Forty free plugins that genuinely rival paid alternatives. From synths to compressors, we've found the gems so you can save your money for rent.
TL;DR
You don't need to spend hundreds on plugins to make great music. Vital, Supermassive, TDR Nova, and dozens more free VSTs can hold their own against premium alternatives. We've categorised the best by type and ranked them honestly.
Free Synths That'll Make You Question Your Paid Ones
Let's start with the one that blew the plugin world wide open: Vital by Matt Tytel. This wavetable synthesiser is, frankly, embarrassingly good for a free plugin. Three oscillators, spectral warping, MPE support, and a modulation system that rivals Serum. The free version has some preset limitations but the engine is identical to the paid tier. There's no excuse not to have this installed.
Dexed is the other essential — a faithful recreation of the Yamaha DX7 that handles FM synthesis beautifully. It can load original DX7 SysEx patches, which means decades of classic presets are at your fingertips. For analog-style sounds, Surge XT is an open-source powerhouse with multiple synthesis types and a devoted community constantly adding content.
Odin 2 deserves special mention for its routing flexibility. Four oscillators, three filters, and a modulation matrix that lets you do genuinely weird things. It's the kind of plugin that rewards experimentation, and it looks gorgeous doing it.
Effects That Punch Way Above Their Price Tag
Valhalla Supermassive has no business being free. It's a reverb and delay plugin from one of the most respected names in audio effects, and it creates everything from tight rooms to infinite cosmic washes. The fact that Valhalla gave this away is one of the greatest gifts to the production community.
For compression, TDR Kotelnikov is a transparent, musical compressor that engineers swear by. It's clean, it's precise, and it has a 'Gentleman's Edition' that's completely free. Pair it with the also-free TDR Nova dynamic EQ and you've got a mastering-grade processing chain for literally zero pounds.
OTT by Xfer Records — yes, the Serum people — is a multiband upward/downward compressor that's become an industry standard in electronic music. It's everywhere in modern production for a reason: it adds instant energy and presence to any sound. Use it subtly on buses or slam it on a synth for that hyper-compressed EDM sound.
Mixing and Mastering Freebies You Actually Need
Youlean Loudness Meter is non-negotiable if you're releasing music in 2025. It shows you integrated LUFS, short-term loudness, and loudness range — essential for hitting streaming platform targets. Spotify normalises to around -14 LUFS, Apple Music to -16, and Youlean makes hitting those targets dead simple.
MELDA Production's MFreeFXBundle is a collection of 37 free plugins that covers almost every mixing need. The interfaces aren't the prettiest, but the audio quality is excellent. Their free limiter, EQ, and analyser alone are worth the download.
For spatial mixing, A1 Stereo Control from Alex Hilton gives you precise stereo width management with a clean interface and zero CPU hit. And Panagement by Auburn Sounds is a creative panning tool that goes way beyond simple left-right, letting you place sounds in a 3D space.
Instrument Plugins for Specific Vibes
If you make lo-fi, hip-hop, or anything that needs vintage character, Rough Rider 3 by Audio Damage is a free compressor that adds grit and warmth like nothing else at this price point. It's been a staple on bedroom producers' drum buses for years and the latest version added a sidechain filter.
For guitar and bass, Amplitube CS from IK Multimedia gives you a solid amp sim with a few models for free, and Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) is an open-source machine learning amp modeler where the community has trained models of thousands of real amps. The quality from NAM models is genuinely staggering.
Spitfire LABS remains the gold standard for free orchestral and cinematic sounds. Their library includes everything from strings and pianos to frozen textures and drumkits, all recorded at their London studios with proper engineering. It's a massive download but worth every gigabyte.
How to Build a Complete Production Setup for Free
Here's the thing that blows our minds: you could start producing music today without spending a penny on plugins and still make professional-quality tracks. Pair these free plugins with a free DAW like Ardour, LMMS, or the generous free tiers of BandLab or Cakewalk, and you've got a full production environment.
The barrier to entry in music production has never been lower, and that matters. When we talk about democratising music at Noise, this is what we mean — the tools are there, for everyone, regardless of budget. Your next favourite artist might be making their debut single right now on a laptop with nothing but free plugins.
Our advice: download Vital, Supermassive, TDR Kotelnikov, TDR Nova, OTT, and Youlean Loudness Meter today. That's your starter kit. Learn those six plugins inside out before you spend money on anything else. You'll be shocked at what you can achieve.