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DistroKid Alternative: Infrastructure, Not a Subscription

Short answer: for one artist releasing their own music, DistroKid is cheaper and simpler than LabelGrid, and their Agreement pays "one hundred percent (100%) of any and all monies that we actually earn and receive" after the deductions listed in the same sentence. That artist is not who we build for. LabelGrid sells the infrastructure underneath a label or a distributor: a workspace per customer, royalty accounting, an API. Every DistroKid value in the table below comes from their own pages, linked beneath it.

What does it cost to stay, and to leave?

Staying costs more than the plan: nine Album Extras sit on top of it, eight of them paid, Store Maximizer at $7.95 per album per year is what delivers a release to stores added after you upload, and taking money out is metered by a $6 minimum, a per-payout processor fee and "an FX fee of up to 3%" on a withdrawal you have to request yourself. Leaving is priced too: after the end of the term they "will notify all applicable Digital Stores to remove your Recordings", and keeping a release up runs "$29.00 per single, $49.00 per album of 2+ tracks (nonrecurring fee)". LabelGrid charges no fee of its own to issue a payout. The parity belongs in the same breath: our terms allow a minimum payout threshold and we will let you know if one applies, and after 60 days lapsed on any plan we may withdraw your content, blunter than removal at the end of a term.

3

Products on one backend

4

DDEX ERN versions

0

LabelGrid fee to issue a payout

2017

Founded

PUBLISHED SURFACES

What each side publishes, row by row

Each DistroKid value below is taken from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read it: the homepage, the pricing page, the Terms and the help centre. A dimension their pages do not state is left out rather than guessed at.
FeatureLabelGridDistroKid
PlansSolo, Basic, Pro, Custom Distribution, and the API tiersMusician (1 artist) · Musician Plus (2) · Ultimate (1-100)
Fee modelFlat yearly fee; 85%, 85% and 90% on Solo, Basic and Pro; 95% on our standard-DSP deals and 100% on your own for Custom Distribution and the API tiersAnnual subscription + optional paid Album Extras
Sold separatelyDolby Atmos, Hi-Res and YouTube Content ID are in every distribution plan; Imprint and Custom API are quoted separately8 paid Album Extras, $0.99-$49.00, mostly per release per year
Cost to get paidNo LabelGrid fee to issue a payout; your own bank's charges still applyPer-withdrawal processor fee, $1.12 (ACH) to $29.21 (international wire)
Payout thresholdA minimum payout threshold may apply; we will let you know if it does$6 minimum withdrawal
If you stop payingContent may be withdrawn after 60 days lapsed, on any planCatalogue removed from stores after the Term ends
For labels and operatorsImprint (the white-label portal) and Engine (the API), plus multi-label plansUltimate plan, 5-100 artists; Splits, per-artist reports, Playlister, RIAA monitoring
Account structureEvery customer, artist or label, is its own full workspacePer-release label/imprint name, free; single account
Royalty accountingStatements, payouts and automated splits from Basic up and on every API tierSplits engine; per-artist and combined earnings reports, exportable
YouTube Content IDYouTube Content ID on every distribution plan; UGC and Content ID revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals carries a 20% feeYes — Social Media Pack, $4.95/single/yr or $14.95/album/yr + 20%
PublishingNot offeredDistroKid Publishing: composition royalties, min 5 songs, no sync
SupportTicket or email support on every plan; account manager on Scale API and Custom APIClaims "great customer service"; no channel or response target published
Legal entityLabel Grid LLC, Denver, ColoradoDistroKid LLC (Delaware LLC)

Each of the 13 DistroKid values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-18: distrokid.com/, distrokid.com/agreement/, distrokid.com/pricing/, distrokid.com/terms/, support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013534274-What-Are-Album-Extras, support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013534354-What-Services-Does-DistroKid-Have-for-Record-Labels, support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013534394-Using-Splits-To-Pay-Your-Collaborators-Automatically, support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013535314-What-is-YouTube-Content-ID, support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013648353-Is-There-a-Minimum-Payout-Threshold, support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013648853-Is-There-a-Fee-When-I-Withdraw-My-Earnings, support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013648973-How-Much-Does-DistroKid-Cost, support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/sections/46710042314387-Publishing. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

BEFORE YOU COMMIT

What you can read before you buy

A consumer subscription is bought in a minute and abandoned in another. Infrastructure gets chosen for years, so the useful question stops being what it costs this month and becomes how much of it you can verify before you sign.

Our prices sit on the pricing page: every distribution plan and every API tier, including the starting prices for Custom Distribution and Custom API. The API documentation is public, with no login and no qualification form, and a sandbox comes with the plan once it is active. The MCP server and CLI are open source under MIT.

Two limits belong here. Imprint, our white-label portal, is by waiting list, scoped at onboarding rather than published; Custom API is quoted from a published starting figure.

What you can check today

The price list

Every distribution plan and API tier is published, including the Custom Distribution and Custom API starting prices.

The documentation

API docs are public, with no login and no sales call, and DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 are supported.

The sandbox

Issued with every API plan once that plan is active, after onboarding screening and KYC/KYB.

The tooling

Our MCP server is listed on the public MCP registry, and it and the CLI are open source under MIT.

SAME PUBLIC API

Your catalogue on your site and in your terminal

The LabelGrid WordPress plugin syncs your releases to your own website, while @labelgrid/mcp and @labelgrid/cli run on the same public API. Publish a discography, script a bulk update, or ask your own AI client about your catalogue.
See the WordPress plugin

FOR LABELS AND ARTISTS

What a distribution plan covers here

Take the parity up front: it removes most of the feature argument. Dolby Atmos mixes, high-resolution masters, an AI disclosure policy and non-exclusive rights exist on both platforms. Cover songs are handled differently, and theirs is the more convenient side: DistroKid will "manage this cover song for you" for "a fee of $1 per month ($12 billed to your credit card on file)", securing the licence through the Harry Fox Agency, with the statutory rate deducted from your sales. LabelGrid surfaces an Easy Song Licensing link when you mark a track as a cover and say you have not licensed it yet, so the licence is one you buy and hold yourself.

What a LabelGrid distribution plan adds is process. Every release is checked by a person for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, on every distribution plan and at no extra cost, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals. Automated royalty splits run from Basic up and on every API tier, not on Solo or GATE. YouTube Content ID is on every distribution plan, and UGC and Content ID revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals carries a 20% fee, the same share DistroKid retains on its detections. Every self-serve distribution plan opens with a seven-day free trial.

Be honest about the arithmetic though. One artist putting out two singles a year will pay less on a Musician plan than on ours, and a review queue is time they did not ask for. Our plans are priced for a catalogue with people, statements and a roster attached to it.

Inside a distribution plan

Release review

A person checks quality, metadata and rights before delivery on every distribution plan, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Royalty splits from Basic up

Automated from Basic up and on every API tier; Solo and GATE do not carry them.

Content ID

Available on every distribution plan, with a 20% fee on UGC and Content ID revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals.

Payouts

We charge nothing of our own to issue one, though a threshold may apply, and we will let you know if one does.

FOR WHITE-LABEL OPERATORS

A roster in one account, or a portal per customer

DistroKid's Ultimate plan holds "1-100 artists or bands" inside one account. The LabelGrid shape is flat: each end customer is a full workspace of its own, and Imprint puts those workspaces on your brand and your domain.

One account, one roster

Their Ultimate tier runs "from 5 artists to 100 artists", with unlimited uploads for each artist you work with, Splits for routing earnings to other DistroKid users, per-artist or combined earnings reports exportable to Excel or Google Sheets, Playlister and RIAA Award Monitoring. Sub-label and imprint names are a per-release field, "at no additional charge". For a label whose artists do not need logins of their own, one dashboard is less to administer, and its price is on their pricing page.

A portal for each customer

Each LabelGrid end customer is one label with its own login, catalogue, analytics and earnings, partitioned from every other, while you as the operator see across all of them. That shape has a cost worth naming: a label customer does not get a tier of artists beneath it to supervise, because an artist who wants a label of their own signs up as their own end customer on your domain. Imprint is that portal under your brand, scoped at onboarding.

When the ladder does not fit

The published plans are sized by a track limit and a label limit. Pro carries a per-track overage of $0.15 a year, Custom Distribution $0.25 per track per year up to 10,000 tracks, and the standard API tiers add labels in packs of 5, 10 or 25 as a recurring yearly add-on. A business outside those ceilings gets a custom deal: caps, platform fees, bulk label pricing for an operation running thousands of single-label artists, and in some cases royalty retention. The figures are agreed under NDA.

The ladder on the pricing page is the floor of that conversation rather than its ceiling. If a roster inside one subscription is genuinely what your business needs, their Ultimate tier is the cheaper way to buy it, and we would rather you read both pages than take ours on trust.

FOR API BUILDERS

Read the docs before you buy the plan

Across 49 DistroKid pages we captured and read on 18 September 2026, their published material mentions no REST API, no white-label portal, no DDEX delivery in or out, and no MCP server. That is a statement about what their pages cover, not about what they have built; if you need one of those, ask them directly. Their Ultimate plan does cover 1 to 100 artists with per-artist reports and exports, so the difference for a label is accounting depth, not an absence of label features.

On our side those things are documented. The three standard Engine tiers are published flat yearly fees, Custom API starts from a published figure plus $0.025 per track per month, and a sandbox is issued once the plan is active. The meters are a track limit, a label limit and a monthly royalty processing cap of $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000; crossing one moves you up the published ladder, and sustained excess on the cap starts a tier conversation rather than an overage charge.

What an API plan meters

Tracks and labels

Each standard tier carries a track limit and a label limit; additional labels come in packs of 5, 10 or 25.

Royalty processing

Standard tiers cap royalties processed monthly at $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000; sustained excess moves you up a tier.

Sandbox

Comes with every API plan once the plan is active, after onboarding screening and KYC/KYB.

Open-source tooling

@labelgrid/mcp and @labelgrid/cli are MIT licensed, readable before either one touches your catalogue.

WHERE DISTROKID WINS

Three reasons to choose DistroKid instead

Three places where DistroKid is the stronger answer, taken from their own pages.

The entry price

Their plans are published and they start low. Our capture was geo-served in euros: Musician at "€2 / mo €23.99 billed annually" for one artist or band, Musician Plus at €3.58 a month for two, and Ultimate "Starting at" €6.83 a month for "1-100 artists or bands". Their USD-facing page says "With plans starting at just $2.08/month." A .edu address takes 50% off. Nothing on the LabelGrid ladder competes with that number, and for a solo artist it is the right number to pay.

Advances against royalties

Their Agreement describes an Accelerated Payment: DistroKid "may notify you of the option to receive an advance payment of royalties less a processing fee", recouped from what the catalogue earns afterwards. LabelGrid does not fund advances, on any plan or tier. If cash against future earnings is part of what you want from a distributor, we are the wrong shop and they are a serious one.

Publishing on the same account

DistroKid Publishing acts as publishing administrator, collecting composition royalties while the writer keeps copyright ownership, with a minimum of five songs distributed through DistroKid to qualify and quarterly payments after an initial one. Their own page states that "DistroKid Publishing does not include sync licensing." LabelGrid does not administer publishing. If you want master and composition income collected in one place, that is a real reason to choose them.

We keep this section in every comparison we publish; a comparison you cannot trust is worth nothing.

WHICH ONE

Choose DistroKid if, choose LabelGrid if

Choose DistroKid if you are one artist or a duo putting out your own records. The plan costs less than anything on our ladder, and their Agreement pays you 100% of what they receive from the stores you selected, after the deductions it lists.

Choose them if you want an advance against future earnings, publishing administration in the same account as distribution, or the products they sell around it: music videos through DistroVid at "$8.25/month", mastering, print-on-demand merch, a website, fingerprint-based upload blocking.

Choose them, too, if a roster inside one subscription is the shape you want. Ultimate covers 1 to 100 artists or bands with per-artist earnings reports and exports, and for a stable roster whose artists do not need their own logins, that is less to run than a workspace each.

Choose LabelGrid if

You distribute for others

Each of your customers gets a workspace of its own, with its own login, catalogue, analytics and statements.

You need the portal branded

Imprint puts those workspaces on your own domain and brand; access is by waiting list.

You build on an API

Public docs, three published tiers, four DDEX ERN versions, and a sandbox once the plan is active.

Your business outgrew the ladder

Custom deals cover caps, platform fees and bulk label pricing; the route is public, the figures are not.

BEFORE YOU CHOOSE ANYONE

Seven questions worth asking whoever you pick

Put these to us as readily as to anyone else.

01Ask what the subscription buys, then ask for the price list of everything sold on top of it: per release, per track, per year, and what stops working when you stop paying for it.

02Ask whether you can read the price for a business your size without booking a call, and at which rung the published number stops and a quotation begins.

03Ask what it costs to move a balance into your bank: the minimum, the charge per payout by method, any currency conversion fee, and whether you are paid or must request it.

04Ask what happens to releases already live if you cancel, how long they stay up, and what keeping them there costs per release.

05Ask whether release review is included on every plan, whether a person does it before delivery rather than after a complaint, and how long the queue runs at its busiest.

06Ask which DDEX ERN versions they deliver and to which platforms, and whether they can ingest DDEX from you as well as send it out.

07Ask when you get a sandbox, whether it arrives before or after you pay, and whether the tooling you would connect to your catalogue is open source enough to read beforehand.

Frequently asked questions

Who runs DistroKid, and what is the legal entity behind each company?
DistroKid is operated by "DistroKid LLC, a Delaware limited liability company", and their Terms put disputes under "the laws of the United States and the State of New York". No customer figure appears on the pages we captured; their homepage says "Millions of musicians rely on DistroKid." LabelGrid was founded in 2017, is based in Denver, Colorado, and is a Merlin Network member. We run three products on one backend: self-serve distribution, Imprint the white-label portal, and Engine the API.

Is LabelGrid cheaper than DistroKid?
For one artist, no. DistroKid publishes three annual plans, and our capture of their pricing page was geo-served in euros: Musician at "€2 / mo €23.99 billed annually" for one artist or band, Musician Plus at €3.58 a month for two, and Ultimate "Starting at" €6.83 a month covering "1-100 artists or bands". Their USD-facing page says "With plans starting at just $2.08/month", and a .edu address takes 50% off. LabelGrid publishes every distribution plan and every API tier, including the Custom Distribution and Custom API starting prices, and none of them start that low.

Does DistroKid take a percentage of streaming royalties?
Not on store and streaming earnings. Their help centre says "DistroKid does not take any percentage of what stores send us for your earnings", and the Agreement states the term: they post "one hundred percent (100%) of any and all monies that we actually earn and receive in U.S. Dollars in the U.S.A. from your selected Digital Stores which are directly attributable to their exploitation of your Recordings, after deducting" payment processing fees, the cover-song licensing fee where that service is used, and 20% of Content ID monies where that one is. The deductions follow the optional services you switch on, and the 100% is a published plan term rather than something decided case by case. LabelGrid works the other way round: Solo, Basic and Pro retain 85%, 85% and 90% of standard-DSP royalties, while Custom Distribution and every API tier retain 95% on our own standard-DSP deals and 100% on your direct deals or your own Merlin membership. One parity in the same breath: UGC and Content ID revenue carries a 20% fee on revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals, the same share they retain on Content ID.

What does DistroKid charge extra for?
Their cost page says: "Your total cost will be the sum of your DistroKid subscription and any of the optional Album Extras and tools that you sign up for." The published Album Extras are Discovery Pack at $0.99 per song per year, Store Maximizer at $7.95 per album per year, the Social Media Pack at $4.95 per single or $14.95 per album per year plus 20% of ad revenue, Beatport at $9.99 a month, Audiomack free, Cover Song Licensing at $12 per cover song per year, Leave a Legacy at "$29.00 per single, $49.00 per album of 2+ tracks (nonrecurring fee)", Dolby Atmos at $26.99 per track and Loudness Normalization at $2.99 per track. Store Maximizer is worth reading twice: it is what "will automatically deliver your release to new online stores and streaming services as we add them to our distribution network". On LabelGrid, Dolby Atmos, high-resolution masters and YouTube Content ID sit inside every distribution plan; Imprint and Custom API are quoted separately.

What does it cost to withdraw earnings from DistroKid?
"The minimum payout threshold is $6", and a processor fee comes off each withdrawal. Their withdrawal-fee article lists ACH in the US at $1.12, eCheck at $1.69 in the US and $5.62 outside it, a paper check at $3.37, a US wire at $16.85, an international wire at $21.47 in local currency or $29.21 in USD, and PayPal at $1.12 plus 2%; a second article of theirs still lists an older set, so check what your own account shows. On top of that, "an FX fee of up to 3% may apply if payment currency is different than the country you select". Payment is a pull rather than a push: "You must then affirmatively accept and withdraw the payment from your DistroKid account in order for us to transmit the royalties to you". LabelGrid charges no fee of its own to issue a payout, on any plan. The parity is owed here: our terms allow a minimum payout threshold and we will let you know if one applies to your account, and a balance below it can be carried into a later cycle, so their $6 floor is not a point in our favour.

What happens to your music if you stop paying DistroKid?
Their help centre states that "If you stop paying your annual subscription fee, your DistroKid releases may be removed from the services you delivered them to", while account access and earnings already owed survive. On cancellation: "If you don't renew your subscription to DistroKid, your music will be removed from services." The Agreement runs "one (1) year" and renews annually unless you terminate through the dashboard, and "After the end of the Term, we will notify all applicable Digital Stores to remove your Recordings". Keeping a release live past that point costs "$29.00 per single, $49.00 per album of 2+ tracks (nonrecurring fee)", per release. Ours is the blunter policy and we will not pretend otherwise: if a LabelGrid subscription lapses for more than 60 days without renewal, or the fee goes unpaid, we may withdraw the content and suspend or terminate the account, on any plan.

Can you run a record label on DistroKid?
Yes, on the Ultimate tier. DistroKid describes "Ultimate plans from 5 artists to 100 artists" with unlimited uploads for each artist you work with, Splits for routing earnings to other DistroKid users, per-artist or combined earnings reports exportable to Excel or Google Sheets, Playlister and RIAA Award Monitoring. Sub-labels and imprints are a per-release name field, "at no additional charge", inside one account rather than separate tenants, and a Split paid to someone without a subscription costs $10 a year unless that collaborator subscribes. On LabelGrid every customer, artist or label, is its own full workspace, with automated royalty splits from Basic up and on every API tier.

Does LabelGrid have a public API, and is the tooling around it open source?
Yes to both. The API documentation is public, with no login and no qualification form, and a sandbox comes with every API plan once that plan is active. Delivery covers DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 outbound, with DDEX import available as an option on the API plans and Custom Distribution. The tooling on top is open source: @labelgrid/mcp is listed on the public MCP registry, and it and @labelgrid/cli are open source under MIT. We captured and read 49 DistroKid pages on 18 September 2026; among them we found no REST API, no white-label portal, no DDEX delivery in either direction, and no MCP server on their side.

Does DistroKid offer advances, publishing and services LabelGrid does not?
Yes to all three. Their Agreement describes an Accelerated Payment, "an advance payment of royalties less a processing fee", recouped from later earnings; LabelGrid does not fund advances. DistroKid Publishing administers compositions while the writer keeps copyright ownership, with a five-song minimum, an initial payment in roughly six to nine months and quarterly payments after that, and their page states that "DistroKid Publishing does not include sync licensing". LabelGrid does not administer publishing. Around the subscription they also sell DistroVid for music video distribution at "$8.25/month", Mixea for mastering, Direct for print-on-demand merch, Bandzoogle for websites, and DistroLock for fingerprint-based upload blocking.

What does LabelGrid offer that a consumer subscription does not?
Two things beyond distribution, and a route. Imprint is our white-label portal: your brand, your domain, and a workspace for every customer you distribute for, by waiting list and scoped at onboarding. Engine is our API, with public documentation and MIT open-source tooling on top. Past those, a custom deal covers a business outside the ceilings of the published plans on tracks, labels or monthly royalty income: caps, platform fees, bespoke packaging such as bulk label pricing, and in some cases royalty retention are negotiable; the route is public and the figures agreed under NDA.

See the price before you talk to us

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, and the API documentation is public; Imprint is by waiting list and scoped at onboarding. Each DistroKid value in the table above comes from one of the pages linked beneath it, read on 18 September 2026. If any of it is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.

See API Pricing