year) becomes the cheaper structure. Free routes also exist — Uppbeat's free tier and the YouTube Audio Library — with narrower terms.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published pricing, specs and license documents, not from hands-on testing. Catalog counts are the vendors' own published figures. Judgments in this guide are either license-term comparisons you can verify in the documents linked by each vendor, or arithmetic on published prices, shown next to the numbers so you can check it yourself.