Best AI stem splitters in 2026: a desk review of AudioShake, Demucs, iZotope RX, LALAL.AI and Moises

This is a desk review, not a test. We compared what each maker publishes about its own stem splitter (pricing pages, terms, privacy policies and documentation), linked every page we used, and gave no scores. The five are listed alphabetically. Nobody paid to be included, and nothing on this page is an affiliate link. If you want to know how the models work and how to handle their artefacts, start with our stem separation guide.

How do they compare on paper?

"Not stated" means the pages we checked don't say. It doesn't mean the answer is bad.

What does each one offer?

AudioShake covers film and broadcast as well as music. Studio handles stems, dialogue, music and effects, lyrics and multi-speaker splits from one upload. Paid plans export WAV, FLAC and MP3 and take files up to two hours. The plans are priced in credits, and the pricing section we read doesn't say how many credits a minute of audio uses. Businesses can run its models in their own cloud or offline, but that's a sales conversation, not a published price.

Demucs is Meta's open-source model, and a common benchmark: AudioShake's own site compares its models against it. It's a command-line Python tool, not an app. It exports WAV (16-bit by default, 24-bit or float on request) or MP3. It needs about 7 GB of GPU memory at default settings, or runs on the CPU at roughly 1.5 times the track's length. Its README warns that the six-stem model's piano has "a lot of bleeding and artifacts", and says the repository "is not maintained anymore". It still works, but nobody is promising fixes.

iZotope RX 12 is a repair suite with separation built in, rather than a splitter. Music Rebalance relevels vocals, bass, percussion and other instruments in a finished mix, offline or as a real-time plugin, and can export them as stems. It's the priciest way in, at $399 for Standard. It makes most sense if you also need the rest of RX's repair tools.

LALAL.AI publishes the clearest plan table of the five: minutes per queue, a 200 MB file limit on the free plan and 2 GB on paid plans, and top-ups for more fast-queue minutes. Unused fast minutes don't roll over. The local model, Lyra, is Pro only. LALAL.AI says it trades some quality for running on your hardware, and recommends its cloud models for final mixes. We covered that trade-off in our news on its plugin launch.

Moises is built for players as much as producers: its home page lists a chord finder, speed changer and lyric transcription alongside stem separation. Its home page says 27 stem types, while its September 2026 Studio announcement says "30+" categories, so we'll count for ourselves. Studio exports DAWproject and Ableton Live Set files. Its pricing page shows no prices to logged-out visitors.

Do you need one at all?

Maybe not. Ableton Live Suite has had four-stem separation since 12.3, running locally on Music AI's algorithms (Music AI is the company behind Moises). Logic Pro's Stem Splitter launched in May 2024 with four stems, processed on M-series Macs and iPads. We left both out of the list because you can't buy them separately. A standalone splitter has to beat them on stem range, quality or price.

How we'll rank them

We follow our methodology and its scoring rubric. Desk reviews carry no scores, every product is judged by the same rules, and payment never changes where a tool appears or how it scores. When we test these five, we'll score them on the rubric's criteria. Control doesn't apply to this category, so the other weights scale up in proportion (the four weights below add up to 90, so each is divided by 90 and multiplied by 100).

• Performance (35, scaled 38.9). Separation quality, stem by stem. We'll use the same set of lossless tracks across genres, including dense mixes. We'll listen blind for bleed and artefacts, and run a null test (stems summed against the polarity-inverted original).
• Rights and data (20, scaled 22.2). Where audio is processed, how long uploads are kept, what the terms allow the maker to do with your files, and what they make you promise about rights.
• Cost and limits (20, scaled 22.2). How far the free tier really goes, what a credit or a minute buys, file size and length limits, and the total cost for a typical month at published prices.
• Workflow and formats (15, scaled 16.7). Export formats and bit depth, DAW integration, batch processing and speed.

What we think

"We don't train on your files" is three different promises. LALAL.AI's privacy policy says it doesn't use user files for AI training, full stop. Moises's promise covers its "shared models"; its custom voice models are a separate, opt-in feature, built only from voices you have rights to and kept private to you. AudioShake's terms rule out training "any AI model or system designed to generate new, original musical compositions or sound recordings". But they also grant it the right to use your content "to improve and enhance the Audioshake Platform". On our reading, that leaves room to use uploads to improve its separation models. We haven't put this to AudioShake yet, and we'll ask before we test. If you're uploading a client's unreleased session, the scope of that sentence matters more than the stem count.

None of the cloud services gives a deletion date we could find. LALAL.AI's privacy policy keeps personal data "only for the period necessary", and AudioShake's privacy policy says "as long as necessary". Neither sets a fixed period for uploaded audio, and we found none for Moises on the pages we read. For unreleased music, we think that's the strongest argument for local processing: Demucs, Lyra, RX, or the splitter in your DAW.

Hidden prices are a cost for artists. You can compare every tool here before signing up except Moises. A price you can only see after handing over an email is a small thing, but it's the opposite of the transparency these companies ask for when they promise to handle your music carefully.

If a maker thinks we've got a published detail wrong, tell us and we'll correct it here.