Which AI music generator is cheapest in September 2026?

Per track, Google's Lyria 3.5 at $0.08 per full song is the cheapest API option — about a quarter of Eleven Music's $0.15 per minute, which works out to $0.30 for a two-minute track. Suno prices by subscription rather than per track: free with 50 daily credits, Pro at $10/month ($8 billed annually) and Premier at $30/month ($24 billed annually), which makes it cheaper than either API at high personal volume and unusable as a programmatic backend.

Which one gives the most control over the output?

Eleven Music. It sets duration exactly in milliseconds via music_length_ms, supports per-section durations through a composition plan, allows section-level edits to sound and lyrics after generation, and accepts a roughly 30-second audio reference to steer style. Lyria 3.5 has no duration parameter and is single-turn — no edits after generation.

Can I use AI-generated music commercially?

Eleven Music states its paid plans are cleared for nearly all commercial uses. Suno grants output ownership on paid plans, while free-tier output is non-commercial. Lyria 3.5 leaves commercial terms to the general Gemini API terms rather than a dedicated music licence. Separately, the US Copyright Office position is that works generated without meaningful human authorship are not themselves copyrightable — ownership from a vendor is not the same as a copyright you can enforce.

Which should I pick for a video or podcast pipeline?

Eleven Music if the audio has to hit exact cut points or you need WAV. Lyria 3.5 if you are generating background scoring at volume and can tolerate approximate lengths and MP3-only output at $0.08 per track. Suno if a human is in the loop choosing and curating tracks rather than a program calling an endpoint.

Quick Answer

Lyria 3.5 vs Eleven Music vs Suno: AI Music Compared

Published: September 7, 2026

The Short Answer

	Lyria 3.5	Eleven Music	Suno
Vendor	Google	ElevenLabs	Suno
Access	Gemini API (`lyria-3.5`, preview)	API	App / subscription
Price	$0.08 per song	$0.15 per minute	$10–$30 / month
Two-min track	$0.08	$0.30	subscription credits
Free tier	❌ none	❌ (paid API)	✅ 50 credits/day
Output format	MP3, 44.1 kHz stereo	MP3 or WAV	MP3
Exact duration	❌ no parameter	✅ `music_length_ms`	❌
Post-gen editing	❌ single-turn	✅ section-level	partial
Audio reference	❌ (image input ✅)	✅ ~30s reference	✅
Commercial terms	general API terms	explicit clearance	paid plans own output
Watermark	SynthID on every track	—	—

The short version: Lyria 3.5 is the cheapest, Eleven Music is the most controllable, and Suno is the best human-facing tool. They are not competing for the same job.

Lyria 3.5 — Cheapest Per Track, Least Control

$0.08 per song · MP3 44.1 kHz stereo · public preview

Google made Lyria 3.5 callable through the Gemini API on September 4, 2026 (the model itself launched inside Flow Music on July 29). It is a latent-diffusion model over temporal audio latents that accepts text and images and returns a full song — verses, choruses, bridges, vocals or instrumental — plus timed lyrics.

The price is genuinely aggressive. $0.08 for a complete track, priced per song rather than per minute, means a two-minute cue costs the same as a forty-second one. At volume — every reel, every episode intro, every product-demo bed — that arithmetic is hard to beat.

⚠️ What you give up:

No duration parameter. Length is “a couple of minutes,” guided by the prompt. Google says exact duration “can be influenced,” not set.
Single-turn generation. No “make the chorus louder.” Re-prompt and regenerate.
MP3 only. No WAV, no stems.
No batch, caching, function calling, structured outputs or Live API.
SynthID watermark on every track.
Commercial use falls under general Gemini API terms, not a music-specific licence.

Google also publishes no numeric benchmarks for it — the model card reports qualitative gains over Lyria 2 on audio fidelity and lyric prompt adherence, and nothing you can put in a table.

Eleven Music — The One That Fits a Real Pipeline

$0.15 per minute · MP3 or WAV · section-level editing

ElevenLabs charges roughly 4x per two-minute track, and the feature list explains why anyone pays it:

Exact duration set in milliseconds via music_length_ms, from 3 seconds to 10 minutes.
Per-section durations through a composition plan — so the intro is 8 seconds because you said 8 seconds.
Section-level edits after generation: change the sound or lyrics of one part without regenerating everything.
~30-second audio reference to steer style toward an existing cue.
WAV output for anyone who has to master or layer the result.
Multilingual, and paid plans are stated as cleared for nearly all commercial uses.

If your audio has to land on a cut, this is the only one of the three that can do it deterministically. In a video pipeline that difference is worth more than $0.22 a track.

Suno — Best Tool, Wrong Shape for Automation

Free / $10 / $30 per month · v5.5 flagship

Suno’s current stable flagship is v5.5, released March 26, 2026, with v4, v4.5, v4.5+ and v5 still selectable on paid plans; the free tier runs v4.5-all. Pricing is free with 50 daily credits, Pro at $10/month ($8 billed annually) and Premier at $30/month ($24 billed annually).

For a human sitting down to make music, Suno is the most pleasant of the three — fast generation, a deep back catalogue of model versions to pick from, and a genuinely usable free tier for experimentation.

⚠️ But it is a product, not a backend. If you need a programmatic endpoint that a pipeline calls a thousand times a month, subscription credits and a web app are the wrong shape. Note also the licensing split: paid-plan users own their output; free-tier output is non-commercial.

The Licensing Trap Nobody Reads

All three vendors will tell you something reassuring about rights. None of them can give you the thing people assume they are buying.

The US Copyright Office position is that works generated without meaningful human authorship are not copyrightable. A vendor granting you ownership of an output is a contractual promise between you and that vendor — it is not a registrable copyright you can enforce against a third party who copies your track.

Practical reading: for background scoring, stings and beds, this rarely matters. For anything that is itself the product — a released single, a licensed sync — get actual legal advice, and expect meaningful human authorship to be part of the answer.

How to Choose

If you need…	Pick
Cheapest full tracks at volume	Lyria 3.5 ($0.08/song)
Audio that hits exact cut points	Eleven Music (`music_length_ms`)
WAV or masterable output	Eleven Music
To revise one section after generating	Eleven Music
Image-conditioned generation	Lyria 3.5 (image input)
A human-in-the-loop creative tool	Suno (v5.5)
A free tier to experiment on	Suno (50 credits/day)
Explicit commercial clearance	Eleven Music paid plans

The default recommendation: use Lyria 3.5 if you are generating a lot of approximate background music cheaply, and Eleven Music the moment duration, format or revision control becomes a requirement. Suno if a person is choosing the take.

Last verified: September 7, 2026.