SoundCloud vs Spotify: Which Music Streaming Service to Choose?

Part 1. SoundCloud vs Spotify: Quick Overview

Before we dive into the comparison deeply, you can take a quick glance at the differences between Spotify and SoundCloud at the table below.

Features	SoundCloud	Spotify
Founded	2008	2006
Active Users	140M+ (registered)	640M+
Music Library	300M+ songs	100M+ songs (includes audiobooks and podcasts)
Free Plan	✅	✅
Price (For Listeners)	SoundCloud Go: $4.99/month; SoundCloud Go+: $10.99/month	Spotify Premium Individual: $11.99/month
Price (For Artists)	Artist: $3.25/month; Artist Pro: $8.25/month	No native artist upload; distribution via third-party services like TuneCore or DistroKid
Subscription Free Trial	7 days for SoundCloud Go; 30 days for SoundCloud Go+ & Student	4 months for new individual users (Ends on December 31, 2025); 30 days for Spotify Student Premium
Audio Quality	256kbps (AAC)	24-bit/44.1kHz (FLAC)
Offline Playback	✅ (only within the platform)	✅ (only within the platform)
Best For	Indie music addicts, remixes, DJ sets, unreleased demos	Mainstream music listeners, curated albums and playlists, audiophiles, high-quality streaming, podcasts fans

If you are listeners who want to get the best music experience, please skip to Part 2 for more details.

If you are artists who want to learn more about uploading tracks, getting paid, etc., please skip to Part 3 for more details.

Part 2. Spotify vs SoundCloud for Listeners

For music listeners, now please check the aspects below to learn more about SoundCloud vs Spotify, including audio quality, music library, music discovery, social features, price plans and so on.

Music Library and Music Discovery

In Spotify's music library, there are more than 100 million songs. Every song is tagged, organized and official. You can find the songs once they are on the Billboard charts. Also, you can find podcasts and audiobooks on Spotify. But you can't find some old tracks or long remixes due to copyright restrictions.

SoundCloud has over 300 million tracks in its music library, which is larger than Spotify's. That is because SoundCloud relies heavily on users to upload and share tracks onto its platform, no matter original tracks or covers. In this case, you can also find some unique content and some talented independent artists on SoundCloud. However, you have to listen to low-quality recordings and incomplete demos.

Both SoundCloud and Spotify can generate recommendations for users, which isn't anything new. According to the user's listening habits, Spotify generates a few customized algorithm-based playlists like "Daily Mixes", "Release Radar" and "Discover Weekly". And at the end of a year, Spotify will give users a "Spotify Wrapped", which is a "year in review" feature, giving you a deep and personalized look into your listening trends and habits in the past year. What's more, with the Smart Shuffle and Spotify AI DJ features, it will recommend new songs that match your taste.

While in SoundCloud, you can view comments with a specific timestamp on the soundtrack, which Spotify lacks. Also, you can find new artists and tracks via 'Artists You Should Know', 'Artist Stations' or 'Daily Drops' section.

Winner: Tie

It depends on your music taste and listening habits. If you want to listen to official tracks with high quality and want to explore music, you should choose Spotify. If you want remixes, covers and music that you can't find on other music services and want to see comments on the tracks, you can choose SoundCloud.

Audio Quality

Now, check the comparison of SoundCloud vs Spotify audio quality. This is a major factor that needs to be considered while choosing a music service.

Spotify Free users are limited to about 160kbps. Spotify Premium users now can stream up to 24-bit/44.1kHz (FLAC), which is called Spotify Lossless. Previously, Premium users could only stream up to 320kbps (Ogg Vorbis).

When it comes to SoundCloud sound quality, it offers maximum streaming quality for tracks at 256kbps (AAC), which is lower than Spotify's highest setting. But SoundCloud Free users can only stream at 128kbps MP3.

Winner: Spotify

Spotify wins for it offers Lossless quality, which is better for users who pursue high-quality streaming.

Popularity and Social Features

According to some research, there are more than 640 million monthly active users on Spotify. SoundCloud has over 140 million monthly users.

Both SoundCloud and Spotify support to share songs with friends or share to social platforms via a link address. Besides, Spotify offers Spotify Jam and Collaborative Playlist features for users to listen to music together and even add songs to the queue in real time. But SoundCloud lacks these features for users.

By the way, both these two music services offer the 'year in review' to users to see their listening history of the year. They are Spotify Wrapped and SoundCloud Playback. In the yearly review, you can see your top artists, music tastes and so on.

Winner: Spotify

Spotify offers lots of features for users to create personalized playlist and listen to music with friends together. If you prefer these features, you can pick up Spotify.

User Interface and User Experience

Spotify has a polished, user-friendly and professional user interface, which is ideal for casual listeners. SoundCloud focuses on community interaction and tracks comments, giving users a raw and authentic experience. But on Spotify, you can't comment on any track and you can't message people within the app directly. On SoundCloud, you can do all of these.

Winner: Tie

Spotify is better for users who want an easy-to-use app interface, while SoundCloud is ideal for users who want to interact with other users and even artists.

Price and Plans

Price is one of the key factors that most customers are concerned about. As you can see from the above form, both SoundCloud and Spotify offer free listening plans. With SoundCloud free version, users can access a massive amount of music with ads, but not the full SoundCloud library. If you are visiting the SoundCloud website, you can listen to music without logging in or even signing up for an account.

Then SoundCloud offers two tiers of subscription plans: SoundCloud Go for $4.99/month and SoundCloud Go+ for $10.99/month. Both plans offer ad-free streaming and offline listening, while SoundCloud Go+ has more tracks with higher quality than the Go plan.

In addition, SoundCloud is known as an audio discovery platform for artists, podcasters, and labels to share music with their audience. So SoundCloud launches two plans for the group accordingly: SoundCloud Artist for $3.25/month and SoundCloud Artist Pro for $8.25/month. Subscribing to Pro, artists can upload unlimited amount of any type of audio, schedule releases, and so many more features.

As for Spotify, its free plan gives users access to all music but with interruptive audio or visual advertisements between 3 to 5 songs. If you are using Spotify mobile app, you are only allowed to skip 6 songs per hour, and can only shuffle play most playlists.

Spotify Premium costs $11.99/month for individuals and students can get a discount at $5.99/month after verification. With Spotify Premium family plan, users can add up to 6 accounts to the group. Spotify Premium Duo costs $16.99/month for two accounts.

View also: Spotify Free vs Premium

Note: Now, new users can get Spotify Premium free trial for 4 months, and student can enjoy a month free trial.

Plans	SoundCloud	Spotify
Individual Plan	SoundCloud Go: $4.99/month SoundCloud Go+: $10.99/month	$11.99/month
Student Plan	SoundCloud Go+ Student: $5.49/month	$5.99/month
Duo Plan	/	$16.99/month
Family Plan	/	$19.99/month
Artists Plan	Artist: $3.25/month Artist Pro: $8.25/month	N/A

Winner: Spotify

Though SoundCloud is cheaper than Spotify, Spotify's Family and Duo plans surpass SoundCloud. By subscribing to one of these two plans, each person can save money compared to getting an individual plan separately.

View also: How to Get SoundCloud Free Trial

Part 3. SoundCloud vs Spotify for Artists

For artists, you can check this section to learn more about the different business models for creators between Spotify and SoundCloud.

Music Upload Limits

On Spotify, you can't upload music its platform directly. You have to use a third-party digital distributor like DistroKid, CD Baby, etc. On SoundCloud, you just tap the built-in Upload button on the platform to upload your file and manage your file easily.

Winner: SoundCloud

Profit Model

Spotify uses the Pro-Rata Model. It distributes all its revenue based on total global streams. SoundCloud adopts a 'user-centric' model, which is Fan-Driven Royalty. You can directly get profit from fans and earn more per stream on SoundCloud than on Spotify.

Winner: SoundCloud

Building a Fan Base

SoundCloud is ideal for building a fanbase, as it allows you to comment, repost and send direct messages to fans. Spotify is better for monetizing a fanbase you already have. But you can't connect to your fans directly on Spotify.

Winner: SoundCloud

Part 4. Spotify vs SoundCloud: Pros and Cons

In this part, we list the Pros & Cons of Spotify and SoundCloud so that you have a clearer overview of each platform's advantages and disadvantages.

Spotify Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Spotify free users can have access to most tracks in the library.

• Spotify collaborative playlist allows users to add songs to a playlist together by sharing links.

• Offers Lossless audio quality for Spotify Premium users.

• The user-friendly Spotify Connect can let users switch music between devices easily.

Cons:

• One account is allowed to stream on 3 devices only.

• Spotify Premium users are allowed to download 10,000 songs for offline listening only, and the downloaded Spotify music can only be played within the Spotify app due to format restrictions. When the subscription expires, users can no longer listen to any Spotify music, even if they have downloaded them before.

SoundCloud Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Independent artists have a large platform to upload their original music.

• Vice versa, users can discover great music not available elsewhere and talented musicians here.

• SoundCloud free version can satisfy most users' needs.

• Supports to comment and repost.

Cons:

• Free users only get 15 million tracks.

• Mediocre sound quality is a defect for some audiophiles.

• Artists have to pay for SoundCloud to upload and stream their music onto the platform without limitation.

Part 5. How to Keep Spotify and SoundCloud Music Offline without Subscription

No matter you choose SoundCloud or Spotify, you can't own the music files actually. Once your subscription expires or the track is not accessible on the platform, you can't access the music tracks online and offline anymore.

So, to help you and keep your music forever, we'd like to recommend two tools to you.

For Spotify users, you can use AudFree Spotify Music Downloader. It is a professional software designed to download Spotify music as Lossless FLAC files to the computer at 13X speed and convert them into common audio formats like MP3, FLAC, AIFF, etc. with high quality. With this tool, you can keep Spotify music forever and play them offline anywhere.

For SoundCloud users, we'd like to recommend AudFree Streaming Audio Recorder. It is an all-in-one music converter that supports to download music from SoundCloud to computer and supports even more music services, including Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc. After using it, you can get local SoundCloud music tracks for offline playback forever.

Part 6. FAQs about Spotify vs SoundCloud

Can I Transfer My SoundCloud Playlist to Spotify, or Vice Versa?

Yes, now you can use the built-in Import Music feature in the Spotify mobile app to transfer SoundCloud playlist to Spotify via TuneMyMusic. To transfer Spotify playlist to SoundCloud, you need to use online tools like Soundiiz, etc. But they're not the actual music tracks. If you want to keep the true music files, you can use AudFree tool to download SoundCloud or Spotify playlists as local files and then import them to your music library.

Which Platform Uses More Data, Spotify or SoundCloud?

In general, Spotify will consume more data, especially when you stream music at 'Very High' quality, as it will use more than 100MB per hour. SoundCloud uses about 60-70MB per hour as its standard streaming is more compressed, which is user-friendly for those with limited data plans.

Is SoundCloud or Spotify Better for Smart Speakers like Alexa, Google Home, etc.?

Spotify is better for smart speakers as it offers a Spotify Connect feature. This allows you to control music playback on your devices directly from your phone.

Why Is Spotify Louder than SoundCloud?

That is because Spotify uses Audio Normalization by default. In this case, it can adjust each track to play at the same volume. However, SoundCloud doesn't normalize audio.

Part 7. Finals Thoughts

So, is SoundCloud better than Spotify? It depends on your needs.

If you are a listeners who want to have a better listening experience, then Spotify is your best choice. If you are an artist or a music fan wants to find some unique content, then you can choose SoundCloud. Or you can try both, as they all offer free plans to enjoy music.

By the way, if you want to keep music offline forever, don't miss using AudFree tool to back up your favorite tracks from Spotify and SoundCloud.