All four tools can generate music from a prompt. What separates them is what you are legally allowed to do with the result — and the answers are opposites. One bars commercial use on every plan and won't even let you download the file. Another licenses its free plan. This guide compares the license first, and the price second.
Pro, billed annually ($10/mo monthly). Premier is $24/mo billed annually ($30 monthly).
Standard, billed annually ($10/mo monthly). Pro is $24/mo billed annually ($30 monthly).
Creator tier, priced by download minutes. Higher tiers run $10–$20/mo; pay-as-you-go is $3/minute. See the pricing note below — figures vary between vendor pages.
Solo plan. Free plan is $0 with 50 credits/month. Monthly billing only — no annual toggle on the pricing page.
| Suno | Udio | Beatoven.ai | Stable Audio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Creators releasing full songs with vocals | Making and sharing songs inside Udio — personal use | Video, podcast and game creators who need background music | Producers who need instrumentals, beds and sound effects |
| What it generates | Full songs: vocals, lyrics, arrangement | Full songs: vocals, lyrics, arrangement | Instrumental background tracks and sound effects, fitted to your content | Instrumental music and sound effects only — no vocals |
| Use in monetized video / podcasts / ads | Yes — on Pro / Premier, for songs downloaded within your allowance | No — barred on every plan under current terms | Yes — paid downloads are licensed for use inside content | Yes — per current pricing / license pages (see note) |
| Release the track itself (Spotify, Apple Music, sale) | Yes — on Pro / Premier, for downloaded songs | No — posting output to streaming / UGC platforms is prohibited | No — license covers use inside content, not standalone distribution or resale | Yes — the vendor's explainer says you own the audio and can distribute and commercialize it |
| Free plan: commercial use? | No — personal, non-commercial only, permanently for those songs | No — personal, non-commercial only | No — trial / free use is personal only | Yes, per latest check — current pricing FAQ says every plan including Free carries a commercial license; earlier sources said non-commercial, so confirm on the live page |
| Downloads | Paid plans: 20 downloads/mo (Pro), 60/mo (Premier); extra downloads priced separately. No download allowance on Free | Disabled for all users since 30 October 2025 — share via udio.com links only | Metered in minutes: generation is broad, paid downloads are capped by your minute allowance | No download cap stated for generated output on the hosted app; open weights run locally |
| Paid plans from | Pro $10/mo ($8 billed annually) · Premier $30/mo ($24 billed annually) | Standard $10/mo ($8 billed annually) · Pro $30/mo ($24 billed annually) | From $6/mo for 15 download minutes; higher tiers $10–$20/mo for 30–60 minutes; $3/min pay-as-you-go | Solo $12/mo · Session $30/mo · Producer $90/mo · Studio $199/mo (monthly only) |
| Generation allowance | Free: 50 credits/day. Pro: 2,500 credits/mo (about 500 songs). Premier: 10,000/mo (about 2,000 songs) | Free: 10 credits/day, 100/mo cap. Standard: 2,400/mo. Pro: 6,000/mo | Unlimited generations on paid plans; what you can take out is limited by download minutes | Free: 50 credits/mo. Solo: 660 · Session: 1,800 · Producer: 6,000 · Studio: 14,000 credits/mo (a full mix costs 4 credits per the vendor guide) |
| Who holds the rights? | Suno assigns its rights in the output to Pro / Premier subscribers. That is a commercial-use grant, not a promise of copyright — purely AI-generated work may not be registrable | Udio and/or its licensors own the output under the current transition terms | Beatoven.ai retains ownership of the music; you receive a non-exclusive, perpetual license for your content | Terms assign the vendor's rights in your outputs to you, "to the extent permitted by applicable law"; the Community License frames ownership below $1M annual revenue |
| After you cancel | Rights in songs you already downloaded are stated to survive cancellation or downgrade | There are no commercial rights to survive — personal use only throughout | The license on tracks you already downloaded is perpetual — published content stays licensed | Vendor FAQ (for paid plans) says generated audio stays covered after cancellation — confirm the current wording at signup |
| Trade-off to know | The download cap, not the credit count, is your real monthly output of releasable songs | Paying buys credits and features. It does not buy downloads or rights — the most common expensive misunderstanding in this category | Brilliant fit for BGM, wrong tool for releasing music: the same license that clears your video forbids standalone distribution | No vocals, ever — if your project needs a singer, this is a sound-design tool, not a song tool. Free-plan license wording has changed over time |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors and checked in November 2026. Beatoven.ai's own pricing has appeared in two different shapes across its pages (a $6 / 15-minute entry and a $10 / 30-minute entry), and its dedicated pricing page was reported unavailable at points in autumn 2026 — treat its figures as a range and confirm inside the app before subscribing. Stable Audio's free-plan license is the one cell in this table where sources genuinely disagree: captures earlier in 2026 described the free plan as non-commercial, while the vendor's pricing FAQ as checked in late October and November 2026 states that every plan, free included, comes with a commercial license. We publish the latest reading and flag it — check the live pricing page before you rely on a free track commercially. Plans and terms in this category change fast; always confirm on the vendor's site before you buy or release.
Vendor pages advertise how many songs you can generate. Your budget should be divided by how many you can take out with rights. Those are different numbers, and the gap is the whole story of this category. The arithmetic below uses only the published prices and allowances in the table above.
| Plan | Headline generation | What you can commercially take out | Effective cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suno Pro ($8/mo billed annually) | ~500 songs/mo (2,500 credits) | 20 downloaded songs/mo | $0.40 per releasable song ($10 ÷ 20 = $0.50 on monthly billing) |
| Suno Premier ($24/mo billed annually) | ~2,000 songs/mo (10,000 credits) | 60 downloaded songs/mo | $0.40 per releasable song — the upgrade buys volume and Suno Studio, not a stronger license or a cheaper song |
| Udio (any plan) | Up to 6,000 credits/mo on Pro | 0 songs — downloads and commercial use are barred | Not purchasable at any price under current terms |
| Beatoven.ai Creator (from $6/mo) | Unlimited generations | 15 download minutes/mo (≈ five 3-minute tracks) | $0.40 per minute ≈ $1.20 per 3-minute BGM track; higher tiers work out near $0.33/min (≈ $1.00 per track), while pay-as-you-go at $3/min makes the same track $9 |
| Stable Audio Solo ($12/mo) | 660 credits/mo ≈ 165 full mixes at 4 credits each | No separate download allowance — generated output is the deliverable | ≈ $0.07 per generation; if you keep 1 in 3 takes, ≈ $0.22 per kept track |
| Stable Audio Free ($0) | 50 credits/mo ≈ 12 full mixes | Commercial license included per the vendor's current pricing FAQ | $0 — if the current FAQ wording holds when you sign up, the cheapest commercial instrumental in this comparison is free. Verify it live; see the note above |
A second rule falls out of the same terms: rights are fixed at the moment of creation and download, not by the plan you hold today. A song made on Suno's free plan does not become commercial when you subscribe later — subscribe first, generate second, and download inside the same paid period. Conversely, rights and licenses you properly obtained (a Suno download, a Beatoven.ai licensed download) are stated to survive cancellation, so a one-month subscription used deliberately can clear a whole project's music — as long as the downloads happen while the plan is active.
Suno generates complete songs — vocals, lyrics and arrangement — from a text prompt, and it is the only tool here whose paid plans are built around distributing the result. Pro ($10/mo, $8/mo billed annually) includes 2,500 credits a month (roughly 500 songs), and Premier ($30/mo, $24/mo billed annually) raises that to 10,000 credits and adds the Suno Studio production environment. The licensing line is drawn by tier and, since Suno's terms took effect on 3 September 2026, by the download: commercial use is granted on Pro and Premier for songs you take as a permitted download within your monthly allowance — 20 songs a month on Pro, 60 on Premier, with extra downloads priced separately. Suno assigns its rights in that output to you and takes no royalty share. Two limits deserve plain language. First, songs made on the free plan are personal and non-commercial, and subscribing later does not change their status. Second, a commercial-use grant is not the same as copyright: Suno's own help material notes that music made entirely by AI may not qualify for copyright protection, which depends on your own creative contribution and your jurisdiction.
Udio also generates full songs with vocals, with editing controls — extend, remix, inpainting-style section edits and style settings — that made it a favorite for hands-on song shaping. Its current terms, however, remove it from commercial consideration entirely. After Udio's partnership with Universal Music Group was announced on 29 October 2025, downloading audio, video and stems was disabled for all users, and the terms of service (revised 12 November 2025) limit output to personal, non-commercial use, prohibit downloading copies of your output for any purpose, and prohibit posting output to streaming and user-generated-content platforms — the terms name services such as YouTube, TikTok, Spotify and SoundCloud. Udio and/or its licensors own the output. The plans still exist — Free (10 credits/day, 100/month), Standard ($10/mo, $8/mo billed annually, 2,400 credits), Pro ($30/mo, $24/mo billed annually, 6,000 credits) — but what the money buys is credits and features inside Udio, where songs can be listened to and shared as udio.com links. A next-generation licensed platform has been announced as in development; until it launches and publishes different terms, the rules above are the ones that apply. Many older reviews still describe pre-deal Udio plans as commercially usable — that information is out of date.
Beatoven.ai does one job: instrumental background music and sound effects fitted to your content — by mood, genre, length, or scored against an uploaded video — for videos, podcasts, games, ads and audiobooks. Its model is trained on licensed and contributed material and carries a Fairly Trained certification, with contributing musicians compensated. The pricing unit is unusual and worth understanding: generation on paid plans is unlimited, but you pay for download minutes — entry tiers start at $6/mo for 15 minutes, higher tiers run $10–$20/mo for 30–60 minutes, extra minutes are bought pay-as-you-go at $3/minute, and vendor pages have shown these tiers in differing shapes, so confirm the current grid inside the app. Each paid download comes with a non-exclusive, perpetual commercial license for using the track inside your content, with a license record for the track — which is why published videos stay cleared even if you later cancel. The boundary is equally clear: Beatoven.ai retains ownership of the music, and the license does not cover releasing or selling the track on its own — no standalone distribution to streaming services, no stock-library registration, no resale. Free / trial use is for personal projects and previewing.
Stable Audio, from Stability AI, generates instrumental music and sound effects — beds, transitions, ambience, loops — up to about six minutes, including multi-track-style generation in the current app, plus a DAW plugin and an API. It does not generate vocals or lyrics. The hosted plans are credit-based and monthly-only: Free (50 credits/mo), Solo ($12/mo, 660 credits), Session ($30/mo, 1,800), Producer ($90/mo, 6,000) and Studio ($199/mo, 14,000), with a full mix costing 4 credits per the vendor's guide. Its licensing model is the outlier here in a useful way. The pricing page's FAQ, as checked in November 2026, states that every plan, free included, comes with a commercial license, and Stability's own explainer puts it in ownership terms: under the Community License you own the audio you generate and can distribute and commercialize it, with organizations above $1 million in annual revenue needing an Enterprise license instead. The terms assign the company's rights in your outputs to you to the extent the law permits. Three of the Stable Audio 3.0 models are also published as open weights you can download and run yourself — your generations then never depend on a vendor's export policy at all. Because earlier sources described the free plan as non-commercial, re-check the live pricing page before a commercial release built on free credits.
Background inside your own video, podcast or game → sync-style use. The track itself, released or sold → distribution. These are different rights, and Beatoven.ai is the proof: it clearly allows the first and clearly forbids the second. Udio currently allows neither.
Need a singer and lyrics → Suno (commercially) — Udio makes songs too, but only for personal listening and sharing under current terms. Need beds, cues and effects → Beatoven.ai for content-fitted BGM, Stable Audio for sound-design range and self-hosting.
Divide the price by what carries rights: Suno downloads per month, Beatoven.ai download minutes, Stable Audio credits with no separate export gate. A cheap plan with zero commercial exports — Udio today — is not cheap; it is a different product.
Rights are fixed when you create and download, not retroactively. Subscribe before you generate anything you might sell, download everything you need while the plan is active, and keep the receipts, license records and creation dates — they are your proof if a platform or client ever asks.
It depends entirely on the tool and the plan, which is the point of this guide. Suno: yes, for songs made and downloaded on Pro or Premier. Beatoven.ai: yes — that use is exactly what its paid download license covers. Stable Audio: yes, under its commercial license (all plans per the current pricing FAQ — verify live). Udio: no — its current terms prohibit commercial use and posting output to platforms including YouTube, on every plan. Separately, YouTube's own rules still apply: disclose AI-generated content where the platform requires it, and expect purely mass-produced, template-like uploads to face monetization limits regardless of which tool made them.
Not under Suno's published terms. Rights follow the plan at the time the song was created and downloaded: free-plan songs are licensed for personal, non-commercial use, and a later subscription does not retroactively change that. The reliable workflow is the reverse — subscribe first, then generate and download the songs you intend to release, while the paid plan is active.
For properly obtained rights, cancellation is mostly a non-event — and the details are in each vendor's terms. Suno states that rights in songs you downloaded survive cancellation or downgrade. Beatoven.ai's license on downloaded tracks is perpetual, so published content stays licensed. Stability's FAQ for paid Stable Audio plans says generated audio remains covered after cancellation. Udio is the exception that proves the rule: there were no commercial rights to begin with, on any plan.
Usually you hold a license or an assignment of whatever rights the vendor has — which is not always the same as owning a registrable copyright. Suno and Stability assign their rights in the output to you, Beatoven.ai keeps ownership and licenses the music to you, and Udio's licensors own its output. On top of that, purely AI-generated material may not qualify for copyright protection at all in some jurisdictions; your own lyrics, arrangement and editing are what can change that. This page summarizes published vendor terms — it is not legal advice, and a release with real money at stake deserves a lawyer's read of the current terms.
Because "Suno alternative" is one of the most-searched phrases in this category, and most comparison pages still describe Udio's pre-October-2025 terms. A creator who pays for Udio Pro today expecting downloads and commercial rights — as older reviews promise — gets neither. Documenting that gap, from Udio's own current terms, is more useful than leaving the product out and letting readers find the old information instead.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published pricing, terms and help pages, not from hands-on testing. Judgments like "the download cap is the real limit" are arithmetic and contract reading, shown next to the numbers and clauses they come from, so you can verify every claim on the vendor's own site. Where sources disagreed — Stable Audio's free-plan license, Beatoven.ai's price grid — we said so in the table instead of picking a number quietly.