StemSplit Alternative

At a Glance

Pick StemSplit if you need files — lossless downloads, an API, long audio, or a phone. Pick Riffloop if you need to play along — the stems stay live on the YouTube page with loop, speed, key and chords attached, and the separation runs on your own machine.

• 🤝 Both take files, YouTube links and SoundCloud links
• 🎚️ Both separate into six parts
• ☁️ StemSplit processes on its servers; Riffloop on your machine
• 💾 StemSplit downloads stems; Riffloop keeps them playing
• 💳 StemSplit charges per minute; Riffloop is free tier plus a flat plan
• 📱 StemSplit runs on a phone; Riffloop is desktop and Chromebook

What Each One Is

StemSplit is a separation service: you give it a song, its servers split it, and you download the files. Riffloop is a practice studio: it separates the song on your own machine and then keeps it playable, so the stems are something you work with rather than something you file away.

StemSplit

A pay-as-you-go web service. You paste a YouTube or SoundCloud link, or upload a file, and it returns two, four or six stems as WAV, MP3 or FLAC. Processing runs on their GPUs, most songs finish in under a minute, and there is a REST API with webhooks on every tier. Credits are minutes: one credit separates one minute of audio, and they don't expire. It runs in any browser, including a phone, with nothing to install.

Riffloop

A Chrome extension plus a web Studio. The extension puts a panel under the YouTube player so a song can be separated and practised without leaving the page; the Studio takes your own files, YouTube links and SoundCloud links. Separation runs on your machine, so the audio isn't sent anywhere. What arrives isn't a folder of files — it's six faders you can mute and solo, an A-B loop, a speed control that holds the pitch, a key change, the chord track and a metronome locked to the song's own beats.

Where StemSplit Fits Better

Four situations where StemSplit is the right tool, and switching would cost you something real.

• 💾 You need the files. Lossless WAV or FLAC, downloaded, to take into a DAW or a set.
• 🔌 You need an API. REST plus webhooks on every tier, with automation guides. Riffloop is built around the browser session rather than a pipeline.
• 📱 You work from a phone or tablet. It runs in any browser with nothing installed.
• ⏱️ You process long audio. Two-hour DJ sets and podcasts, and a Camelot and Rekordbox workflow built for that job.

There's a pricing case as well. At $0.10 to $0.20 a minute with credits that never expire, a few songs a year costs a couple of dollars once. No subscription beats that on arithmetic, including ours. Riffloop is built for the person who works on songs most weeks, where a flat price and a free daily allowance land differently.

Where Riffloop Is Genuinely Different

Both tools separate a song into six parts. Riffloop's difference starts after that: the stems stay live, on the page, with the practice controls attached to them.

• ▶️ Riffloop works in place on the YouTube video — the panel sits under the player, so nothing is pasted or fetched
• 🔒 Riffloop separates on your own machine — the audio isn't sent to a server
• 🎚️ Riffloop keeps the stems playable — mute and solo while it runs, not a 30-second preview
• 🔁 Riffloop attaches the practice controls to the result — A-B loop, speed with the pitch held, key change
• 🎼 Riffloop reads the chords and locks a click to the beat — on the same panel as the faders
• 🆓 Riffloop has a daily free allowance — five separations a day signed in, three as a guest

The distinction that decides most of it: StemSplit takes a YouTube link and fetches the audio on its own servers, and Riffloop runs on the video already open in your tab. One produces files; the other produces a session you play along with.

Price, Compared Honestly

The two price in different units, so a straight comparison needs a usage figure. StemSplit charges by the minute of audio; Riffloop charges a flat rate and gives a daily allowance free.

Roughly: a three-minute song is three credits, so about 30 to 60 cents on StemSplit. Ten songs is three to six dollars, once. Riffloop's yearly plan is $39 with no per-song cost and a free daily allowance underneath it. Below about a hundred songs a year the credits are cheaper; above it the flat rate is, and neither of those is an argument about quality.

Riffloop vs StemSplit

The two tools match on what goes in — both take a file, a YouTube link or a SoundCloud link, and both separate a song into six parts. They differ on where the work happens and on what exists once the song is split.

StemSplit takes seven of those rows, and they cluster in one place: getting finished files out of the system. Riffloop takes the rows about what happens while the song is playing. If you're learning a part rather than exporting one, that's the half of the table to read.

Test It Yourself in Ten Minutes

Comparison pages are written by people with a stake in the answer, this one included. Here's a procedure that settles it with a song you already know, using free tiers on both sides.

1. Pick a song you've already learned. You need to know what the guitar or the bass actually plays, so you can judge what comes back rather than guess.
2. Run it through StemSplit. Their signup gives 5 free minutes, which covers one song. Download the six stems.
3. Open the same song on YouTube with Riffloop. Three separations as a guest, no account. Separate the section with the part you care about.
4. Compare the same eight bars. Solo the instrument in both. On a normal mix you'll find the difference small — that's the honest expectation, not a hedge.
5. Now try to practise those eight bars. In one, loop them, drop to 75% with the pitch held, and mute the part you play. In the other, open the files in whatever you use. Whichever of those two matches how you actually work is your answer.

Step five is the whole comparison. Steps two through four usually end in a tie, and if they don't, the roundup ranks the field on quality rather than workflow.

How We Checked This

We make one of the two tools here, so weigh the Riffloop column accordingly. Every StemSplit figure on this page was read off stemsplit.io's own pricing, FAQ and changelog pages on 7 September 2026 — not from review sites, and not from our own testing of their service.

One thing worth knowing if you're pricing it up: the free tier is 5 minutes. That's what their pricing page says and what their changelog records, though a few of their older pages still say ten. Their file limits also read differently in different places — the web uploader says 100MB while the API documentation says 500MB with a two-hour ceiling. If a limit matters to your job, check it on the page for the route you'll actually use.

We haven't scored either tool for separation quality. Both run the same class of separation and the difference on a normal mix is small — quality is not where these two part company, and any page claiming a precise accuracy percentage for either of them made the number up. If you want quality judged by someone with no stake in it, MusicRadar tested eleven separation tools in January 2026, including the option already sitting inside most DAWs.

If Neither Is Quite Right

This page compares two tools on purpose. If you're still choosing rather than switching, the field is wider than both of us.

LALAL.AI is the usual reference for separation quality and bills per stem. Moises brings the practice features with real phone and tablet apps, and we compare it directly on the Moises alternative page. Ultimate Vocal Remover is free and runs on your own machine if you're comfortable installing it. Our roundup of stem splitters ranks eight of them by use case, including the cases where Riffloop comes second.

StemSplit and Riffloop — FAQ

What people actually ask before switching: what StemSplit costs, whether credits expire, where the audio goes, and which tool suits which job.

Keep Going With Riffloop