You don't need to spend a penny to start producing professional music. Here's our guide to the best free DAWs, plugins, and tools available.
TL;DR
BandLab, GarageBand, and Audacity are all capable free DAWs. Vital (synth), TDR Nova (EQ), Valhalla Supermassive (reverb), and OTT (compressor) are essential free plugins. You can produce professional music without spending anything on software.
Free DAWs That Actually Work
BandLab is the best fully free DAW available in 2025. It runs in a web browser, includes hundreds of instruments and effects, supports unlimited tracks, and offers cloud collaboration. The quality of its built-in sounds has improved dramatically, and for many producers, it's sufficient for complete productions without any paid software.
GarageBand (Mac/iOS only) remains Apple's gift to music makers. Its instruments, particularly the Drummer and Alchemy synth, are genuinely professional quality. Many chart-topping producers started on GarageBand and some still use it as part of their workflow.
Audacity is the veteran free option for recording and editing audio. It's not a full DAW — there's no MIDI sequencing or virtual instruments — but for recording, editing, and processing audio, it's a powerful and reliable tool that's been refined over two decades of open-source development.
Cakewalk by BandLab (Windows only) is a full-featured professional DAW that BandLab acquired and made completely free. It offers capabilities that rival paid DAWs including unlimited tracks, VST support, and professional mixing tools.
Essential Free Plugins
Vital by Matt Tytel is a wavetable synthesiser that rivals Serum in capability. The free version has minor limitations but provides access to the same powerful synthesis engine that makes the paid version a professional staple.
TDR Nova is a dynamic equaliser that competes with plugins costing hundreds of pounds. Its intelligent EQ capabilities — where bands only activate when needed — make it useful for everything from surgical corrections to creative processing.
Valhalla Supermassive is a reverb and delay plugin from the legendary Valhalla DSP. It creates massive, atmospheric, and evolving spaces that range from subtle to infinite. The fact that it's free is genuinely absurd given its quality.
OTT (Xfer Records) is the multiband upward/downward compressor that's become an essential production tool, particularly in electronic music. It adds presence, clarity, and energy with a single knob. Free, effective, and universally useful.
KILOHEARTS Essentials provides a suite of high-quality effects — EQ, compressor, chorus, delay, distortion — that cover the basics professionally.
Building a Complete Free Setup
A complete music production setup using only free software is not only possible — it's genuinely capable of professional results.
Start with BandLab or GarageBand as your DAW. Add Vital for synthesis, TDR Nova and OTT for mixing, and Valhalla Supermassive for spatial effects. Supplement with free samples from Freesound.org and Cymatics, and you have a production toolkit that would have cost thousands a decade ago.
The quality ceiling of free software has risen to the point where the limiting factor is your skills and creativity, not your tools. A producer with great ideas using free software will always outperform a mediocre producer with expensive plugins.
At Noise, this matters because it means there's no financial barrier to making music. A teenager with a laptop and an internet connection has access to professional-grade production tools. The democratisation of music technology is complete — all that remains is the democratisation of opportunity.