The arena · AI music generator review
ElevenLabs Music
by ElevenLabs
Licensed AI music cleared for commercial use from $6/month, with a real API, stem separation and tracks up to 5 minutes
From $6/mo
Music bills at 900 credits/minute from the shared ElevenLabs credit pool: Free $0 (10,000 credits, no commercial use), Starter $6/month (30,000 credits, music commercial use included), Creator $22/month (121,000 credits, $11 first month), Pro $99 (600,000); annual billing gives 2 months free; June 2026 cuts lowered music costs up to 50% on API. Verified against elevenlabs.io/pricing 2026-07.
ElevenLabs
10,000 credits/month (about 11 min of music), no commercial use
5 min (10 min via composition plans)
Yes
Yes
Yes
What is ElevenLabs Music?
Eleven Music is ElevenLabs' text-to-music product, launched in August 2025 with licensing deals covering Merlin's 30,000 indie labels and Kobalt, and upgraded to the Music v2 model on 2026-06-11. It generates commercially cleared tracks with vocals or instrumentals up to 5 minutes (10 via composition plans), with stem separation, section inpainting and a developer API inside the wider ElevenLabs audio suite.
ElevenLabs Music pros & cons
Pros
- Cleanest licensing story of the big three: trained on licensed music via Merlin and Kobalt opt-in deals, with outputs cleared for broad commercial use on every paid plan from $6/month
- Only one of the trio with a real developer API: music generation, composition plans (structured multi-section tracks up to 10 minutes) and stem separation endpoints, with June 2026 price cuts up to 50% on the API
- Stem separation built in: 2 stems at 0.5x generation cost, 4 stems at 1x, available in both UI and API
- Music v2 (June 2026) added style shifts inside a single track, embedded sound effects and section-level inpainting, a genuine editing edge over regenerate-and-pray rivals
- 44.1 kHz output with pro formats (MP3 up to 192 kbps, PCM up to 48 kHz), and paid-plan credits roll over up to 2 months (3x monthly cap)
- One credit pool across the whole ElevenLabs suite: combine music with the market-leading TTS, SFX and dubbing on a single subscription
Cons
- Credit math bites at scale: music costs 900 credits per minute, so the free plan yields about 11 minutes a month and the $6 Starter about 33 minutes, far from Suno's ~500 songs at $10
- Songcraft and vocals trail Suno v5.5 for radio-style full songs; it shines on functional and background music more than on hits with hooks
- Real usage restrictions: no reselling into commercial music libraries, banned sectors (arms, tobacco, pharma, adult, religious, political), and no artist names, song titles or lyrics as prompts
- 5-minute cap per standard generation (10 via composition plans), below Suno's 8-minute tracks
- Youngest music product of the three (Aug 2025), with a smaller community and fewer shared styles and workflows than Suno
The arena’s verdict
Pick ElevenLabs Music if the music is for something: videos, podcasts, apps, games or any commercial project where clean licensing and an API matter more than chart-ready vocals. At $6/month the Starter plan is the cheapest legally solid commercial entry in AI music, and the v2 inpainting plus stems make it the most editable of the trio. Skip it if you want full radio-style songs with standout vocals, Suno v5.5 is clearly better there, or if you need hours of output monthly, where the 900 credits/minute pricing gets expensive fast. It is also the obvious choice if you already pay for ElevenLabs TTS, since everything draws from one credit pool.
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What the crowd says
“Vocals aren't Suno level but for corporate video music nobody notices, and legal signed off on the licensing in a day.”
“$6/mo with commercial rights for podcast intros is a no brainer. Inpainting v2 fixed the one section I hated without redoing the track.”
“The API + stems made it trivial to pipe custom background beds into our video pipeline. Composition plans are underrated.”
ElevenLabs Music: frequently asked questions
Is ElevenLabs Music free?
ElevenLabs Music offers a free tier (10,000 credits/month (about 11 min of music), no commercial use). Paid plans start at $6/mo.
How much does ElevenLabs Music cost?
ElevenLabs Music starts at $6/mo (freemium). Music bills at 900 credits/minute from the shared ElevenLabs credit pool: Free $0 (10,000 credits, no commercial use), Starter $6/month (30,000 credits, music commercial use included), Creator $22/month (121,000 credits, $11 first month), Pro $99 (600,000); annual billing gives 2 months free; June 2026 cuts lowered music costs up to 50% on API. Verified against elevenlabs.io/pricing 2026-07.