Comparison / Verified 19 August 2026
ElevenLabs Music v2 vs Suno in 2026
elevenlabs built the rights story before it built the product, licensing through merlin and kobalt on a 50/50 split. suno built the product first and has been negotiating ever since. as of august 2026 that gives you the cleanest provenance on one side and the highest ceiling on the other.
ElevenLabs Music v2 in Sonura songs mode / Free to start / No credit card
Best rights story
ElevenLabs Music v2
trained only on licensed data through merlin and kobalt, with a 50/50 royalty split and commercial clearance built in from day one.
Best output ceiling
Suno
the most natural vocals in the category, a browser daw, up to 12 stems, and the ecosystem most releases come out of.
Use ElevenLabs here
Sonura
ElevenLabs Music v2 is selectable in songs mode, with stems and a plugin for your DAW on top.
Open it free01 / Spec sheet
Side by side, no marketing
every row below is checkable against a public source, and it is the same table on every page here, so nothing gets quietly reworded to suit an argument.
| Specification | ElevenLabs Music v2ElevenLabs | SunoSuno |
|---|---|---|
| Current model | Music v2 | v5.5 |
| Shipped | May 2026 | 26 March 2026 |
| Longest run | full songs | full songs, extendable in the app |
| Vocals | yes | yes, plus Voices for a reusable voice and custom models trained on your own catalogue |
| Stems | no stem export, but you can inpaint a section or transition between genres | up to 12 stems, but only inside Suno Studio on the top plan |
| Files out | yes | wav, per-clip wav, and midi out of Studio |
| Training data | licensed through Merlin and Kobalt on a 50/50 royalty split | a licensing deal with Warner Music, with other label litigation still unresolved |
| Commercial use | yes, though self-serve plans carve out film, tv, and Studio Games | paid plans only |
| Weights | closed | closed |
| Where it runs | web app and api | web and mobile app |
| Run it in Sonura | yes, pick it in songs mode | no, it only runs inside Suno |
02 / Head to head
Where each one actually wins
Training data
ElevenLabs takes itlicensed only, through Merlin for roughly 30,000 indie labels and Kobalt for publishing, on a 50/50 royalty split with rights holders.
a warner deal, with other label litigation still unresolved. materially better than a year ago, not finished.
Commercial clearance
ElevenLabs takes itcleared for commercial use, but self-serve plans carve out film, tv, and Studio Games. enterprise covers all of it.
commercial rights on paid plans, with the underlying training question still open.
Vocals
Suno takes itgood, and improving fast, but this is not where elevenlabs is beating the field on music.
the strongest pop and r&b vocal delivery available, plus Voices for a reusable voice and custom models on your own catalogue.
Editing what you made
Suno takes itsection inpainting and genre transitions, so you can rewrite eight bars or move between styles inside one track.
Suno Studio: a full browser daw with take lanes, eq, faders, pan, warp markers, and time signatures.
Stems
Suno takes itno stem export. inpainting is the substitute and it is not the same thing.
up to 12 stems, gated behind Suno Studio on the top plan.
Building it into a product
ElevenLabs takes ita proper api from a company whose whole business is audio api, which is why it keeps winning integration work.
built as a consumer product first. good app, and not the obvious choice to wire into your own software.
Where releases come from
Suno takes ita smaller share of released music, and a much larger share of music inside other companies' products.
roughly 90 percent of commercially released tracks in this category in q1 2026.
Predictability
ElevenLabs takes itthe licensing is contractual and written down, which makes the terms boring in the way legal teams like.
suno has said current models get deprecated when the industry-partnered models land, so plan for change.
a tally is not a recommendation. the rows that matter are the ones that touch what you are trying to ship.
03 / The catch
What the feature lists leave out
Read the carve-out before you assume you are covered
"cleared for commercial use" is doing a lot of work in elevenlabs marketing, and it is broadly true. the detail that catches people is that on self-serve plans the clearance excludes film, tv, and Studio Games. enterprise plans cover everything.
so if you are scoring a short, cutting a trailer, or shipping a game, the plan you are probably on is not the plan you need. that is not a gotcha, it is written down, and it is exactly the sort of clause worth finding before the delivery deadline rather than after it.
Licensed is a claim with a paper trail behind it, or it is not
the merlin and kobalt deals matter because they are opt-in partnerships with rights holders who share the revenue on a 50/50 split. that is a real economic arrangement, not a statement of intent, and at a moment when several competitors are in active litigation it is the cleanest provenance in the category.
one honest caveat, since this page is not a sales sheet: opt-in and revenue share operate at the rights holder, label, and publisher level, not per individual artist. that distinction was the subject of an artists' coalition letter in june 2026. it does not undo the licensing, it just means "every artist consented" is a stronger claim than anyone can actually make.
Different companies, different products
suno is a consumer music product that happens to have an api story. elevenlabs is an audio infrastructure company that happens to have a music product. that shows up everywhere: suno has the browser daw, the community, the meta-tag lore, and the release share. elevenlabs has the api, the enterprise contract, and the legal department that already answered your compliance questionnaire.
if you are a musician, that points at suno. if you are putting music inside software you are shipping, it points at elevenlabs. very few people are genuinely choosing between them on sound alone.
04 / Pick one
Which one is yours
Go with ElevenLabs Music v2 if you
- /need licensed training data you can point a legal team at
- /are wiring music generation into your own product through an api
- /want to inpaint a section or transition genres inside one track
- /work at a company that will ask where the training data came from
- /are on, or can move to, an enterprise plan if film, tv, or games are involved
Go with Suno if you
- /want the most convincing vocal available today
- /need a multitrack editor and up to 12 stems without leaving the browser
- /are releasing music rather than shipping software
- /want two years of community prompting knowledge to draw on
- /can live with an unresolved paragraph in the training-data story
05 / In Sonura
Run ElevenLabs Music v2 here
ElevenLabs Music v2 is one of the models you can pick in Sonura songs mode, alongside MiniMax Music 3.0, Stable Audio 3, Google Lyria 3.5. Suno only runs inside Suno, which is the trade a closed platform asks you to make.
so you get the model and the workflow. split any track into stems, work inside Ableton, Logic, and FL Studio through the AU and VST3 plugin, and keep exclusive commercial rights on every paid plan, with no royalty splits.
Models in songs mode
- MiniMax Music 3.0 the newest open-weights song model, and the first you can run on your own hardware end to end.
- Stable Audio 3 a sound-design toolkit first and a song model second, trained only on data it is allowed to use.
- ElevenLabs Music v2 the licensing-first model, with a rights story built before the product shipped.
- Google Lyria 3.5 the cloud-native option: strong structural control, wrapped in google cloud terms and a watermark.
- Stems on every plansplit any track into parts you can chop and mix, free included.
- Inside your DAWAU and VST3 for Ableton, Logic, and FL Studio.
- Free to start10 loops, 20 one-shots, and 2 full tracks, no card.
06 / FAQ
Questions people actually ask
Is ElevenLabs Music better than Suno?
for provenance and for building music into your own product, yes. elevenlabs music v2 trains only on licensed data through merlin and kobalt on a 50/50 royalty split, and its api is the better integration path. for the music itself, suno v5.5 still has the higher ceiling, particularly on vocals, and it has stems and a browser daw attached.
Is ElevenLabs Music cleared for commercial use?
yes, with one important limit. on self-serve plans the commercial clearance excludes film, tv, and Studio Games. enterprise plans cover all uses. the underlying training data is licensed through merlin and kobalt with a 50/50 royalty split to rights holders, which is the clearest position in the category as of august 2026.
Does ElevenLabs Music export stems?
no. it offers section inpainting and genre transitions instead, which lets you rewrite part of a track without regenerating the whole thing, but it does not hand you the drums and bass on separate tracks. suno gives you up to 12 stems on its top plan. sonura splits any track into stems on every paid plan.
Which one is safer for a client project?
elevenlabs, on paper, as long as the project is not film, tv, or a game and you have read which plan you are on. its licensing is contractual and its rights holders share revenue. suno has a warner deal but unresolved litigation elsewhere, which is a harder conversation to have with a cautious client.
What version of ElevenLabs Music is current?
music v2, released in may 2026, which added genre transitions and section inpainting. this page was verified on 18 august 2026.
Did every artist consent to the ElevenLabs training data?
not individually. the merlin and kobalt deals are opt-in partnerships with rights holders, labels, and publishers who share revenue on a 50/50 split, and that operates at the rights holder level rather than per artist. an artists' coalition letter in june 2026 made that distinction publicly. the licensing is real, the "every artist agreed" version of it is not.
Own your sound
make the loop, the vocal, or the whole track, then take the parts into your DAW and release it as yours. free to start, no card needed.
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