Soneam vs EngineEars, for working engineers
These two are not really competing for the same hour of your day. EngineEars is a marketplace: it gets you booked, holds the fee in escrow, and pays you out. Soneam is the handoff, for clients you already have. The question underneath the feature lists is whether you want a platform standing between you and your client's money. Facts verified August 2026.
Most comparison pages pretend two products are rivals. This one starts by saying they mostly aren't. EngineEars sells getting booked and getting paid: a public profile, a calendar, a CRM, escrow, payouts, tax forms. Soneam sells one afternoon of your working week, the part where a finished master goes out to a client and has to come back approved. There is a strip of overlap in the middle, and that strip is where this page lives.
At a glance
| Soneam | EngineEars | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Review, approval and delivery for clients you already have | A marketplace and business platform for engineers and studios |
| Finds you new clients | No | Yes: public bookable profile |
| Free tier | Yes: 10 GB, 5 projects, every feature, 0% fee | Yes: bookable profile, 15% fee on earnings |
| Platform fee on what you charge | 0% on every plan | 15% free tier · 0% on Platinum ($15/mo) |
| Who holds the money | Nobody: card charges land in your own Stripe | Escrow from booking, paid out 24h after approval |
| Fee secured before you start work | No: the gate holds the files, not the fee | Yes: that is what escrow is for |
| Lossless playback and delivery | Yes (FLAC streaming, originals on delivery) | Yes (WAV, AIFF, multitrack stems) |
| Time-stamped comments on the waveform | Yes | Yes |
| Streaming loudness and codec preview | Yes | Not offered |
| LUFS and true-peak metering | Yes | Not offered |
| Checksum on delivery (SHA-256) | Yes | Not offered |
| The client side | A link · no account, no app | An artist account with a wallet and CRM |
| Scheduling, CRM, intake forms | No | Yes |
| Verified credits, watermarking, 1099s | No | Yes (credits via Muso.AI, US 1099s) |
| Storage | 10 GB free, 50-600 GB paid | Unlimited on Platinum |
| Headline pricing | Free / $9 / $19 / $39 | $0 with 15% fee, or $15/mo billed annually at 0% |
Facts checked August 2026 by reading their own pages. If something is stale, tell us and we'll fix it.
What your client actually sees
Both products give the client somewhere real to listen, so this is not a question of whether their side is any good. It is a question of what that side costs them: on EngineEars the client's half of the platform is an account, with a wallet, a CRM and distribution attached. On Soneam it is a link, and there is nothing to join.
Open a live client page and use it yourself: play it, drag a comment onto the waveform, switch versions level-matched. Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for, which is the point.
The money is the whole argument
Everything else on this page is detail. The design difference is that EngineEars stands in the middle of the payment and Soneam does not, and both of those are defensible.
Their way: the client books, the fee goes into escrow immediately, and it is released to you within 24 hours of them approving the delivery. That solves the oldest problem in this trade, which is finishing a job for someone who then goes quiet. The money was already secured before you opened the session. Soneam has no answer to that, and it would be dishonest to pretend the download gate is the same thing. Our gate protects the files. Theirs protects the fee.
Our way: the client pays by card through your Stripe account, as a direct charge. You are the merchant of record, the money lands in your balance on your Stripe's schedule, and Soneam is never a party to it. That is why the fee is 0% on every plan including the free one: there is no cut to take, because the funds do not pass through us. It also means the arrangement works with a client who will never sign up for anything, and does not depend on our standing with anyone.
On price, their two plans cross at a clean number. A 15% fee and a $15 monthly plan are the same cost at $100 billed through the platform in a month, so above that their Platinum plan is the cheaper of their own two. Worth knowing before you pick the free one.
Where EngineEars wins, honestly
- It finds you work. This is the big one and we have nothing to put against it. A public bookable profile on a marketplace with real traffic is a different kind of product from anything Soneam does. If your problem is an empty calendar, a review tool cannot fix that, and we would rather say so than sell you the wrong thing.
- Escrow. The fee is secured at booking, not at delivery. For work with new clients, that is the strongest protection either product offers, and it is theirs.
- The business around the work. Scheduling, a CRM, custom intake forms, multi-currency payouts, automatic 1099 forms in the US, and verified credits through Muso.AI. Soneam does one job and leaves the admin to you.
- Room, and a track record. Unlimited storage on Platinum, against 600 GB on our largest plan. They also carry named reviews from engineers with credits attached, a Trustpilot presence and a following. We have published none of that yet.
- Watermarking. Audible watermarks on private streaming links, tagged per listener. We have deliberately not built that, but if you send unreleased material to A&Rs it is a real feature and we do not have it.
What Soneam hasn't earned yet
No marketplace, no escrow, no track record. If the reason you are reading this is that you want more clients, Soneam is the wrong tool and this page has done its job by telling you. If it is the other reason, that the handoff itself keeps going wrong, the cheapest test is the free plan: it does not expire, it does not want a card, and every delivery it sends carries a SHA-256 checksum. One real project will tell you more than this page can.
Where Soneam pulls ahead
- Nothing stands between you and the money. Direct charges into your own Stripe, 0% on every plan, no booking required and no platform payout schedule to wait on. The client pays by card for an instant unlock, or by bank transfer with one click of confirmation from you, which matters as soon as the client is a label with a finance department rather than an artist with a wallet.
- Free is actually free. Their $0 plan costs 15% of your earnings. Ours costs nothing and has every feature in it. For an engineer testing whether their clients will even use a review link, that difference decides whether the test happens.
- The mastering layer, which is not on any of their pages. A streaming loudness and codec preview inside the review, so the client hears how Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube will actually play the master, true-peak ceilings included. LUFS and true-peak metering on every version. Level-matched A/B, so nobody approves the louder one by accident. We read all five of their public pages looking for LUFS, true peak, loudness, normalization or codec, and none of them appear.
- The paper trail. A recorded approval of the exact version, with who, when and which file, printable. Plus a SHA-256 checksum on delivery. "Paid and downloaded" is weaker evidence in a dispute than "approved this specific master, and these exact bytes went out".
- Clients join nothing. No account, no app, no wallet. A link that opens and plays losslessly on a phone.
Which should you pick?
- Pick EngineEars if you want to be found and booked, or if getting stiffed is the risk that actually keeps you up. Escrow answers that and we do not.
- Pick Soneam if you already have the clients and the part that hurts is the handoff: chasing feedback, proving which version was signed off, and being paid without a platform in the middle taking a position on your money.
- Or both, which is what we would expect a lot of people to do. Get booked over there, run the review, approval and delivery here, which costs nothing to try. They were never the same job.
Frequently asked questions
Is Soneam a good EngineEars alternative?
Only for part of what EngineEars does. EngineEars is a marketplace: it lists you publicly, books the job, holds the fee in escrow from the moment of booking, and pays out within 24 hours of the client approving delivery. Soneam does none of that and has no marketplace at all. What Soneam replaces is the handoff itself, for clients you already have: a no-login review link with lossless playback, a streaming loudness and codec preview, feedback pinned to the waveform, a recorded approval of the exact version, and a payment-gated, checksum-verified delivery. The money is charged straight into your own Stripe account, so Soneam never holds it and takes 0% on every plan, the free one included.
What does EngineEars do better than Soneam?
Three things, and the first is the big one. It finds you work: a public bookable profile on a marketplace, which Soneam has no answer to. It secures the fee before you start, because funds sit in escrow from booking, so a client who disappears after delivery cannot take the money with them; Soneam gates the files, not the fee. And it runs the business around the work: scheduling, CRM, custom intake forms, verified credits via Muso.AI, audible watermarking, multi-currency payouts, automatic 1099 forms in the US, and unlimited storage on the Platinum plan. On the shared ground it is closer than you would expect, with lossless playback and delivery of WAV, AIFF and multitrack stems, time-stamped comments on the waveform, and round-by-round revision tracking.
How do Soneam and EngineEars prices compare?
EngineEars has two published engineer plans: Provider Essentials at $0 forever, which charges a 15% fee on your earnings, and Provider Platinum at $15 a month billed annually, which charges 0% and adds unlimited storage, 24-hour payouts and CRM. The two cross at $100 billed through the platform in a month, above which Platinum is the cheaper of their own plans. Soneam is free for 5 projects and 10 GB with every feature and no fee at all, then $9 for 50 GB, $19 for 200 GB and $39 for 600 GB, with unlimited projects. Soneam's platform fee is 0% on every plan because the client pays your Stripe account directly and Soneam is never in the payment path.
Try the handoff, free
Lossless review with a streaming loudness preview, feedback on the waveform, a recorded approval, and a payment-gated, checksum-verified delivery paid straight into your own Stripe. Free plan, no card, clients never register.