AIVA starts at €11/month for the Standard plan, but the real utility sits at the €33/month Pro tier, which is the only way to actually own the copyright to your music. While tools like Suno and Udio are chasing viral AI pop songs with vocals, AIVA remains steadfastly a tool for composers, game developers, and theory nerds. It doesn't generate a radio hit in one click; it generates a structured MIDI composition that you can actually dissect, rearrange, and polish in a DAW.
The workflow is fundamentally different from the prompt-and-pray model of its competitors. You select a style (or upload an influence track), but instead of a flattened audio file, you get a timeline. You can see the chord progressions, adjust the instrumentation, and most importantly, export the MIDI. For a game developer needing 20 variations of a combat theme, this is invaluable. You aren't stuck with a fixed WAV file; you have the raw note data to route through your own high-quality VSTs in Ableton or Logic.
However, AIVA shows its age in audio fidelity. The built-in instrumentation sounds like a high-end General MIDI set from 2015—clean, but clearly synthetic. It lacks the "ear candy" and production gloss of Udio. If you use the raw audio output, it sounds like stock music. The power is exclusively in the composition data.
The pricing structure is also aggressive regarding rights. On the Standard plan (€11/mo), AIVA retains the copyright, meaning you are technically licensing the music you "created" from them. You only get full ownership on the Pro plan. For a solo indie dev, this makes the entry price effectively €33/month if you want clean IP title.
Use AIVA if you need royalty-free orchestral or electronic themes and have the production skills to humanize the MIDI. Skip it if you want a finished vocal track or a quick background loop for a YouTube video—Soundful or Suno do that cheaper and better.
Pricing
The Free tier is strictly a demo: 3 downloads/month, restricted to 3 minutes, and you must credit AIVA. The "Standard" plan (€15/mo) increases downloads to 15 but AIVA retains copyright, making it risky for commercial projects. The real cost is the Pro plan (€49/mo or ~€33/mo billed annually), which unlocks full copyright ownership, 300 downloads, and stem export. If you are shipping a commercial game or film, the Pro plan is the only viable option.
Technical Verdict
AIVA is a web-first application with no public API for generation, making it unsuitable for automated pipelines. Its technical strength lies in its export engine: it produces clean, quantized MIDI files and properly separated stems (Pro only). Integration requires manual download and import into a DAW. It is not a service you can pip install.
Quick Start
# AIVA has no public API. Workflow is Web UI -> Export MIDI -> Load in Python.
import mido
# Example: Loading an AIVA-exported MIDI file for analysis
mid = mido.MidiFile('AIVA_Composition.mid')
print(f"Track Count: {len(mid.tracks)} | Duration: {mid.length}s")
# Output: Track Count: 12 | Duration: 184.5sWatch Out
- You do not own the copyright on the Standard plan (€11/mo); AIVA does.
- No vocal generation capabilities whatsoever.
- Built-in instrument sounds are 'stock' quality; you must export MIDI to make it sound professional.
- Unused credits do not roll over to the next month.