Comparison
Suno and Udio make songs. Cutroom makes the ad
Music in an ad has one job. Sit under the voice and never steal the sentence that sells. Suno and Udio are built to make music you notice. Cutroom is built to make the ad, and the bed is one control inside it for 20 credits. This page covers what each one is for and what a track costs. By the end you will know whether you need a song or a bed.
- Credits for one generated Cutroom track, any length
- 20
- Trial credits, 7 days, no card
- 300
- A thirty-second ad with a bed under it
- 130 CR
Suno and Udio win every time the track is the deliverable
A brand anthem people are meant to enjoy. A full track for a launch film. Anything you would put on a streaming service. Buy Suno or Udio and bring the file in.
Suno gets from a written line to something that sounds like a real recording faster than anything else, across a wide range of styles.
Udio is where people go when the music itself matters more than the speed of getting some. Arrangement detail, audio quality, and section-level work.
Both let you iterate. Regenerate a chorus, extend a section, try the same lyrics in four genres. Cutroom gives you one generation per request and no section-level editing.
Both are priced as music tools, on plans built for people making tracks. Read their current pages, because those tiers move.
That is the correct trade for an ad. Nobody wants a music production session at four in the afternoon when the voice-over is already cut.
An ad soundtrack fails by being too good
There is one attention channel and two occupants. Your voice-over and the music. Almost every bad ad soundtrack comes out of that collision.
What an ad needs is a bed. Steady energy, no dramatic swell, nothing that steals the second before the offer.
That is a lower musical bar and a harder one to hit deliberately, because everything about a general music tool pushes toward interesting.
Interesting is the failure mode. A track that sounds great alone is usually about to fight your read. A bed that sounds dull on headphones is usually correct.
Length is the other half of it. A thirty-second ad wants about thirty seconds of music with a clean start, and a fade at thirty seconds is audible.
So judge it inside the ad, at phone volume, in a room with some noise in it. Read the script out loud over the top. Whichever sentence you lose was the one doing the selling.
Where the music decision actually sits
Music is one control beside the pace and the captions, at 20 credits a track. It is not a project of its own.
Batch the take
Transcript, cut plan and b-roll: 100 credits
Direct on the transcript
Mark phrases, delete lines, set the pace
Turn music on
Describe a style, or write lyrics: 20 credits
Set the level
Against the speech, in the same screen
Export
20 credits per output minute
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
One track, 20 credits, and it never leaves the edit
The music module is deliberately small. Write lyrics and describe a style for a sung track. Leave the words empty and get an instrumental bed.
One track costs 20 credits whatever length it runs. That is under one percent of a Basic month.
It arrives inside the ad you are already cutting, and the level against the speech is set on the same screen. No separate tab, no download, no drag into a second tool, no third subscription.
What it does not do is shape music. There is no regenerating a chorus, no extending a section and no stems.
Turning music on is one control beside the pace and the captions. You describe a style, the track arrives, and you set how loud it sits against the read.
For a bed, none of that is missing. A bed is a decision you make once and stop thinking about.
- 20 credits a track is under one percent of a Basic month's 2,500 credits.
- A thirty-second ad with a bed costs 130 credits: 100 batch, 20 music, 10 export.
- The trial's 300 credits covers two batched takes with a bed on each.
- Instrumental is the default outcome when you leave the lyrics empty.
One thirty-second ad, with a bed under it
130 credits from upload to file. The music is the smallest line in it and the only one that is optional.
- Batch: transcript, cut plan, b-roll100 CR
- Music track, any length20 CR
- Export, 30 seconds10 CR
- Setting the level0 CR
Licensing is the row every comparison skips
Rights to AI-generated music differ by tool, by plan and by country. The legal position is still moving.
What you may do commercially on a free plan is often not what you may do on a paid one, and it is not the same as the tool next to it.
So do not take any comparison page's word for it, including this one. Read the current terms for the tool, the plan and the use you intend.
One point holds across every option here. A generated track avoids the risk of using a commercial recording you have no rights to, which is still the most common way small advertisers get a video taken down.
Adopt one habit whichever tool you pick. Keep the file, the prompt, the tool, the plan and the date in the same folder as the ad.
Do it for every ad, not only the ones with spend behind them. The one that gets queried is never the one you expected.
Suno and Cutroom, row by row
Two rows go to Suno and they are the musical ones. The other six are what happens when the track has to sit under a voice.
| Suno | Cutroom | |
|---|---|---|
| Range of styles | Wide, and it shows | Narrow by design |
| Section-level editing | Redo a chorus, extend | One pass, no sections |
| Sits under your ad | Download, then import | Generated inside the edit |
| Level set against speech | Done in your editor | Volume set in editor |
| Cost per track published | Priced by plan tier | 20 credits, any length |
| Instrumental bed on request | Leans toward full songs | Leave the lyrics empty |
| Length matched to the cut | Trim it yourself | Track fits the ad |
| Licensing certainty | Read their current terms | Read ours as well |
Decide what the music has to do, then buy once
If the track is the thing people are meant to remember, buy Suno or Udio.
If music is a five minute chore inside a job you are already behind on, the tool sitting next to your edit saves more of your week than the one with the higher ceiling.
Most teams shipping vertical ads weekly are in the second group and buy as though they were in the first. Then a folder of unused generated songs sits next to the ads that went out silent.
Count the ads you published last month that went out silent. That number is what the bed is for.
The trial is 7 days and 300 credits with no card. Enough to put a bed under two ads and hear the difference.
- Sung hook, jingle, anything meant to be remembered. Suno.
- Score, iteration, audio quality first, and an afternoon to spend. Udio.
- Thirty seconds under a voice-over that nobody should notice. Cutroom, 20 credits.
- A cleared library track when a client or a lawyer will ask questions. A curated library.
Questions people ask
- Can I use a Suno or Udio track in a Cutroom ad?
- The music module is the built-in path, and you use it when you want the bed generated where you are cutting. If you have a track you love from elsewhere, nothing stops you assembling that combination in a normal editor.
- Instrumental or vocals for an ad?
- Instrumental, almost always, when there is a voice-over. Two vocal lines competing is the fastest way to make a good read feel cluttered. Sung tracks earn their place when the music is the message, or when nobody is narrating.
- What does Cutroom's music cost?
- 20 credits for one generated track, any length. For scale: the trial is 7 days and 300 credits with no card, Basic is $39.99 a month with 2,500 credits, and Premium is $79.99 with 5,000. Suno and Udio publish their own plans, which change.
- How long should the track be?
- As long as the ad and no longer. For a 30-second vertical ad that means about 30 seconds with a clean start. Fading a two minute song out at 30 seconds is audible and reads as unfinished.
- Is the built-in module ever the wrong choice?
- Yes, when the track is the deliverable. Anthems, jingles, launch films and anything you would iterate a chorus on belong to Suno or Udio. Cutroom gives one generation per request, which is right for a bed and wrong for a song.
A song is a deliverable. A bed is a control. Cutroom puts that control next to the pace and the captions, for 20 credits a track.