AI Tools

Is Free Stem Separation Software Good Enough? StemDeck vs Moises and LALAL.AI

Published 2026-08-30 · Researched and price-checked on official sources

StemDeck is a free stem separation software that splits audio into six stems entirely on your machine, verified on version 0.15.2 released August 26, 2026. No account, no upload, no subscription: it runs locally on Windows, Linux, and macOS. This review compares StemDeck with the paid cloud services Moises and LALAL.AI, with pricing checked on August 30, 2026.

Key facts

What matters

StemDeck 0.15.2 (released August 26, 2026) is free, Apache-2.0 licensed, and separates vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, and other stems locally using Meta's Demucs htdemucs_6s model.
No account, no upload, no subscription: audio never leaves your machine, and the only internet use is YouTube import and a one-time model download of about 170 MB.
LALAL.AI plans verified on its pricing page: free Starter (10 minutes), Lite at $7.5/month billed annually ($90/year), and Pro at $15/month billed annually ($180/year).
Moises reports more than 75 million musicians but shows paid pricing only after login, so its tiers cannot be cost-compared from public pages.
StemDeck's honest gaps: one job at a time, no mobile app, no pitch or chord tools, slow on CPU-only machines, and macOS builds are not yet code-signed.

What is StemDeck?

StemDeck is a free, open-source stem separation software for Windows, Linux, and macOS that splits a song into six stems: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, and other. Everything runs on your own machine through a DAW-style interface, with no account, no uploads, and no subscription.

It positions itself directly against cloud stem splitters. The project's README calls StemDeck "a free, open alternative to cloud stem-splitters like Moises and LALAL.AI." The project was created in May 2026, is licensed under Apache-2.0, and is self-hostable through Docker or Unraid images published on GitHub Container Registry.

Verified: what StemDeck 0.15.2 actually does

The latest release, version 0.15.2, shipped on August 26, 2026, with a fix for Windows portable installs. The GitHub repository reports 3,142 stars and 258 forks as of August 30, 2026. The license is Apache-2.0 and the LICENSE file is present in the repository, so this is genuinely open source, not merely source-available.

Feature set, from the official README

Six-stem separation using Demucs htdemucs_6s, Meta AI's open-source model, with automatic device detection: CUDA on NVIDIA, MPS on Apple Silicon, CPU fallback.
Import by drag-and-drop MP3, WAV, FLAC, OGG/Opus, MP4, or M4A files, or a pasted YouTube URL.
DAW-style multitrack editor with mute, solo, per-stem faders, waveform zoom, loop regions, and live VU meters.
Song analysis: BPM via librosa beat tracking, key and scale detection, integrated LUFS, and sample peak.
Export individual stems or a summed mix.wav of selected stems.

The only internet use is YouTube import and a one-time model download of about 170 MB, cached afterward. Processing speed depends on your hardware: fast with a GPU, slow on CPU-only machines.

Which free stem separation software should you use: StemDeck vs Moises vs LALAL.AI

The table below compiles what each product verifiably states about itself. StemDeck is the only fully local option and the only one with an open-source license. The paid services trade that away for speed on any hardware, mobile apps, batch processing, and extra musician tools, all verified on their official pages on August 30, 2026.

LALAL.AI pricing, verified on the official page

LALAL.AI's pricing page, checked on August 30, 2026, shows three tiers under annual billing. The free Starter tier gives 10 minutes of processing in the relaxed queue, a 200 MB per-file upload limit, and result previews only. Lite costs $7.5 per month billed annually ($90 per year): 90 minutes per month in the fast queue, unlimited relaxed-queue minutes, 2 GB uploads, result downloads, and batch processing. Pro costs $15 per month billed annually ($180 per year): 250 fast-queue minutes, 3 voice pack slots, the VST plugin, and API access.

LALAL.AI runs in the cloud with an account, and per the site banner it just added guitar and piano stems in its Andromeda update. StemDeck's published comparison notes cloud services like these offer up to 10 stems depending on service and plan.

Moises: 75 million users, but pricing is behind login

Moises is the biggest name in consumer stem separation. Its homepage states it is trusted by more than 75 million artists and musicians worldwide. On top of stem separation it bundles chord detection, speed changing, lyric transcription, AI Studio, and Voice Studio, and Apple named it iPad App of the Year, with Charlie Puth serving as Chief Music Officer.

One fact buyers will struggle to verify: exact paid pricing. Moises' FAQ directs visitors to "log in to see our full pricing and features table," and the pricing URL redirects to the homepage without a login. As of August 30, 2026, Moises' paid tiers are not publicly listed, so any specific Moises price you see quoted elsewhere did not come from Moises itself.

The honest catch: where StemDeck falls short

One job at a time: no batch queue in the desktop app.
Speed depends on your hardware, and CPU-only machines are slow, per the README's own comparison.
No mobile apps, so nothing for iPhone or Android practice on the go.
No pitch shift, chord detection, lyrics, click track, or BPM tap, the tools the paid apps bundle in.
macOS builds are not code-signed yet. The v0.15.2 release notes tell Mac users to clear the Gatekeeper quarantine flag with xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/StemDeck.app, or macOS reports the app as damaged.
The first run downloads the roughly 170 MB stem model before anything works.

Who should use which

Choose StemDeck if you want stems for personal study, practice, transcription, or remixing, care about audio privacy, or refuse another subscription. It is the only option here that works fully offline and the only one you can fork and self-host.

Choose LALAL.AI if you process many tracks and need fast queue minutes, batch uploads, the VST plugin, or API access, and you accept uploading audio to a cloud service. Its pricing is public and predictable.

Choose Moises if you want a polished mobile experience with chord, speed, and lyric tools and do not mind that pricing is only visible after creating an account.

StemDeck joins a growing lineup of audio AI tools we track. For voice cloning and podcast editing, see our ElevenLabs and Descript tool profiles, and browse the rest of the radar archive for weekly AI tool comparisons.

At a glance

Feature	StemDeck	LALAL.AI	Moises
Price	Free, open source	Free tier; Lite $7.5/mo, Pro $15/mo billed annually	Free tier; paid plans shown only after login
Where it runs	Locally on your machine	Cloud upload	Cloud upload
Account required	No	Yes	Yes
Stems	6: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, other	Up to 10; guitar and piano added in Andromeda update	Not stated on public homepage
Offline use	Yes	No	No
Mobile apps	No	iOS and Android	iOS, iPad, Android, web, desktop
License	Apache-2.0	Proprietary	Proprietary

StemDeck vs LALAL.AI vs Moises, verified August 30, 2026

FAQ

Is StemDeck really free?

Yes. StemDeck is Apache-2.0 licensed open-source software with no account, no subscription, and no paid tier. The only costs are your own hardware and a one-time model download of about 170 MB, verified against the repository and README on August 30, 2026.

Does StemDeck work on a Mac?

Yes, official builds exist for Apple Silicon (M1 through M4) and Intel Macs. Because the app is not code-signed yet, the first launch requires clearing the Gatekeeper quarantine flag, or macOS will refuse to open it.

StemDeck vs Moises: which should I use?

For free, private, offline separation, StemDeck wins: six stems, no uploads, no account. For a mobile app with chord detection, speed control, and lyric transcription, Moises wins, but its paid pricing is only shown after login, so you cannot compare the two on price directly.