Best free stem splitters what the free tier really gives you, September 2026

By ShinobiTools Team · Last updated: 2 October 2026

The free tiers, side by side

Read off each tool's own pricing, help or product page on 2 October 2026, with the source in the last column. Free tiers in this category change often, and a few don't publish exact numbers at all. Where that's true, or where a site blocked our check, the table says so instead of guessing.

The tools, one by one

What each one is actually for, and where the free tier stops. Numbers below are what each tool publishes on its own site; several don't publish an exact free-tier ceiling at all, and we say that plainly rather than inventing one.

• StemGrab (ours) — seven stems (vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, other, instrumental) at 192 kbps, no account, 10 tracks a day, files up to 15 minutes. Honest limit: processing happens on our server, so it's not a local/offline option like Demucs or UVR.
• Ultimate Vocal Remover (UVR) — free, open source (MIT) and unlimited, with a desktop GUI for Windows 10+, macOS Big Sur+ and Linux. You pick the separation model yourself and can chain more than one. The cost is an install and a computer with enough power: its own notes name a GTX 1060 with 6 GB as the minimum for GPU processing.
• Demucs — Meta's open-source separation model, similar territory to UVR but free, unlimited, and run from the command line or a Python script instead of a GUI. Splits into 4 stems by default, or 6 experimentally (adding guitar and piano, though the maker's own notes flag the piano stem as less clean). Its creator has moved on to other work, so don't expect new features — the current release still runs fine.
• Spleeter — Deezer's open-source separator, installed via pip, conda or Docker. Offers 2, 4 or 5-stem models and is fast enough to process audio around 100x faster than real time on a GPU. No interface beyond the command line or a Python API.
• LALAL.AI — the free Starter plan processes up to 10 minutes in a slower queue with a 200 MB file cap, and minutes count per stem type (a 4-minute song split two ways uses 8). The honest catch: its pricing table marks result downloads as not included on Starter, so free use is a preview, not a free export. It also has a voice changer, a lead and backing vocal splitter, apps, and a VST plugin and API on Pro. Some people just search lalal ai stem splitter directly, since that's literally what it does.
• Moises — a musician-focused suite: stem separation alongside chord detection, a key/BPM finder and a practice player that can slow a track down without changing pitch. The free plan needs an account and allows 5 uploads a month, up to 5 minutes each, as 2 or 4 stems. Its pricing page doesn't show the number, but its help centre does.
• Splitter.ai — a free browser splitter built on Deezer's Spleeter, with a paid Pro tier advertising better two-stem separation. Free uploads wait in a shared queue and are deleted after an hour. Its site doesn't publish exact free-tier minute or file limits, so we can't put a number on it here.
• PhonicMind — recognises up to 16 instrument and vocal categories in a single pass (lead vocal, harmony vocal, drums, bass, guitars, keys, strings, horns), more granular than most tools on this list. The free tier is a preview only: downloads start at the $18.99/month Play plan, or $6.99 for a single song.
• vocalremover.org — a long-running free browser tool that splits vocals from instrumental and also finds pitch, key and BPM. Its site blocked our check on 2 October 2026, so we can't confirm its current limits or whether it needs an account.
• BandLab Splitter — a free stem splitter built into BandLab's studio on the web and in its apps, splitting into 2 or 4 stems, tied to a free BandLab account. BandLab's own blog calls it free on an unlimited number of tracks; Pro and Max add guitar, piano and strings.
• Fadr — the fadr stem splitter doubles as a remix and DJ-set builder, and its free Basic tier states no cap on how many songs you split. The catch: Basic gives 4 stems, MP3 downloads only and uploads up to 10 minutes; lossless WAV, more stems and 1-hour uploads sit behind the $10/month Plus tier.
• Loudly — the loudly stem splitter sits inside a wider AI music-generation platform, useful if you also want to build a backing track around the stem you pull out. It needs a Loudly account, and the free tier is a set allowance of audio minutes rather than unlimited use; the page doesn't say how many.

Where the others are better than StemGrab

• UVR, Demucs, Spleeter: no daily limit, no file-length cap, nothing uploaded, and you choose the model. StemGrab stops at 10 songs a day and 15 minutes per file.
• LALAL.AI, Moises, PhonicMind, Fadr (paid): lead and backing vocals as separate stems. StemGrab keeps every voice in one vocal stem.
• Moises and BandLab: a practice player or studio around the stems, apps for your phone, and your songs saved in an account.
• LALAL.AI: a voice changer, a VST plugin and an API. Fadr: remix and DJ tools.

Why people pick StemGrab

• No account, no watermark, and the free download is the full result
• 10 songs a day, up to 15 minutes and 2 GB each, seven stems per song
• MP3 at 192 kbps or WAV; upload deleted after processing, results kept 45 minutes (24 hours with a pass)
• An optional one-time pass (€5 for 30 days) for hour-long tracks, with no subscription

Which stems splitter to use

The honest split is between "open a tab" and "install something", and it decides most of it:

• One song, right now — StemGrab is the song splitter to open: seven stems, six seconds, nothing to install or sign up for.
• The most control over the result, and you have time — UVR on your own machine. You pick the model, chain two of them and tune the settings, with no limits. It is free, and it is the honest answer even though it is not ours.
• You are comfortable with a terminal — Demucs or Spleeter. Same idea as UVR, scriptable, good for batches.
• Practising an instrument — Moises, because the stem separation sits next to a practice player, chord detection and a speed changer. We compare it feature by feature on our Moises alternative page, and LALAL.AI on this one.
• A long DJ set or album side — check the file limit first. This is where the free web tiers stop and where our 15-minute ceiling or a local install matter.

What "free" usually costs you here

Stem separation is expensive to run: it is a neural network chewing through every second of audio on a GPU. Three business models come out of that, and they explain every row in the table.

1. Free minutes, then a subscription. The most common: ten free minutes is enough to prove the quality and not enough to finish a project.
2. Free, but you install it. Local tools move the GPU cost to your own computer. Unlimited, and the quality ceiling is the highest — at the price of a download, a setup and a slower run on a laptop.
3. Free because the hardware is already paid for. Ours: the same GPUs run our other tools, so an extra song costs electricity, not an API bill. Ads around the tool cover the rest.

There is no fourth model where a company rents cloud GPUs and gives away unlimited separation — if you see that promised, look for where the cap actually is.

How we checked

We first opened each tool's own pricing or product page in September 2026 and checked every limit again on 2 October 2026, this time with a source per tool in the table. Splitter.ai and Loudly don't publish an exact free-tier number anywhere we could find, and vocalremover.org blocked our check, so the table says so rather than guessing. We did not run one song through all ten and rank the audio quality — separation quality depends heavily on the mix, and one test track would make that ranking look more solid than it is.

What we can say about ours specifically: a three-minute song takes about six seconds of processing on our GPUs. We have not run a fair quality test against the other tools (that needs at least ten songs with clear rights, run through every tool), so we make no claim that ours separates better or worse.

Common questions