# Google Lyria vs MusicGen on Replicate

> MusicGen on Replicate has a score of 54.4 (C) against Google Lyria's 49 (D). Both do audio music. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 48 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-04

MusicGen on Replicate has a score of 54.4 (C) against Google Lyria's 49 (D). Both do audio music. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 48 points.

- Google Lyria: grade D, 49/100, rank #371 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-lyria.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-lyria.json
- MusicGen on Replicate: grade C, 54.4/100, rank #323 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/replicate-musicgen.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/replicate-musicgen.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Google Lyria for security & auth (+20), maintenance & community (+48), transparency & trust (+8).

Pick MusicGen on Replicate for reliability (+15), schema & documentation (+31), agent ergonomics (+35).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Google Lyria | MusicGen on Replicate | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 33 | 48 | MusicGen on Replicate +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 56 | 87 | MusicGen on Replicate +31 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 40 | 75 | MusicGen on Replicate +35 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | Google Lyria +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 32 | Google Lyria +48 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 78 | 70 | Google Lyria +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **49 · D** | **54.4 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Google Lyria | MusicGen on Replicate |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Google | Replicate (Cloudflare) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta` | `https://api.replicate.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy) |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | MIT code, CC-BY-NC-4.0 weights |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-22 | 2024-03-28 |
| Popularity | 4k stars | 24k stars, 634k npm/wk, 387k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**MusicGen on Replicate.** About $0.035 a run, billed by GPU second, with text or melody conditioning. MusicGen weights are CC-BY-NC 4.0, so no commercial use.

## Before you call either

### 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

### MusicGen on Replicate

1. Set `duration` (default 8 seconds) and `model_version`. The default is stereo-melody-large
2. Use `Prefer: wait` for short clips and webhooks for long ones
3. On a 429, wait the reset time in the message, about 30 seconds
4. Switch to `google/lyria-2` or `minimax/music-2.5` when output must be commercial
5. Add a payment method first, or you're held to 6 requests a minute

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