Best AI for generating music
For writing a song, Suno leads today and sings above everything else on both music leaderboards. But there is a second question no comparison page asks: does the file reach you at the end. Udio switched downloads off entirely in October 2025, and Suno hands over between twenty and sixty files a month.
- five candidates, four ranked
- numbers from two leaderboards
- a column for the file
Last checked: This is a reference page. It is re-checked against the vendor sources and updated when a new version ships. What changed
Where each tool's score comes from
The ring below is the same set of weights printed in the table headers further down.
- Quality with vocals 30
- Quality instrumental 20
- Getting the file 20
- Track length 10
- Cheapest paid plan 10
- Access from Iran 10
We chose these weights, and that is the only judgment call in the table. Weight them differently and the order changes.
The ranking today, from what was published and what was voted on
The first two columns come from the Artificial Analysis music boards, which collect human votes, and the rest from the vendors own documentation. An empty cell means no figure was published, not that the figure is zero.
| Rank | Tool | Score | Quality with vocals 30 | Quality instrumental 20 | Getting the file 20 | Track length 10 | Cheapest paid plan 10 | Access from Iran 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Suno Current pick | 66.7 | 1,171 Source: artificialanalysis.ai | 1,188 Source: artificialanalysis.ai | 1/3 | 480 seconds Source: help.suno.com | $8 per month Source: suno.com | not checked / no working route |
| 2 | Eleven Music | 62.5 | 1,069 Source: artificialanalysis.ai | 1,063 Source: artificialanalysis.ai | 2/3 | 300 seconds Source: elevenlabs.io | $5 per month Source: elevenlabs.io | blocked / no working route |
| 3 | Mureka | 48.3 | 1,162 Source: artificialanalysis.ai | 1,184 Source: artificialanalysis.ai | not verified | not verified | not verified | not verified |
| 4 | Udio | 0.0 | 967 Source: artificialanalysis.ai | 954 Source: artificialanalysis.ai | 0/3 | 130 seconds Source: help.udio.com | not verified | not verified |
An empty cell means we could not verify that number, not that the tool scored zero.
Behind each number
Every judged score in this table carries a written reason, and the Iran column says how it was checked. Those two are open here. The measurement trail behind each number, which row of which leaderboard and on how many votes, opens under the model it belongs to.
1 Suno
Getting the file 1/3 Downloads exist but are capped per month: twenty songs on Pro and sixty on Premier, and none at all on the free plan, all from the date they print as 9/3/26
Access from Iran not checked / no working route Suno publishes no supported-countries list and we have run no network test from inside Iran, so the reachability column reads as unknown. What we did read is the export-control clause in their own terms: they state that Suno is headquartered in the United States and that compliance with the law of your jurisdiction is entirely your responsibility. Payment is by international card only.
Measurement trail (2)
Quality with vocals 1,171 The Suno V5.5 row, first on the vocals board with 9,982 samples, and the model the paid plans get. The free plan runs v4.5-all, whose row is 1,089
Quality instrumental 1,188 The Suno V5.5 row, first on the instrumental board with 5,995 samples, though only four points ahead of Mureka V9 and both confidence intervals cover that gap
2 Eleven Music
Getting the file 2/3 The file comes back from the app and from the API with no monthly song cap; consumption is metered in credits instead, at 900 per minute, and nothing in the documentation offers separated stems
Access from Iran blocked / no working route The only tool in this category whose vendor writes the word Iran. The export-control clause in the ElevenLabs terms has the user warrant that they are not located in a country under US sanctions, and it names Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria and the annexed regions of Ukraine. That is a document, not a network test; we have measured nothing from inside Iran.
Measurement trail (2)
Quality with vocals 1,069 The Eleven Music v2 row, ninth of fifteen on the vocals board, 4,838 samples; the older model sits in its own lower row as Eleven Music
Quality instrumental 1,063 The Eleven Music v2 row, eighth of eighteen on the instrumental board, 3,489 samples, the smallest sample count among the candidates in this table
3 Mureka
Measurement trail (2)
Quality with vocals 1,162 The Mureka V9 row on the vocals board, second place, 2,494 samples, a 16 point confidence interval which is the widest on that board
Quality instrumental 1,184 The Mureka V9 row on the instrumental board, second by four points behind Suno, 2,421 samples
4 Udio
Getting the file 0/3 Downloading of audio, video and stems has been disabled since 29 October 2025 and Udio own help centre says so; the song gets made but no file leaves the service
Measurement trail (2)
Quality with vocals 967 The Udio v1.5 Allegro row, fourteenth of the fifteen rows on the vocals board, 8,652 samples
Quality instrumental 954 The Udio v1.5 Allegro row, sixteenth of the eighteen rows on the instrumental board, 4,708 samples
Not enough verified data to rank
These are real tools we track, but more than half of their criteria have no verified number yet, so ranking them would be a guess.
How this ranking is calculated
Every criterion below has a weight and a source. Change a weight and the whole table recomputes. There is no hand-placed position anywhere in this hub.
| Criterion | Weight | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Quality with vocals | 30 | Music Arena (Vocals)Elo on the Artificial Analysis vocals board, from blind pairwise listening. It is the only place these tools are scored on how they sound; Arena has no music board at all |
| Quality instrumental | 20 | Music Arena (Instrumental)The same method on instrumental music. Kept separate because it is a different job and the order really differs: Lyria is fifth here and eighth there |
| Getting the file | 20 | defined scale, with a written reason per assignmentThe only ordinal criterion in this table: from zero, no download at all, to three, uncapped download in several formats plus separated stems on every plan. Each step is set from the vendor own document |
| Track length | 10 | vendor stated specificationThe longest track produced in one generation, from the vendor own guide. Nothing at all is published for Flow Music |
| Cheapest paid plan | 10 | vendor stated specificationLower is better. The basis is the monthly rate when billed annually, because all three vendors that publish a price headline that one. Udio publishes none |
| Access from Iran | 10 | our access column, with its method statedOnly one candidate has a document in this column. An empty cell means we have read nothing and are not guessing |
Why Suno leads
Because in both places where its sound has been measured it stands above the rest: 1,171 with vocals and 1,188 instrumental, against 1,069 and 1,063 for Eleven Music and 967 and 954 for Udio. It also makes the longest track, eight minutes in one generation.
One caveat we add ourselves, and a Suno partisan will not enjoy it: on the instrumental board it is four points ahead of Mureka while the two confidence intervals are nine and sixteen points wide. Those two are effectively level, and first place in that column is not a strong claim. On vocals the gap is nine points, which is firmer.
The question nobody else asks
We built the delivery column because researching this category turned up something we had seen in no comparison anywhere: on 29 October 2025, alongside its Universal deal, Udio disabled downloading of audio, video and stems, and said so itself. Its paid subscription generates songs and hands you no file.
Suno caps too, but differently: twenty downloads a month on Pro and sixty on Premier, while those same plans hand out 2,500 and 10,000 credits. You generate hundreds of times and you take away sixty. At the top of that column sits Google Flow Music, which offers mp3, wav and m4a on all four plans including the free one, and separated stems with them.
And because normalisation runs across every candidate before the ranked ones are separated out, the top of that column was set by the very tool that carries no rank.
Why Google Flow Music is unranked
Because two of the six columns are empty for it and their combined weight is more than half the table. Google nowhere says how long a Flow Music song can run, and the model its home page announces is Lyria 3.5, which has no row on any leaderboard.
We could have borrowed the Lyria 3 Pro figure. We did not, because that is the API model and this is the consumer product, and we refused the same borrowing in the chat category for a sibling model. If Google publishes a track length tomorrow, or Lyria 3.5 appears on a board, this tool probably lands near the top. Today it simply lacks the data.
Mureka, which nobody outside the boards talks about
It is second on both boards, above Lyria, Eleven Music and Udio. And we could not read a single number from the company itself: mureka.ai has no pricing page and its API platform returns an empty body. Even the version name, V9, comes from the leaderboard rather than from Mureka. So it loses half the weight of the table and still finishes third.
We wrote it up because dropping it quietly would have been easier and wrong. If you read a comparison that has no Mureka in it, it probably lists what everyone lists.
Two things deliberately missing from the table
First, monthly output volume. Suno grants 2,500 and 10,000 credits without publishing what a song costs in credits; Udio grants 2,400 and 6,000 and does publish its rate, two credits for a 130 second song; Flow Music annotates 3,000 credits as roughly 600 songs; Eleven Music charges 900 credits per minute. Four different units that do not convert. A column holding four unrelated numbers is not a column.
Second, commercial rights. Eleven Music is the most explicit and says the output is cleared for nearly all commercial uses; Suno grants commercial rights on paid plans only; for Udio and Flow Music we found nothing. A column with three empty cells only penalises whoever published less. It belongs in the prose, not in the table.
Persian
None of these five publishes the list of languages it sings in. Eleven Music writes English, Spanish, German, Japanese and more, which is not a list, and Suno own site is translated into fourteen languages with Persian not among them. So which one sings Persian best is something we do not know and will not claim. If you need Persian output, trying it on a free plan is the only route we have, and it is the one we suggest.
When not to take our first pick
- If you want a Persian lyric with correct pronunciation, this table has no answer: no vendor publishes a language list.
- If you want music generated inside your own software, skip this table and take the API model, whose price per song is explicit.
- If all you need is one instrumental bed under a video, the cheapest row will do and the top of the table is money wasted.
Where it falls short
- Sound quality comes from a human voting board rather than our own testing; we have not run these five on one prompt.
- Udio price cell is empty because its pricing page will not render for our server.
- Google Flow Music carries no rank because neither its track length nor a board row for its model exists.
- Mureka loses half the weight of the table because it publishes no number we can read.
- The Iran column has a document for one candidate only; the rest read as unknown.
- Monthly output volume and commercial rights have no columns, for the reasons argued above.
Our take
For a song that is itself the deliverable, Suno, and count how many finished files you need per month before you subscribe. For music under video and podcasts, where you may have to prove later that you had the right, Eleven Music has the cleanest rights position. And if the file and separated stems matter most, Flow Music is the only tool that gives you those on a free plan, even though there is still nothing to score it with.
Questions people actually ask
What is the best AI music generator
Suno, on the evidence of the two human voting boards that measure these tools. But if your work is handing files to a client, look at its monthly download cap before you subscribe.
Why can you not download from Udio
Because on 29 October 2025, alongside the Universal Music Group deal, downloading of audio, video and stems was disabled. Udio own help centre says so.
Which AI makes music in Persian
None of these five publishes the languages it sings in, so we neither claim they do nor claim they do not. The only route is trying it on a free plan.
What is the cheapest way to start
Flow Music and Eleven Music both start around six dollars a month. The difference: the ElevenLabs free plan makes no music at all, while Flow Music allows downloads even on its free plan.
If what you need is a publishable video with its sound and music rather than a raw file, that is the work in
our motion graphics service