Suno
Generates original music from a written description — jingles, background beds, hold music and full tracks — with commercial rights included on the paid plans.
What you'd use it for
Writing a custom background track for a video, advert or phone system without licensing stock music or hiring anyone.
- Generate a full song with vocals, lyrics and production from a one-sentence description
- Generate instrumental-only tracks with no vocals, for background use
- Upload or record your own audio, then extend, remix or rewrite sections of it
- Export up to 12 time-aligned WAV stems for mixing in Ableton or Logic (Pro and Premier plans)
The verdict
Suno is genuinely good at the unglamorous background-music jobs a small business actually has — a video, a phone system, an advert — because the bar there is nobody noticing, and thirty seconds from a prompt usually clears it. The free tier is a listening test, not a plan, since nothing you make on it carries commercial rights, so budget for Pro before you ship anything. It suits an operator who needs a handful of tracks a month, not a studio producing at volume, and the unsettled legal status of AI-generated music means a campaign with real media spend behind it is worth a conversation with whoever handles your contracts first.
What it costs
| Tier | Price | For | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | Finding out whether the output is good enough for what you need. | 50 credits a day, free models, audio uploads up to 8 minutes, shared creation queue. No commercial rights. |
| Pro | $8/month when billed yearly (the page states this saves $24 a year) | A business using generated music in its own marketing. | 2,500 credits a month, commercial rights, advanced models, 20 downloads a month, pro editing tools, priority queue. |
| Premier | $24/month when billed yearly (the page states this saves $72 a year) | Regular production where 2,500 credits a month is not enough. | 10,000 credits a month, commercial rights, Suno Studio with MIDI and effects, 60 downloads a month, audio uploads up to 30 minutes. |
Read from Suno's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.
What you need to start
- A Google, Discord, Apple, Microsoft or email account to sign up — no credit card for the free tier
- A paid Pro or Premier plan before any track can be used commercially
- Desktop Chrome for Suno Studio's stem export and MIDI tools; not available in the mobile apps
A few minutes to a free account and a first track; the Pro upgrade needed before anything can be used commercially is a one-click purchase on top of that.
Your first run Sign up free with no credit card, describe the mood and instrumentation in a sentence, and Suno returns two finished versions with vocals and full production in under a minute.
Where it breaks
The free tier gives you no commercial rights at all, which makes it a listening test rather than a usable tier for a business. Credits expire monthly and do not roll over, so an unused month is money gone. The legal position on training data for generative music is contested and unresolved in several jurisdictions; the commercial licence Suno grants you is Suno's licence, not a guarantee about third-party claims. And platforms that fingerprint audio can flag generated tracks in ways that are tedious to appeal.
Browser and mobile apps. Subscription credits do not carry over from day to day or month to month; separately purchased top-up credits persist while the subscription is active.
First entry in this reference. There is no previous check to compare it against.
When not to use it
Not for anyone who needs a specific existing song, a real performer, or a licence that goes beyond what Suno itself grants — the legal ground under AI-generated music is still being argued between rights holders and model developers in several jurisdictions. Not for anyone unwilling to pay, since the free tier's output cannot legally go anywhere a customer sees it.
Most small businesses need music exactly three times: behind a video, behind a phone system, and behind an advertisement. All three are jobs where licensing has historically cost more in admin than in money, and Suno collapses that to a sentence and a wait.
Describe the mood, the instrumentation and the length, and it writes and performs a track. For a thirty-second product video, the result is usually good enough that nobody notices it, which is the actual bar for background music.
The bit that matters commercially
The free tier grants no commercial rights. If the track is going anywhere a customer sees it, you need Pro at minimum, and the $8 figure is the annual-billing rate.
The part worth taking seriously
Generative music sits in genuinely unsettled legal territory. Suno’s licence tells you what Suno permits; it does not resolve questions being argued between rights holders and model developers. For a social post that is a small risk. For a broadcast campaign with a media budget behind it, talk to whoever handles your contracts before committing.
Where it fits in a workflow
You prompt it, you download the file, you drop it into the edit yourself. Where that edit happens is CapCut for most people, or Canva if the video started life as a design. Nothing here runs unattended, and for music that is probably the right arrangement — you want to hear it before it goes out.
Alternatives
Marketing & socialAppsFilmora
Desktop video editor for your own footage, with AI captions, background removal and a music generator built into the timeline.
InVideo
Turns a script or a short prompt into a finished marketing video, assembling stock footage, motion graphics and voiceover without a camera or an editor.
Marketing & socialAppsFreepik
A stock-image and template library bundled with AI image, video and audio generation, so a small marketing team can build or find what it needs on one subscription.
Get Suno
Buying the tool is not the hard part.
The ebook is about what to hand over, in what order, and how you find out when it goes wrong. One payment, no subscription.