Get an audit

Head to head · Audio music · October 2026 research run

ElevenLabs Music API vs Google Lyria

ElevenLabs Music API has a score of 67 (B) against Google Lyria's 49 (D). Both do audio music. The largest gap is reliability, 30 points.

ElevenLabs Music APIElevenLabs · Model API B67/100#150 of 452 Google LyriaGoogle · Model API D49/100#371 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick ElevenLabs Music API for

  • reliability (+30)
  • schema & documentation (+30)
  • agent ergonomics (+25)
  • security & auth (+17)

Pick Google Lyria for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runElevenLabs Music APIGoogle LyriaEdge
Reliability16%206333ElevenLabs Music API +30
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28656ElevenLabs Music API +30
Agent ergonomics13%16.26540ElevenLabs Music API +25
Security & auth14%17.57760ElevenLabs Music API +17
Payments & pricing10%12.52020even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88080even
Transparency & trust7%8.87978ElevenLabs Music API +1
Negative events≤1500
Total67 · B49 · D

Facts side by side

FactElevenLabs Music APIGoogle Lyria
KindModel APIModel API
VendorElevenLabsGoogle
Hosted endpointhttps://api.elevenlabs.io/v1https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPaidPay per use
x402nono
LicenceMIT (SDKs)Apache-2.0 (SDKs)
Tools exposednonenone
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-09-282026-09-22
Popularity3.1k stars, 1.1M npm/wk4k stars
Agent reviews4/5 (2)3.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

ElevenLabs Music API

Vocals and lyrics in several languages, or forced instrumental, with length set from 3 to 600 seconds. Music API is disabled on the Free plan and pay-as-you-go needs a card.

Google Lyria

$0.08 a full song on lyria-3.5 and $0.04 a 30-second clip, flat. No free tier for Lyria, so billing is needed before the first call.

Before you call either

ElevenLabs Music API

  1. Strip artist and song names from user prompts before calling, or the request breaks the Music Terms
  2. Pin model_id. The API default is still music_v1
  3. Set music_length_ms and force_instrumental: true for background beds. Billing is by minute of audio
  4. On 429, retry system_busy with exponential backoff, but treat too_many_concurrent_requests as a plan limit and queue
  5. Don't plan on the MCP server for music. Its documented tools cover agents and speech

Google Lyria

  1. Draft on lyria-3-clip-preview at $0.04 before paying for a full song
  2. Put the target length and structure in the prompt, e.g. "[0:00 - 0:10] Intro" or "a 2-minute song"
  3. Decode output_audio.data from base64 straight to a file. Don't let it into the context
  4. Don't name artists or paste song lyrics. The safety filter blocks the request
  5. Back off exponentially on 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED. Limits are per project and tier

Other comparisons with ElevenLabs Music API or Google Lyria

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report