How to Use Suno AI: Complete Guide to AI Music Creation (2026)

Suno AI is a text-to-music generator. You write a description of what you want - the genre, mood, instruments, and style elements - and Suno generates a full song with vocals, melody, and production within about 60 seconds. Unlike traditional music software, you do not need to play an instrument, read sheet music, or understand audio production.

The core technology is a large language model trained on music data. When you type "acoustic folk song about leaving home, fingerpicking guitar, melancholy female vocals," Suno interprets each element and builds a complete track. The V4.5 model, released in May 2025, generates songs up to 8 minutes long and supports over 1,200 musical genres.

The interface runs at suno.com in your browser. No software installation is required. Sign in with a Google or Discord account, and the Create section is where all music generation happens. The free plan provides 50 credits per day. Each song generation costs 5 credits, so you can create approximately 10 songs daily without paying anything.

From r/SunoAI (800+ upvotes): "I was really blown away by the very first result. I find this tech absolutely fascinating and genius." That sense of surprise is consistent among first-time users who have never been able to produce music before.

To start using Suno AI, visit suno.com and click Sign In. Authenticate with Google or Discord - no separate email registration is required. Once logged in, you land on the main feed showing public song creations from other users.

The Create button in the left sidebar opens the song creation panel. This is where you spend most of your time in Suno. The panel has two main inputs: a description field and a toggle between Simple Mode and Custom Mode.

Your song library appears under Library in the left sidebar. Songs you generate are stored here and accessible from any device. Free songs are public by default; Pro and Premier plans allow private song creation.

The Explore section shows trending songs and popular styles. Browsing here helps identify what styles Suno handles well and gives prompting ideas. The r/SunoAI community (100,000+ members) posts outputs regularly with the prompts used to generate them, which is one of the fastest ways to learn what works before spending your own credits.

Simple Mode is the fastest path to a finished song. Type one description, press Create, and Suno generates two versions simultaneously. Each version runs the same prompt through a different creative path, so you get two distinct interpretations to compare side by side.

The description field accepts plain language. A working first attempt: "upbeat indie pop song about a summer road trip, male vocals, acoustic guitar, energetic." Suno reads every word and uses it to shape the song.

What to include in your Simple Mode description:

• •Genre or style: "folk," "hip-hop," "lo-fi jazz," "80s synthwave," "bedroom pop"
• •Mood or energy: "melancholy," "euphoric," "contemplative," "high energy," "relaxed"
• •Vocal type: "female vocals," "male vocals," "vocal harmonies," or "no vocals" for instrumental
• •Key instruments: "piano," "fingerpicking guitar," "trap drums," "strings," "electric bass"
• •Tempo feel: "slow," "mid-tempo," "driving," "fast," "danceable"

The song generates in 30 to 60 seconds. Both versions play back directly in the interface. If neither fits what you had in mind, regenerate from the same prompt (5 credits) or modify the description and create new versions.

From r/SunoAI (400+ upvotes): "Be specific about tempo and energy, not just genre. 'Fast punk' and 'mid-tempo punk' produce completely different results even with the same genre tag."

Custom Mode gives you control over song structure, lyrics, and technical musical parameters. Switch to it using the toggle at the top of the Create panel.

Custom Mode adds four fields that Simple Mode does not have:

Structure tags are the most important feature in Custom Mode. Add [Verse], [Pre-Chorus], [Chorus], [Bridge], or [Outro] on their own lines within your lyrics. Suno assigns different musical energy to each section - verses stay conversational and quieter, choruses get the full production push.

A practical workflow: write your verse and chorus lyrics first, add structure tags, then fill in the Style field with specific sonic details. This combination gives the most predictable output.

From r/SunoAI (500+ upvotes): "Custom Mode is where Suno goes from a toy to a real tool. The structure tags make an enormous difference in output quality."

The r/SunoAI community has built up a body of prompting knowledge over two years of shared experimentation. These patterns appear repeatedly in the highest-upvoted threads.

Specificity beats length. "Folk rock, acoustic guitar, warm female vocals, verses that build to a big chorus, 90s production" outperforms a paragraph of vague description. One well-chosen detail is worth five generic adjectives.

Describe what you do not want. Suno responds to exclusion prompts in the Style field. Adding "no rap, no electronic drums, no distorted guitar" steers the generation away from those elements. Users who discovered this technique call it the most underused feature in Custom Mode.

Use music production language in the Style field. Terms like "stereo width," "room reverb," "dry mix," "punchy kick," and "warm low end" influence the production quality and character of the output. Suno has learned these concepts and responds to them consistently.

Genre mashups work well. "Celtic folk meets hip-hop" or "jazz with trap drums" are legitimate style descriptors. The V4.5 model's support for 1,200+ genres means niche combinations produce coherent results more often than not.

Iterate in batches. Generate three to five versions of each concept before deciding an approach does not work. Suno produces two versions per creation, so two generations give you four interpretations of the same prompt. Minor prompt variations - swapping one adjective or changing the tempo descriptor - can significantly shift the output character.

When a version is close but not quite right, use the Remaster option on saved songs. Remaster preserves the overall structure while regenerating specific elements, rather than starting from scratch.

Suno offers three tiers. The decision comes down to commercial use rights and how many songs you produce each month.

Free plan gives 50 credits daily, resetting every 24 hours. At 5 credits per song, you get 10 songs per day or roughly 300 songs per month. Free songs carry metadata marking them as Suno-generated, and you cannot use them in monetized content. The free plan also does not include the highest-quality V4 settings. For personal projects, experimentation, and learning how Suno interprets prompts, the free plan is substantial.

Pro at $10 per month provides 2,500 credits monthly - approximately 500 songs. Commercial rights are included, so you can monetize songs on YouTube, use them in paid client projects, or sell them as stock music. Pro also unlocks the Song Editor, which lets you split songs into up to 12 stems, rearrange sections, and make structural edits. Priority queue reduces wait times during peak usage hours.

Premier at $30 per month offers 10,000 credits monthly (roughly 2,000 songs). The main additions over Pro are Suno Studio - DAW-style timeline editing - and MIDI export for taking Suno output into other music production software.

Credits do not roll over. Unused credits expire at the end of each monthly billing cycle.

From r/SunoAI pricing discussions: "Free is enough to know if you like it. Pro is worth it if you actually use it for anything that needs commercial rights. The credit math only points to Premier once you are consistently burning through Pro credits before the month ends."

Several patterns show up consistently in r/SunoAI help threads from users frustrated with their results.

• •Vague prompts produce generic results. "A nice song" gives Suno nothing to work with. The fix: add at least five specific details covering genre, tempo feel, instrument, vocal type, and emotional quality.

• •Missing structure tags in Custom Mode. When you write your own lyrics without [Verse], [Chorus], and [Bridge] markers, Suno may treat the entire lyric block as one continuous section with no dynamic variation. Adding structure tags is the single most impactful change for users who write their own lyrics.

• •Giving up after one or two generations. Suno produces probabilistic outputs - the same prompt generates different results each time. At 5 credits per generation, exploring 5 variations of a concept costs 25 cents on the free plan and typically surfaces at least one strong version.

• •Trying to reproduce a specific copyrighted song. Describe the style characteristics instead: "folk-pop, conversational storytelling lyrics, acoustic guitar, emotional female vocals" works far better than naming the artist.

• •Expecting stems on the free plan. Stem export requires Pro (12 stems via Song Editor) or Premier (full MIDI). Many users discover this only after generating a song they want to edit in a DAW.