# MusicGen on Replicate vs Stable Audio API

> MusicGen on Replicate has a score of 54.4 (C) against Stable Audio API's 50.3 (D). Both do audio music. The largest gap is reliability, 17 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 Stable Audio API's 50.3 (D). Both do audio music. The largest gap is reliability, 17 points.

- 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
- Stable Audio API: grade D, 50.3/100, rank #362 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/stable-audio.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/stable-audio.json

## Which one, for what

Pick MusicGen on Replicate for schema & documentation (+8), agent ergonomics (+15), security & auth (+10), maintenance & community (+17), transparency & trust (+5).

Pick Stable Audio API for reliability (+17).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | MusicGen on Replicate | Stable Audio API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 48 | 65 | Stable Audio API +17 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 79 | MusicGen on Replicate +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 60 | MusicGen on Replicate +15 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | MusicGen on Replicate +10 |
| 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) | 32 | 15 | MusicGen on Replicate +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 65 | MusicGen on Replicate +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.4 · C** | **50.3 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | MusicGen on Replicate | Stable Audio API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model API |
| Vendor | Replicate (Cloudflare) | Stability AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.replicate.com/v1` | `https://api.stability.ai/v2beta` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy) | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT code, CC-BY-NC-4.0 weights | none |
| 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 | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2024-03-28 | none |
| Popularity | 24k stars, 634k npm/wk, 387k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Stable Audio API.** Pay-as-you-go credits, $0.26 a 3.0 generation and $0.20 on 2.5, failures free. Stable Audio 3.0 is async only, with polling and no webhook, and inpaint stays on 2 and 2.5.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Stable Audio API

1. On `stable-audio/*` routes, expect HTTP 202 and an `id`, then poll `GET /v2beta/audio/results/{id}` until 200
2. Send `accept: audio/*` for raw bytes, not base64 JSON
3. Set `duration`. It defaults to 190 seconds on 3.0
4. Wait 60 seconds after a 429 before the next call
5. Use the `stable-audio-2` routes for inpainting. 3.0 has no inpaint route

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