While Monkey's Audio can achieve high compression ratios,[3] the cost is a dramatic increase in requirements on the decoding end.

In comparison, most lossless codecs are asymmetric, meaning that the work done to achieve higher compression ratios, if selected by the user, slows down the encoding process, but has essentially no effect on the decoding requirements.

[4] On 10 August 2023, with the release of version 10.18, Monkey's Audio switched to the Open Source Initiative-approved 3-Clause BSD Licence.

As of version 4.02 (19 January 2009) a DirectShow filter is distributed with the installer, allowing for compatibility with most media players running on the Windows operating system.

[10] Monkey's Audio files can be encoded and decoded on any platform which has a J2SE implementation, by the means of the unofficial JMAC library, which is free software licensed under the GNU LGPL.