Suno v6: Free v6-mini, 8-Minute Songs, Old Models Retired

Suno v6 launched on September 9, 2026, the company’s first model generation built together with record labels: Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. The release splits into three separate models, v6 and v6-wild, both reserved for Pro and Premier subscribers, and v6-mini, which is free for everyone on the platform. All three models can generate songs up to 8 minutes long, and every model that came before v6, including v4.5 and v5.5, has now been retired.

Below is what a free account gets under the new lineup, from songs made on one on September 12, 2026, and what the label deals change for anyone using Suno.

Three Models, One of Them Free

Suno splits v6 into three models, each labeled in its own picker. v6 carries the tag “Powerful. Versatile. Refined. Our best model yet.” and is marked Pro. v6-wild carries “Best for experimental ideas.” and is also marked Pro. v6-mini is labeled “A free, more efficient version of premium v6 models.”

Suno’s own blog describes v6 as reliable and precise across genres, v6-wild as less predictable and more varied, and v6-mini as faster and more efficient. Suno’s chief product officer Jack Brody told Variety that without v6 and v6-wild, v6-mini “would be the best music model in the world.”

The free plan ran the older v4.5 model until this switch (v4.5 first arrived for paid plans in May 2025), and it remains listen-only, with no downloads.

Three Prompts on a Free Suno Account

I ran three prompts on a free Suno account on September 12, 2026, with v6-mini selected because it was the only model the account could pick. Every generation came back with four items: two full-length v6-mini songs and two clips of up to a minute tagged “v6 preview” with an “Upgrade for full song” button beside them. No credit counter appeared anywhere on the free account and no limit notice showed up across the three generations.

The first prompt, in Simple mode, asked for an upbeat indie pop song with a female lead vocal about a Sunday morning coffee run in a small town, with jangly guitars, handclaps, warm bass and a sing-along chorus. Suno named the two v6-mini songs “Where the Coffee’s Hot”, 3 minutes 10 seconds and 2 minutes 45 seconds. The two v6 previews, “Paper Cup Sunday”, ran 1 minute each.

The second, also in Simple mode, asked for a lo-fi instrumental for a cozy coffee shop YouTube vlog, soft piano, laid-back drum loop, vinyl crackle, no vocals. Back came “Warm Afternoon” (2:50) and “Café de Noche” (2:42), both instrumental as asked, plus two 1-minute previews called “Cups and Rainy Windows”.

The third switched to Advanced mode with custom lyrics: two short verses and a chorus in English with two Korean lines, and a style line asking for a K-pop dance track with a confident female vocal, bright synths, punchy drums and 128 BPM. The v6-mini songs, “First Day, First Day”, came out at 31 and 32 seconds, about as long as the lyrics. The v6 previews ran 43 and 40 seconds.

Edit One Lyric, Mash Up Two Songs, Prompt With a Video

Suno’s launch post describes a set of new creation tools alongside the v6 models. One lets you edit part of a song in plain language. Suno’s own example is “Change the chorus so it’s sung by a gospel choir.” Another changes a single lyric without regenerating the whole track, such as “Change the lyric from ‘love’ to ‘light’.”

Beyond editing, Suno now offers mashups that combine several sources into one request, plus sampling and isolating sounds to build beats from. Prompts can also come from text, audio, images and video, not just typed descriptions.

Suno’s pricing page lists advanced editing, replacing or adding a section, and stem extraction as paid features. On a free account, most of these tools are out of reach. Suno’s FAQ adds that songs made with older models stay in the library unchanged, any new iteration on them runs on v6, and existing custom models are upgraded to v6 automatically. The same FAQ says that “each time you generate, you make two songs with a total cost of 10 credits,” and that prompts built from images or video cost more.

Built With Warner, BMG and Believe

Suno says v6 was developed together with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. Jack Brody told The Verge that v6 was trained from the ground up on a new data set that does not include the data behind earlier models, made up of licensed music from those partners plus user data.

Warner CEO Robert Kyncl said in an internal email reported by Digital Music News that Warner’s artists and songwriters now share in the revenue from Suno’s more than 2 million paying subscribers, and that Suno is shutting down the original model it trained without permission. Suno says it has added safeguards that screen uploaded audio and lyrics for unauthorized use, and that its next product is opt-in experiences built around individual artists, who get paid when they take part.

Lawsuits from Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Round Hill Music are still open, according to Variety. The Warner relationship follows Suno’s earlier settlement with the label and the BMG deal that came with Suno Studio 2.0.

Is v6 Better Than v5.5? The First Verdicts Disagree

The Verge’s Terrence O’Brien, testing on launch day, found all three models much better at understanding genre than earlier versions, but unable to produce deliberate imperfection. Requests for off-key piano, monotone vocals or no drums were ignored, and vocals showed more of the harsh artifacts typical of AI music than v5 did. He could barely tell v6-wild from v6 in his own testing.

Digital Music News called the reception mixed, with some subscribers threatening to leave and others positive, and its report notes that the loudest early complaints came from long-time users who preferred the old models.

Suno v6 on Free, Pro and Premier

Suno v6 changed which model each plan gets, not the prices. Free stays at $0 with v6-mini and 50 credits a day, Pro is $10 a month or $8 on annual billing and adds v6, v6-wild, downloads and commercial rights, and Premier is $30 a month or $24 annual with 10,000 credits and Suno Studio.

On September 12, Suno’s app carried a banner saying its best v6 models could be used with credit-free creation for two more days, aimed at subscribers, so the launch promotion ends around September 14.

Where This Leaves Google, ElevenLabs and Soundraw

Free full songs are now a three-way race

Lyria 3.5’s free Gemini rollout gives away downloadable songs of 2 to 3 minutes. Suno’s free tier now runs a v6-generation model but still cannot download anything. ElevenLabs Music gives 10,000 free credits a month.

Licensing becomes the selling point

Suno now pitches label-backed training as a reason to trust v6’s output. Soundraw trains on in-house recordings instead, which sidesteps the licensing question. ElevenLabs Music sells commercial rights starting on its Starter plan.

What to pick

If you want to listen and sketch ideas for free, Suno v6-mini is the strongest free model of the four. If you need the file, Gemini is the only one of them that lets a free account download. Paid, ElevenLabs Music is the cheapest route to commercial rights, and Soundraw fits background music that needs a perpetual license. The full picture is in the AI music generator roundup.

FAQ

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Sources

1. Introducing v6 - Suno, September 9, 2026
2. v6 FAQ - Suno Help Center
3. What’s new in v6? - Suno Help Center
4. Suno pricing - Suno
5. Suno releases its first AI music model made with record industry help - The Verge, September 9, 2026
6. Suno Tries to Break Into Music Mainstream With New Label-Backed Model ‘v6’ - Variety, September 9, 2026
7. Will You Please Stop Suing Us Now? Suno Turns a Legit Leaf With ‘v6’ - Digital Music News, September 9, 2026
8. Suno launches its v6 AI-music models - Music Ally, September 9, 2026