Create AI music for free: Suno and the alternatives

Creating AI music for free is easier than ever in 2026, as long as you have no plans for the finished song. Suno gives you 50 credits every day, which is enough for around ten songs. Since September 3, however, users on the free plan can only download seven of them in total. Not per month. In total.

I produce cyberpunk metalcore with EDM influences with my band Siren Remains, and Suno has become a fixed part of the workflow. So I’m taking an especially close look at the fine print right now.

Suno is free as long as the song stays on Suno

Little has changed about the scope of the free plan, but what you’re allowed to do with the songs has changed considerably. Since September 3, every download counts against a quota: seven in total on the Free plan, 20 per month on Pro, and 60 on Premier. This explicitly also applies to songs created before that date. You can still play and share your library without limits.

There’s another point that many people only notice when it’s too late. Songs created on the Free plan cannot be used commercially retroactively, even after upgrading. If you land a hit on the free plan, then you landed it on the free plan. Pro costs $10 per month, Premier costs $30, and paying annually is 20 percent cheaper in each case.

Who actually owns a Suno song?

If you pay for Pro, you own the song, one might think. Unfortunately, no. Until the end of 2025, Suno’s documentation said exactly that, but after the settlement with Warner Music in November 2025, the wording was removed. Today, it says that despite having commercial usage rights, you are generally not the owner because the output was generated by Suno.

That’s less dramatic than it sounds. You can still publish and sell songs from a paid plan. But you still can’t sleep completely soundly from a legal perspective, because according to the current state of affairs, UMG and Sony are still suing Suno. Suno itself is focusing on cooperation: Version 6 was announced on September 9, developed jointly with Warner, BMG, and Believe.

The alternatives at a glance

Udio is a sketchbook with a lock on it

In October 2025, Udio became the first AI music platform to sign a licensing agreement with Universal, followed by Warner in November. The free plan provides 100 credits per month, and when it comes to the mix, Udio is even considered cleaner than Suno. Sounds like the perfect candidate.

Except you can’t get the song out of there. Downloads and commercial use are unavailable under the current rules. That makes Udio great for trying out a direction. The finished track then has to be created somewhere else.

ElevenLabs Music is the safest choice for anything commercial

ElevenLabs, originally known for AI voices, offers the clearest commercial licensing of the major platforms with Eleven Music, because it was developed jointly with labels and publishers rather than only after a legal dispute. It’s also practical that individual sections of a song can be regenerated instead of rolling the dice on the entire track every time. For podcast intros, commercials, or client projects, this is where I would start.

If you really want freedom, calculate it yourself

The only solution without quotas, download limits, and licensing questions is an open model running on your own computer. ACE-Step is Open Source and free, and many producers use it for individual instrumental or vocal tracks. It doesn’t match Suno’s vocal quality, and without a graphics card and some willingness to tinker, it won’t work. In return, the result belongs to you without any ifs or buts.

The prompt does at most half the work

At first, I thought a good prompt was the whole secret. It wasn’t. At Siren Remains, every Suno track now goes through a custom mastering pipeline in Python before it ends up anywhere, because although the raw version sounds impressive, it quickly comes across as thin next to real productions. By the way, if you type in “Cyberpunk Metalcore,” you occasionally get something that sounds more like bumper cars at a fairground. Describing the genre, tempo, instruments, and mood individually helps more than any adjective.

Siren Remains’ music is created with AI, but the world behind it isn’t: I wrote the band’s story as a novel years ago, and no machine did that for me. Maybe that’s precisely the division of labor that is beginning to settle into place. If you’re interested in the music and the story behind it, feel free to follow Siren Remains on Instagram.

Has anyone here already published an AI song on Spotify or YouTube? I’d be interested to know which plan it was created with and whether there were any issues with Content ID.