Stable Audio
Text-to-music and audio generation from Stability AI. Create royalty-ready tracks, sound effects, and loops with precise control over genre, mood, and tempo.
Overview
Stable Audio is Stability AI's entry into generative music, applying the same latent diffusion approach that powers Stable Diffusion to the audio domain. It generates music tracks, sound effects, and seamless loops from text prompts, with controls for genre, mood, tempo, key, and instrumentation that give producers meaningful creative direction.
The tool is aimed squarely at content creators, game developers, and video producers who need custom audio without licensing headaches. Paid plans include full commercial rights, which makes it a practical choice for production workflows. The underlying model (Stable Audio Open) is also available for self-hosting, a significant differentiator for teams that want local inference or fine-tuning on their own audio data.
Where Stable Audio falls short compared to Suno and Udio is in vocal generation — it's primarily an instrumental and sound design tool. But for background music, ambient textures, sound effects, and loops, it produces clean, professional-sounding output with notably fast generation times.
Key features
Text-to-Music
Generate instrumental music tracks up to 3 minutes from natural language prompts. Specify genre, mood, tempo, key, and instrumentation for precise creative control.
Sound Effects
Create custom sound effects and foley from text descriptions — footsteps, explosions, ambient environments, UI sounds, and more. Useful for game dev and video production.
Loops
Generate seamless audio loops optimized for background music, game soundtracks, and ambient content. Loops tile cleanly without audible seams.
Pricing
Free tier: 20 tracks per month up to 45 seconds, non-commercial use only
| Plan | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 20 tracks/mo, 45-second max, non-commercial use |
| Pro | $12/mo | 500 tracks/mo, 3-minute max, commercial license |
| Max | $36/mo | 2000 tracks/mo, 3-minute max, priority generation, commercial license |
20 tracks/mo, 45-second max, non-commercial use
500 tracks/mo, 3-minute max, commercial license
2000 tracks/mo, 3-minute max, priority generation, commercial license
Pros & cons
Pros
- ✓Generates music, sound effects, and loops — not just songs
- ✓Open-weight model available for self-hosting and fine-tuning
- ✓Fast generation times compared to competitors
- ✓Precise control over tempo, key, genre, and instrumentation
Cons
- ×No vocal generation — instrumental and sound design only
- ×Free tier limited to 45-second clips
- ×Track length capped at 3 minutes even on paid plans
- ×Output quality a step behind Suno and Udio for full music production
How it compares
| Tool | Best for | Pricing | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stable Audio | — | Freemium | 8.4/10 |
| Suno AI | — | Freemium | 9.2/10 |
| ElevenLabs | — | Free tier + Starter $5/mo + Creator $22/mo + Pro $99/mo + Scale $330/mo + Enterprise custom | 9.2/10 |
| Udio | — | Freemium | 8.8/10 |