Suno v6 vs ElevenMusic v2.5 vs Lyria 3.5
Three AI music launches in one September: Suno v6, ElevenMusic v2.5 and Lyria 3.5 compared on licensing, length, editing, references, watermarks and price.
Three of the biggest AI music models all changed in the same fortnight. Google made Lyria 3.5 generally available on 3 and 4 September. Suno replaced its whole lineup with v6 on 9 September. ElevenLabs made Music v2.5 its default on 11 September. Each one made a different bet on the question that now decides AI music: whose catalogue trained it, and what that means for you.
This is a head-to-head of those three launches only. For the broader picture (Udio, Stable Audio, beds versus songs), see Suno vs Udio vs Stable Audio.
The launches in one table
| Suno v6 | ElevenMusic v2.5 | Lyria 3.5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 9 Sept 2026 | 11 Sept 2026 (API from 14 Sept) | 3–4 Sept 2026 (GA) |
| Licensing | Trained on licensed WMG, BMG, Believe catalogues | Agreements with Merlin, Kobalt, Believe; the UMG deal is separate and did not train v2.5 | No licensing statement in the launch coverage |
| Song length | Not stated in launch material | Not stated in launch coverage | 60 seconds to about 3 minutes |
| Editing | Edit one section by prompt; change one lyric | Composer section-by-section editor (launched 25 Aug) | Single-turn; no iterative editing |
| Stems | "Robust isolation capabilities" | Documented stem separation (2, 4 or 6 stems) | Not offered in launch coverage |
| References | Text, audio, images, video | Prompted and reference generation | Text plus up to 10 images; custom lyrics with section tags |
| Watermark | Watermarking announced in August | Not stated in v2.5 coverage | SynthID on all audio |
| Output | Not stated | Lossless downloads | 44.1 kHz stereo; MP3 default, WAV available |
| Price model | Subscription; v6-mini free with no downloads or commercial rights | Plan-based downloads; free plan commercial use with credit | $0.08 per song on the Gemini API |
Sources are linked in each section below.
Licensing: three different answers
This is the column that matters most for paid work.
Suno v6 is the cleanest break. Suno trained v6 on licensed catalogues from Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe, says it did not reuse the old training data, and retired every previous model (TechCrunch). Suno still faces suits from Sony and UMG over the earlier models.
ElevenMusic v2.5 comes from a company with agreements with Merlin, Kobalt and Believe. ElevenLabs announced a multi-year Universal Music deal on 10 September, but says that agreement "is separate from Music v2.5, and no UMG artist music was used to train this model" (Music Business Worldwide). Do not read "UMG deal" as "UMG-trained". Our UMG and ElevenLabs explainer covers what that deal actually builds.
Lyria 3.5 coverage says nothing about training licences (Unite.ai). What Google does say is that it blocks specific artist voices and copyrighted lyrics, and watermarks every output with SynthID. That is a guardrails-and-provenance answer, not a licensing answer.
Our pick for brand work: Suno v6 or ElevenMusic v2.5, because both can name the rights holders they work with. Lyria's watermark helps with disclosure. It is not a licence.
Length and structure
Only Lyria 3.5 publishes a hard length: "from a 60-second clip to a full three-minute song" (Unite.ai). You can write custom lyrics with Verse, Chorus and Bridge tags and use timestamps to say when an instrument comes in. That is fine control for a single pass.
Neither Suno's v6 post nor the ElevenMusic v2.5 coverage states a maximum length. Test your real brief before you assume a four-minute track will hold together. For short-form video you rarely need more than 60 seconds anyway. For when a full vocal song is worth it over a looped bed, see Lyria 3.5 and three-minute vocal tracks.
Editing and stems
Suno v6 edits inside the song. Change one section by prompt and keep the rest, or swap a single lyric without regenerating (Suno). It also added stem isolation and multi-source mashups.
ElevenMusic edits by section too, through Composer, which launched on 25 August just before v2.5 (Music Business Worldwide). Its stem separation endpoint returns two, four or six stems. That is the most flexible split of the three if you need drums and bass on separate faders. Our note on ElevenLabs stems for an edit covers when two stems are enough.
Lyria 3.5 is single-turn. You cannot iterate on a track by prompting it again (Unite.ai). If the bridge is wrong, you generate again.
Winner for editing: Suno v6 and ElevenMusic, roughly tied. Suno's lyric-level edit is the more surgical tool. ElevenMusic's stem split is the more useful one for mixing.
References
Suno v6 takes the widest range: text, audio, images and video. Scoring your own footage from a video reference is the most direct brief of the three.
Lyria 3.5 takes up to 10 images alongside the prompt, and writes lyrics in whatever language you prompt in.
ElevenMusic v2.5 is the default for "prompted and reference generation", per MBW. The coverage does not list which reference types it accepts, so check before you plan around one.
Quality claims
Only ElevenLabs published a comparison number: v2.5 was preferred in blind tests across 47,885 prompt pairs, with the biggest lead in vocal-led and acoustic-heavy genres such as R&B, soul, hip-hop, rock, metal and orchestral (Music Business Worldwide). That test compares v2.5 with ElevenLabs' own earlier model, not with Suno or Google.
Suno v6 has the loudest user reaction, and much of it is negative: users describe the output as muffled, with buried vocals (Digital Music News). We cover that in Suno v6 vs v5. Lyria 3.5 has no published head-to-head.
Nobody has run an independent three-way test. Listen to all three on your own genre before you pick.
Price model
Suno is a subscription. v6 and v6-wild are for Pro and Premier subscribers. v6-mini is free for everyone, but free accounts cannot download and get no commercial rights (Digital Music News).
ElevenMusic meters downloads. The free plan gets 5 lossless downloads a day and Pro gets 400 a month. Free users can use tracks commercially if they credit ElevenMusic. Downloads are blocked on tracks that reference other artists' songs (Music Business Worldwide).
Lyria 3.5 is per song on the API: Google's pricing page lists $0.08 per song. It is also in the Gemini app. For a developer generating music inside a product, per-song pricing is the easiest to forecast.
Which one for which job
- Brand bed or jingle for a client: ElevenMusic v2.5. It has named licensing partners, a commercial-use rule you can read, and stems for the voiceover mix.
- A song you will edit line by line: Suno v6. The lyric edit is the feature.
- Music inside your own app, priced per unit: Lyria 3.5 on the Gemini API. It has a fixed per-song price and SynthID on every file.
- Scoring a video from the video itself: Suno v6, the only one of the three that takes video as a reference.
What runs on Versely
All three are in the Versely Music studio on the web. ElevenLabs Music v2.5 takes one prompt and returns a sung or instrumental track up to 10 minutes, with the credit price shown before you generate. The Suno v6 family (v6, v6-mini and v6-wild) runs songs at 3 credits a generation. Lyria 3.5 arrived on 24 September: one prompt, a full song sung or instrumental, at the same credit price as Lyria 3 Pro. Lyria 3 Pro and Clip stay for instrumentals. The Suno v6 how-to walks through it.
For full-length songs outside Suno, MiniMax Music 3 writes complete tracks up to five minutes from a style description plus lyrics with [verse] and [chorus] tags, in 44.1 kHz stereo, for 3 credits. It is the closest Versely row to Lyria's structured-lyrics workflow, with a longer ceiling.
For beds and sound effects rather than songs, Suno Sounds V6 is 2 credits a call, with loop, tempo and key controls.
Pick the licence your buyer needs first, then the editing tool you will actually use. Sound quality comes third, because all three will keep changing.