Hands-on review

ElevenLabs Music review: good songs, least scenic route

Oct 17, 2026 · 8 prompts, 14 takes, scored blind by one listener.

Verdict

ElevenLabs released Music v2.5 on Sep 11, 2026, and calls it "our best music model yet" (ElevenLabs blog). Its docs say v2.5 improves audio quality and prompt adherence over Music v2 (ElevenLabs docs).

We gave it the same eight prompts we used on Suno v6. Nathan Crowe, our editor, scored every take blind from the audio alone, with no prompts or settings in front of him. He has made more than 1,000 AI tracks, so he knows what a lazy intro sounds like. The average was 3.82 out of 5 across 14 takes. Suno v6 scored 4.56 across 16 on the same prompts.

The songs are good. Six takes got a 4.5, and only one fell below a 3. One had something Suno doesn't really do: guitars genuinely double-tracked and panned left and right. The bluegrass and drum and bass mashup worked again.

The problem is getting there. Over and over, Nathan waited through long, unchanging instrumental intros and gaps, 30 to 45 seconds in the worst cases, before anything changed. His best summary came from the hip hop prompt: a good song by the "least scenic route." And at 900 credits a minute, every one of those waiting seconds is paid for. Our 14 songs used nearly all of our account's credits for the month.

Verdict: ElevenLabs Music v2.5 makes solid, sometimes great songs, with real stereo guitars and mashups that hold together. It also pads songs with long, flat intros and gaps, and its per-minute pricing makes that padding expensive. On our prompts it trailed Suno v6. Use it if you like the sound and plan to edit; skip it if you want a finished song in one pass.

• Who it's for: creators who want songs for videos, podcasts, and social posts, are happy to trim intros and edit sections, and like having music in the same account as their ElevenLabs voice work.
• Who should skip it (for now): anyone who wants to release songs on streaming services on the Starter plan (its terms prohibit that), anyone generating lots of full-length songs on a small credit budget, and anyone allergic to waiting for the singer.

Key facts

Hands-on test

What we measured: how each song sounded, and whether it did what the prompt asked where Nathan's notes say so. Listening is one person's ear: Nathan Crowe scored every take blind from the files alone. Unlike our Suno test, we didn't run instruction follow-up questions after unblinding, so where his notes are silent on an instruction, we say "not checked." Treat this as a sample, not a benchmark.

Setup: ElevenLabs web app, Starter plan bought on annual billing, Music v2.5. Each generation can return two variants, and each variant is billed for its own length. We downloaded the songs on Oct 14, 2026. Same eight prompts, style text, and lyrics as our Suno v6 test, all original, with no real artist names. ElevenLabs didn't refuse or rewrite any of them. It did give every song its own title.

One method difference, in fairness to both tools. For Suno, some of our lyrics used a bare [Chorus] tag for repeats. For ElevenLabs, every repeated chorus and hook was written out in full, the way Nathan recommends. That helps ElevenLabs, if anything.

Running out of credits. Prompts 1 to 6 got two takes each. Then we ran low. Tin Roof got one take, with the length cut from the planned 4:00 to 3:00, and Last Ferry Out got one take at 4:15. That's 14 takes instead of Suno's 16. Here's the math: the 14 songs total 44 minutes and 17 seconds of audio. At 900 credits a minute, that's about 39,900 credits. On Oct 14, before testing began, our account showed 40,000 of 40,000 credits, and the 14 songs used nearly all of them. Starter officially includes 30,000 a month, so the balance probably includes leftover free-tier credits from before the upgrade. On Suno, all 16 takes cost 80 of the 2,500 credits in a Pro month.

Scores and instructions

Tally: 53.5 points across 14 takes, an average of 3.82. Six 4.5s, two 4s, two 3.5s, three 3s, and one 2.5. No take got a 5, where Suno v6 got ten. Across the six pairs, Take A won two, Take B won two, and two tied.

Prompt by prompt, against Suno v6 (average score per prompt)

ElevenLabs tied on Rain Car and trailed on the other seven. The two tests were scored nearly two weeks apart by the same listener, so read the gap as a direction, not a precise measurement.

1. Paper Plane Season (easy)

Style: upbeat indie pop, female vocal, handclaps, bright clean guitar, 118 BPM

Take A

Take B

The warm-up, and the first sign of the pattern. Take A opened with an intro Nathan compared to a "corporate harassment-training video," until the singer came in. After that, the female voice was "pretty good, nothing weird" (3). Take B had a 17-second intro that "feels long," and the song got "super repetitious after first chorus" (3). Both were fine. Neither one won him over.

2. Rain Car (easy, ElevenLabs writes everything)

Description: a garage rock song about an old car that only starts when it rains

Take A

Take B

We gave it one sentence and let ElevenLabs write the rest. It came back with titles of its own, including "Only Starts When It Rains." This pair had the widest split of the test. Take A was "poppy, super catchy," but the sound quality fell off, "like a speaker behind a fan." His verdict: "bush league" (2.5, the lowest score of the test).

Take B was the opposite. It was "catchy" and it "rocks" (4.5). His only complaint was the mix: the drums were a bit flat, and the whole thing sounded "like a 1st-year engineer's rough mix before pro EQ." He still gave it a 4.5, which tells you how much the song carried it.

3. Thermos (medium)

Style: acoustic country ballad, male baritone, fingerpicked guitar, pedal steel, 72 BPM, sparse at first, full band joins on the last chorus

Take A

Take B

Take A had a "nice acoustic tone," a "pleasant voice," and it stayed consistent (4.5). It also had the line of the review. Nathan heard an AI "snake in a pillowcase" slithering in the mix: instruments shifting and panning around at random, while staying clear. It's a strange sound, and it didn't cost the song much.

Take B was "polished but sounds like a dubbed tape copy" (3). Picture a cassette copied from a cassette: everything is there, just a generation removed.

We didn't check whether either take saved the full band for the last chorus. Suno never did.

4. Municipal (hard)

Style: boom bap hip hop, male rapper, fast double-time flow, dusty drums, vinyl crackle, 92 BPM

Take A

Take B

Sixteen bars of dense lines about city hall, and the best pair of the test. Take A was "smooth," with a good voice (4.5). Then came the instrumental gap between verse and hook, which Nathan said was "way too long." The song got where it was going by the "least scenic route."

Take B had a "dope beat/bass" and smooth verses, with a chorus that was "a little rough" (4.5). It also opened with a 30-second intro.

ElevenLabs' docs promise "fast rap and dense lyrical phrasing." Both takes sounded good to Nathan, but we didn't check every word against the lyric sheet this time.

5. Holler Code (hard)

Style: bluegrass banjo and fiddle over drum and bass breakbeats, 174 BPM, female vocal with Appalachian twang

Take A

Take B

This was Suno's standout, and it held up here. Take A was "catchy AF," and to Nathan it sounded like Suno's version of the same mashup: the "genres just work" (4.5).

Take B lost points to its opening, a 35-second "repetitive intro" that "gets old." Once it got going, it "sounds great": drum and bass with banjo and fiddle, and a "clear southern female drawl" on top (3.5). Nathan called the mix of energy and calm a "palm of sleeping pills + Red Bull." He meant it kindly. He enjoyed it.

6. Music Box Riot (hard)

Style: starts as a slow 3/4 waltz with music box and upright bass, soft female vocal; switches to fast punk rock at 180 BPM with shouted gang vocals; returns to the slow waltz at the end

Take A

Take B

Take A started "whimsical," and the "big rock shift" was handled well. But Nathan sat through waits of 30 and 45 seconds, and the song was "too repetitive" (3.5).

Take B was "less repetitive" and "Pixar-like," with a "nice rock shift" and a "nice return to music box" (4). That's both switches, as tagged. Take B also had the detail Nathan liked best in the whole test: "true double-panned guitars," a real left-and-right stereo spread, which in his experience Suno doesn't do. The "sound quality" was "not quite there," he said, but the arrangement was.

7. Tin Roof (hard, instrumental)

Style: instrumental, cinematic ambient score, rain on a tin roof, low cello drones, distant felt piano, slow build over four minutes, no vocals

Take A

One take, set to 3:00 instead of the four minutes the prompt describes, because credits were running out, so we can't judge it on length.

It opened with 25 seconds of rain, which Nathan found too long. Then the piano came in, "tranquil," and the piano "sounds really good" (4). It reminded him of old Halo Waypoint music on the Xbox: "load music." That's a compliment with a loading bar attached. Suno's two takes had faint humming, which failed our no-vocals rule. Nathan's notes on this take don't mention any voice.

8. Last Ferry Out (hardest)

Style: power ballad duet, deep male vocal and high female vocal trading verses, piano and strings, full band from the first chorus, over 4 minutes, key change up a whole step on the final chorus

Take A

One take, with the length set to 4:15, and it ran the full 4:15. Piano and strings, and a "smooth male-to-female" handoff (4.5). The voices did trade places. But when the chorus arrived, it went "gospel/choir," not duet. Two distinct singers became a crowd. Suno's takes kept the voices separate, and that's the part a duet lives or dies on.

We didn't check for the key change. Suno missed it in all four of its attempts.

The long way round

Nathan's general note after all 14 takes was short: "long repetitive intros, little variation." It's the theme of this review.

Count the waits in his notes. 35 seconds before Holler Code's Take B got going. 30 seconds on Municipal's Take B. 30 and 45 seconds on Music Box Riot's Take A. 25 seconds of rain on Tin Roof. 17 seconds on Paper Plane Season's Take B, which still "feels long." Then a gap between verse and hook on Municipal's Take A that was "way too long." When something did happen, it often repeated.

On most tools, a slow intro is a small annoyance you skip past. On ElevenLabs it costs money. You pay about 900 credits for every minute generated, and that includes the minute where nothing much happens. A 30-second intro is around 450 credits per variant.

The other issue is the mix: a "speaker behind a fan," a "dubbed tape copy," a rough mix before a pro got to it. Not every take, and the best sounded great. Suno's 16 takes drew no comments like these.

How to get around it: ElevenLabs gives you more editing tools than Suno, and they're aimed at exactly this problem. We didn't test them in this review, so take these as leads from ElevenLabs' own docs, not results. You can exclude styles at the track or section level, and the docs give "repetitive structure" as an example of something to exclude. You can drag a section to change its duration, delete one, or select a section and regenerate only that part. ElevenLabs also suggests building a song section by section, starting with a short 30-second generation. Since you pay by the minute, generating short and extending what works should waste fewer credits than rolling full four-minute songs and hoping (ElevenLabs docs). Keep writing every chorus out in full. We did, and nothing was skipped.

Pricing (checked Oct 16, 2026)

What a song costs: about 900 credits per minute of music (pricing). Cost depends on the length and how many variants you generate, and the app shows the cost before you click Generate (help center). Credits are shared with every other ElevenLabs product, so music and voice work draw from the same pool.

Prices and minutes: pricing page and music page. Streaming rules: Music Terms. Annual billing is ten months' price for twelve. As of Oct 16, the pricing page also offered Starter's first month for $1, until Oct 18. Unused credits on paid plans roll over for up to two months (pricing).

The 17-minute limit. The pricing and music pages say Starter's 30,000 credits buy 33 minutes of music, about 8 to 16 tracks. The posted Music Terms, updated Oct 9, list a Starter "Monthly Generation Limit" of 17 minutes and a download limit of 30 minutes a month (Music Terms). In our test, the account let us generate about 44 minutes with no warning. If you're budgeting, trust the cost the app shows before each generation, and read the Terms table for your plan.

On Starter, exports are standard-quality MP3. Lossless WAV and high-quality downloads start at Pro (docs, Music Terms). The music page lists 2- and 4-stem splits and inpainting on Starter (music page). We didn't test stems.

Rights: commercial, but not streaming

ElevenLabs says Eleven Music is "cleared for broad commercial use," and that rights vary by plan (docs). The details are in a table in the Music Terms, updated Oct 9, 2026.

On Starter, you may use music commercially online and offline, "except film, TV, radio, and Studio Games." No attribution is required. Starter is "For Individual Use Only." And "Music Streaming Distribution" is "Prohibited." The Terms define that as making output available on a music streaming platform, directly or through a distributor. So you can put a Starter song under a monetized video, but you can't release it on streaming services. Streaming distribution is permitted from Creator up.

Content made during a paid subscription can be used commercially "indefinitely," subject to those terms (help center). This is our reading of the terms, not legal advice.

Unlike Suno, Eleven Music launched with licensing deals already signed, with Merlin and Kobalt (MBW). On Sep 10, 2026, a day before Music v2.5, ElevenLabs announced a multi-year licensing agreement with Universal Music Group. ElevenLabs says that deal is separate from Music v2.5 (ElevenMusic blog, MBW). As of Oct 16, we found no label lawsuit over Eleven Music.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Good songs at their best: six of 14 blind takes scored 4.5, with only one below a 3 (our test).
• Real double-panned guitars, which in Nathan's experience Suno doesn't do (our test).
• The bluegrass and drum and bass mashup worked in both takes (our test).
• Followed a tagged switch to rock and back to the waltz on one take (our test).
• Downloads don't cost credits (pricing). Songs up to 10 minutes, with section editing and inpainting (docs).

Cons

• Long, unchanging intros and gaps, up to 45 seconds before anything happens, and repetitive structure (our test).
• Uneven mixes: "speaker behind a fan," "dubbed tape copy," and a "snake in a pillowcase" (our test).
• The duet's chorus turned into a choir instead of two voices (our test).
• Expensive per song. 14 songs used nearly a month of our account's credits (our test; 900 credits a minute per pricing).
• Starter prohibits releasing to streaming services (Music Terms).

FAQ

Is ElevenLabs Music better than Suno v6? Not on our prompts. Same eight prompts, same listener, scored blind: ElevenLabs averaged 3.82/5 over 14 takes, Suno v6 4.56/5 over 16. ElevenLabs had the better stereo guitars. Suno had the cleaner mixes and the tighter songs.

How many songs do you get on the Starter plan? Fewer than you'd think. Starter's 30,000 credits buy about 33 minutes of music (pricing), and the Music Terms list a lower limit of 17 minutes (Music Terms). In our test, the account let us generate about 44 minutes with no warning.

Can I put ElevenLabs songs on streaming services? Not on Free or Starter. The Music Terms prohibit streaming distribution on those plans and permit it from Creator up (Music Terms).

Why do ElevenLabs songs have such long intros? ElevenLabs doesn't say. It was our headline complaint. Its docs let you exclude "repetitive structure" and edit section lengths; we haven't tested whether that fixes it.

Sources

All checked Oct 16, 2026 (CT).

1. ElevenLabs, pricing
2. ElevenLabs, music page and music pricing table
3. ElevenLabs, Music Terms (last updated Oct 9, 2026)
4. ElevenLabs docs, Music
5. ElevenLabs help center, How much does Eleven Music cost?
6. ElevenLabs help center, Can I publish the content I generate on the platform?
7. ElevenLabs, Introducing Music v2.5, our best music model yet (Sep 11, 2026)
8. ElevenMusic, Introducing Music v2.5 (Sep 11, 2026)
9. Music Business Worldwide, Eleven Music launches with Kobalt, Merlin deals
10. Music Business Worldwide, ElevenLabs launched Music v2.5 shortly after announcing its UMG licensing deal
11. Song Tested, Suno v6 review (Oct 6, 2026)
12. Song Tested hands-on test of ElevenLabs Music: ElevenLabs web app, Starter plan, Music v2.5, songs downloaded Oct 14, 2026; blind scores by Nathan Crowe