To use Suno AI in 2026, sign up free at suno.com, open the Create tab, and choose Simple Mode to describe a song in plain English or Custom Mode to write your own lyrics with a separate style field. The free tier now runs v4.5-all, not the v5.5 flagship and not the older v3.5 several current guides still cite.

That model detail sounds small. It isn't, and it changes the entire calculus of how to use Suno AI on a budget. It's the difference between judging Suno by its actual free-tier output and judging it by a model that got replaced months ago. And it's not the strangest thing found while checking guides for this piece against Suno's own interface.

Before getting into how to use Suno AI step by step, one warning worth flagging first: at least one widely-shared "how to use Suno AI" guide is a step-by-step walkthrough of a completely different tool. The screenshots are labeled Overview, Reference Audio, Attach Button, Submit Request, Review Output, Refine Conversation, Advanced Controls. None of those match Suno's actual interface, and by the article's own later paragraphs, it's describing "Soundverse Agent," a separate product with its own conversational assistant and its own "Soundverse DNA" system.

If you follow that walkthrough expecting to land on suno.com, you'll be hunting for buttons that don't exist. It's an easy mistake to miss, because the headline promises Suno and the early paragraphs mention Suno by name repeatedly before quietly pivoting to the writer's own platform two-thirds of the way down. Worth checking any "how to use Suno" tutorial for this exact pattern: does it ever show you suno.com's actual Create, Library, and Explore tabs, or does it drift into screenshots of something else?

This is how to use Suno AI verified directly against Suno's own site rather than a secondhand description.

1. Create an account. Go to suno.com and sign up with Google, Discord, Microsoft, or Apple, no email and password required unless you prefer that route. You land on the Create tab within seconds. That's it.

2. Learn the three real sections. Create is your workspace. Library holds everything you've generated, organized so you can favorite, download, or extend past tracks. Explore shows community songs for inspiration. Three tabs, nothing hidden. That's the whole interface. It's intentionally minimal.

3. Pick Simple Mode or Custom Mode. Simple Mode takes one plain-English description and handles lyrics, structure, and production for you. It's the fastest path to a finished song and the right starting point if you've never used Suno before. Custom Mode splits the job into two separate fields, one for your own lyrics with structure tags and one for style, and rewards the extra setup with real precision once you know what you're after.

4. Keep the Style field and the Lyrics field separate, always. This is the single most common mechanical mistake in guides covering this topic. Two boxes, two jobs. The Style of Music field is where genre, mood, tempo, and instrumentation belong. Structure tags like [Verse] and [Chorus] belong in the Lyrics field, not mixed into the style description. At least one current guide tells readers to write things like "[verse] Romantic piano melody, [chorus] Full band with drums" as a single combined prompt. That blurs exactly the separation Suno's own interface is built around, and it's the kind of habit that produces confused, structurally messy songs.

5. Generate, then iterate. Suno returns two variations per generation. Pick the stronger one, then refine rather than starting over. Small edits beat full rewrites. Ask for a different tempo, extend a section, or regenerate with one changed variable at a time so you can tell what actually moved the needle.

Every how to use Suno AI guide checked for this piece handles the free-tier model differently, and only one of them is current.

Suno's own pricing page states plainly that the free plan runs v4.5-all. Paid tiers add v5, v5.5, and (on Pro and above) commercial rights, stem separation, and priority generation. That's not a guess. It's copied directly from Suno's pricing page as it reads right now.

One popular tutorial states free users are stuck on v3.5. That was true once. It stopped being true when Suno swapped v3.5 out of the free tier for v4.5-all, a change covered by outside tech press at the time as a meaningful jump in free-tier quality, not a minor patch. A guide repeating the v3.5 claim today isn't lying. It's just describing a free tier that no longer exists.

Other guides skip the question entirely and let you assume the free tier runs whatever's newest. It doesn't. v5 and v5.5 stay behind a paid wall. If your free-tier songs sound a step behind what you're hearing in demos online, this is usually why, and no amount of better prompting closes that particular gap.

This is where how to use Suno AI splits into two real paths. Start in Simple Mode if you're new. It teaches you how Suno interprets a description before you add the complexity of separate lyric and style fields. A workable first prompt looks like: "upbeat indie pop, female vocals, summer vibes, acoustic guitar and synths." Genre, mood, vocal type, and instrumentation in one line, nothing contradictory.

The second half of how to use Suno AI well is knowing when to graduate. Move to Custom Mode once you have actual lyrics you want sung, or you need precise control over song structure. Write your lyrics with [Verse], [Chorus], [Bridge], and [Outro] tags in the Lyrics field. Keep the Style field to genre, era, mood, tempo, and instrumentation only, no structure tags, no lyric fragments.

One more pattern worth naming, because it shows up across guides on how to use Suno AI: a prompt like "write a sad breakup song with late-night feelings and regrets" is a song topic, not a style prompt. It tells Suno what the song is about, which is useful for Simple Mode, but it says nothing about genre, tempo, or instrumentation, the actual sonic ingredients Custom Mode's style field wants. Confusing the two is a quieter version of the same mistake as mixing structure tags into style text: right idea, wrong field.

Beyond field confusion, a few other habits separate a frustrating first hour on Suno from a productive one.

Vague prompts get vague songs. "Good music" or "emotional song" gives the model almost nothing to lock onto. No anchor, no target. Suno fills the gap with whatever's statistically average for that mood, which rarely sounds intentional. Name the actual genre, era, and at least two supporting details every time.

Overloaded prompts confuse the model as much as vague ones do. Cramming fifteen requirements into one style field doesn't produce a more precise song. More isn't more precise. It produces a muddled one, because the model has no way to prioritize which detail matters most. Four to seven descriptors is the tested sweet spot across the guides checked for this piece, and it holds up against Suno's own interface behavior too.

Contradictory directions cancel each other out. "Slow and high-energy" or "dark and cheerful" reads as a coin flip to the model, not a considered brief. Scan your prompt for opposing pairs before hitting generate. If two words in the same line could never describe the same real song, one of them has to go.

None of these three fixes to how to use Suno AI more effectively requires Custom Mode, advanced tags, or paid access. They work identically whether you're on the free v4.5-all tier or a paid plan, because they're about how you describe things, not which model interprets the description.

How to use Suno AI on the free plan: what model does it actually run? v4.5-all, confirmed on Suno's own pricing page. Not v3.5, and not v5 or v5.5, both of which require a paid plan.

Do I need Custom Mode to get good results? No. Simple Mode produces complete, coherent songs and is the better starting point. Custom Mode adds control, not a quality floor Simple Mode lacks.

Where do structure tags like [Chorus] go? In the Lyrics field only, never in the Style of Music field. Mixing them together is one of the most common beginner errors covered in this guide.

How many songs can I generate for free per day? Roughly 10, based on Suno's daily credit allowance, though this can shift and is worth checking on the current pricing page rather than an older guide.

Can I tell if a "how to use Suno" guide is actually describing Suno? Check whether the screenshots show suno.com's own Create, Library, and Explore tabs. If a tutorial drifts into unfamiliar button names and a different company's product mentions, it's not describing the platform it claims to.