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Don't have the cash for professional DAW software? Then don't worry because there are plenty of DAWs that won't cost you a penny and will get you going as a producer.

Music production software looks complex and expensive, but it needn’t be either. While investing in your craft will give you the best available tools you can also get plenty done on free versions of well equipped DAW software. A DAW contains all the facilities you need for recording audio, creating MIDI arrangements, mixing tracks, processing beats and writing songs. You could produce a whole album on your computer using a free DAW, and it could be every bit as professional.

It’s not always about producing professional music, a free DAW can be the perfect way to try things out, test the water of your own creativity and see what’s possible. It can be fun, it can take you to places and discover all sorts of talents you didn’t know you had. And from there you’ll find you can expand with more free instruments, free plugins or paid for ones to give you a wider range of sounds and textures.

Many DAWs have upgrade paths to bigger and better versions so that everything you’ve learned in the free version doesn’t go to waste when you want to move on. But for anyone looking to record their own music, this is definitely the place to begin.

Our picks for the best free DAWs (2024) are:

  • Cakewalk by Bandlab
  • Tracktion Waveform Free
  • Studio One Prime V5
  • Roland Zenbeats 2
  • LMMS
  • BandLab
  • SoundBridge
  • Apple GarageBand

Your Questions About Free DAWs Answered

Which is the best DAW for free?

Robin Vincent

As a free DAW you will never beat the amazing power of Cakewalk by Bandlab. It used to be a flagship DAW costing hundreds of dollars but now it’s available free from Bandlab and is a fully-fledged virtual studio. However, it’s only available on Windows so for macOS users look no further than Apples own GarageBand


Is Reaper free?

Robin Vincent

No, while there’s a fully functional demo version, Reaper for individuals costs $60, and $225 for commercial users.


Is Ableton free?

Robin Vincent

No, although you’ll often find a copy of Ableton Lite included with other hardware purchases such as audio interface and MIDI controllers. The entry-level version of Ableton Live is called Live 11 Intro and costs $99.

Best Free DAWs 2024

Cakewalk by BandLab

It was once a “proper” DAW with a “proper” price tag called Sonar but when Bandlab bought Cakewalk they decided on a new approach. Cakewalk By Bandlab is a full-fledged professional DAW that you can use now, for free.

It is for Windows only and in fact, Bandlab says they are working with Microsoft to build in better support for the Surface Pen and Surface Dial, multi-touch and Bluetooth MIDI. That’s going to keep it a Windows exclusive and perfect for people using touch-enabled Windows computers, hybrids and tablets.

Here are some of the highlights. Cakewalk by BandLab has a 64bit audio engine with plug-in support for DirectX and VST3 effects and virtual instruments. There’s ARA support for integrated Melodyne pitch correction. The studio-quality “Pro Channel” brings professional effects directly into the mixer console with reverbs, resonant filtering, dynamic compression, EQ and tape emulation.

One recent innovation was the ability to save and recall different mixes within the same project. Of course, it has unlimited audio and MIDI tracks, something not often found in free software.

Despite its award-winning interface some people just don’t like it. It can appear busy and cluttered at times. It has a workflow that doesn’t gel for everyone. That’s why there’s such great competition in the DAW market. All these bits of recording software do very similar things and yet can have vastly different approaches and ways of working.

Pros & Cons

  • Unlimited track counts
  • Full VST format plug-in support
  • Professional tools and effects
  • Good touch support
  • Windows only
  • Can feel cluttered

Cakewalk by Bandlab

Tracktion Waveform Free

Tracktion Corporation usually releases a new version of their excellent Waveform DAW every year. When they do so they’ve also been releasing an older version of their DAW for free. It’s difficult to overemphasize how awesome this is. Waveform Free is a fully-fledged DAW that only a couple of years ago was Tracktion’s flagship product. But Waveform Free has begun to evolve its own character and feature set as Tracktion has started to tailor it towards beginners and worked towards simplifying the interface.

Waveform works a bit differently than other DAWs but has a very intuitive and fast workflow. You have unlimited MIDI and audio tracks plus a suite of professional-grade processing, EQ and mixing effects. It has some great editing within MIDI clips where you can generate patterns and detailed automation. In fact, automation and modulation are everywhere because you can apply LFOs to any parameter in your project.

It has an effects rack where you can chain up plug-ins and create complex connections between all the audio processors. You can apply stacks of effects to individual audio clips.

Waveform Free has a number of cool instruments including a sampler and a 4-oscillator synthesizer. It also brought in MIDI chord progressions and melodic pattern generators.

There’s the sort of depth here you’d only find in top-end DAWs. It will do vocal comping, step sequencing, track freezing, MIDI learning, time and pitch warping and sync to video. It also fully supports VST plugins and instruments and will run on Windows, MacOS and Linux.

Waveform Free is comprehensive, different, creative and adventurous and you know there’s a further route to go to in Waveform Pro if you want to progress further.

Pros & Cons

  • Unlimited audio and MIDI tracks
  • Spectacular automation and modulation
  • VST plugin support
  • Cross-platform
  • Step sequencing and patterns
  • Plugin chaining
  • Steeper learning curve to get started

Tracktion Waveform Free

Studio One Prime V6

Releasing simpler versions of a flagship product is a tried and tested way of bringing users into your ecosystem. The thing with Prime is that it’s not half bad and has most of the features you’d expect to find in a DAW you’d pay for.

It has the same streamlined, single-window interface that’s great on high DPI screens and touch-enabled. It has unlimited audio and MIDI tracks including multiple MIDI track editing and audio comping. Version 5 brings in retrospective recording, MPE support and a redesigned Native Effects suite including Ampire for Guitarists. Automation, mixing, sidechaining, resampling and normalization is all there.

However, there’s also quite a bit missing when compared to the flagship version. Most problematic is the lack of support for VST plug-ins. It comes with a powerful workstation sampler synth called Presence XT but that’s about it and so in terms of sequencing virtual instruments it’s rather lacking.

And without the VST support, you can’t add other free (or paid for) instruments that you might have. You can, however, pay for the Mai Tai virtual analog synth as an add-on. Other cool Studio One features are also missing like the Scratch Pads, Chord track and Harmonic Editing, and Melodyne integration. But Studio One professional is a top-level and innovative DAW and there are reasons why they charge you for it.

There’s enough in Studio One Prime to keep the budding Producer happy and it builds up a knowledge base of the workflow for the inevitable upgrade to Artist or Professional versions. If it had VST support it could have a crack at being king of the heap of freeware DAWs, but as it is the technology and the workflow are excellent, it’s a very capable training ground for the fuller versions.

Pros & Cons

  • A basic but decent version of an excellent DAW
  • Some good effects built in
  • Patterns and drum editing
  • All the audio editing and mixing tools you need
  • No VST plugin support
  • There’s a lot missing from the full version

Studio One Prime V6

Roland Zenbeats 3

Zenbeats is now finding it’s feet with version 2 integrating nicely with the RolandCloud, Roland content and cross-platform versatility to make it a very unique DAW.

There are three levels of Zenbeats which give you more features as you upgrade. But the free version is certainly no slouch. You’ll get unlimited tracks in both traditional Timeline and Loopbuilder modes. You get the SampleVerse sampler but with limited presets and basic versions of 9 other instruments plus the new Zenology instrument which can be expanded into all sorts of Roland synthesizer emulations. You also get a small bundle of effects. Then Zenbeats plugs you into an integrated store that tries to tempt you with new features, new instruments and loop packs. But the free version is all you need to start making music.

Zenbeats is very touch-friendly, it has a great Loopbuilder mode where you can fire off MIDI and audio loops in an Ableton Live style of live performance. The cross-platform support does more than just run on different things it allows you to start a project on your iPhone, zap it to your Windows PC for some mixing and finishing off on an Android phone all within the same project.

You’ll need to give it some money to access VST Plugins and extra features but it’s a great place to start.

Pros & Cons

  • Lovely interface
  • Loopbuilder
  • Touch friendly
  • Cross-platform ( iOS and Android as well as Mac and Windows)
  • Exclusive Roland content
  • No VST support unless you pay
  • Small amount of plugins

Roland Zenbeats

LMMS

LMMS is “Open Source” and community-driven meaning that it’s constantly evolving as people put time into the development. Version 1.2 is very solid and has a great cross-platform feature set that’ll run on anything. It has a similar vibe to FL Studio from ImageLine with multiple windows for different functions and offers unlimited audio and MIDI tracks. It has a great inbuilt pattern-based sequencer along with the usual MIDI piano-roll editors. And all the regular recording and arranging tools that you’d expect.

The strength of LMMS comes from the content. The community has developed dozens of synthesizers and tons and tons of effects that come with it. There are virtual analog synths, SID based synths, Yamaha chip emulations and a lot of Chiptune bits and pieces. It supports Soundfonts, Giga and Ultrasound formats for massive sample-based instruments. But it also supports VST Plugins so you can easily expand your sonic collection.

The interface is clean and inviting and you can move projects between Windows, MacOS, and Linux without any bother. Being Open Source often suggests that it will be complex and difficult to get into but LMMS is designed by musicians to give a simple and effective way to make music.

Pros & Cons

  • Designed by users
  • Packed with instruments and effects
  • VST plugin compatible
  • Cross-platform
  • Open Source can appear daunting

LMMS

BandLab

Hang on, I thought BandLab was all about Cakewalk? Well, it is, partly. Before BandLab picked up Cakewalk they already had their own completely free DAW. The reason why it’s still around in light of all this Cakewalk business is because it’s a bit different. BandLab (the music software) is an online DAW built for collaboration and social fraternizing.

Sounds like fun but it’s also a pretty decent piece of recording software. But the best feature is that it’s all online and runs in your browser and so it doesn’t matter which computer or platform you use, you can pick up your project where you left off. So you can do a bit of recording at home, and then mix on your phone on the way to using a computer at school or work, and then do some more tweaking on your mom’s MacBook. It’s completely platform agnostic.

And the feature list is ridiculous. It comes with 120 professionally crafted virtual instruments, amp models for guitar and bass, guitar and vocal effects processing and real-time automatic pitch correction. You get access to over 2,000 royalty-free loops, drum pattern editors, MIDI sequencing and loop triggering.

You can record audio directly into BandLab or upload audio from another DAW. And when your project is done, BandLab offers free algorithmic mastering, which means a computer does it rather than a human. But even so, you get a pretty finished product at the end.

The collaboration side is also very interesting. When you’re not chatting to other musicians and Producers you can invite them to contribute to your project. Grant them access and they can add tracks, edits or mixes for some truly collaborative creativity without having to Dropbox files anywhere. It’s all saved in unlimited space in the Cloud. Unlimited tracks, unlimited projects, unlimited collaboration.

Ok, it’s not Pro Tools. You’re not dealing with complex synchronization or hardware synthesizers. The audio connection and monitoring to an online DAW are going to be problematic in terms of latency. But the recording, sequencing, editing, and mixing are all there, and the ease of collaboration makes BandLab a very interesting and sociable experience.

Pros & Cons

  • Cross-platform
  • Runs online so you can access it from anywhere
  • Collaboration
  • Decent selection of instruments and effects
  • Needs an internet connection
  • Can’t monitor through the software
  • Won’t be able to run hardware synths in sync due to high latency

BandLab

SoundBridge

Simplicity is the name of the game in SoundBridge. It has a good, clean and familiar look and ticks all the usual DAW type boxes with MIDI and audio tracks, mixing and processing. Strangely, they don’t give away too much information about the feature set or functionality; you have to download it and discover it for yourself.

This requires giving up an email address and you’ll need to log in every time you want to use it. However, once you’ve jumped through the hoops you end up in a decent recording environment.

You get MIDI and audio tracks with full automation and a drag-and-drop interface that feels like a cross between FL Studio and Studio One. SoundBridge is very much into using a touch interface and so the design of the interface lends itself to finger-sized touching. It also has a strong connection to the SoundBridge Academy courses and online collaboration platform SkyTracks.io.

It’s a little light on its own plugins but you do get the RitMix drum machine which is pretty good fun and as SoundBridge supports VST plugins then you can always add further ones. In fact, once you’ve registered you get access to a decent bundle of freeware effects and instruments from third parties in a useful single download.

Pros & Cons

  • Nicely touchable interface
  • VST plugin support
  • Good range of free plugins
  • Online collaboration
  • MacOS and Windows
  • Aggressive registration requirements
  • Touch interface can make it feel chunky for mouse use

SoundBridge

Apple GarageBand

GarageBand is the annoyingly good music-making platform that has excelled on iOS and just refuses to go away. Built by the people behind Logic Pro, it has a certain gravitas that peeks out from behind the rather toy-like interface. But the interface works, it brings people in, it makes it so easy to start recording, sampling, playing with instruments and writing songs.

It’s right there, beautifully touch-enabled and even though it was originally built for MacOS, it simply shines on the iPad.

It has drummers, loops, and rhythms built. You’ll find live instruments, synthesizers, and samplers all wired in and ready to go. You can add vocals, guitars, all processed by built-in amp models and effects. Being on the iPad or on your iPhone you can mix and tweak on the bus or in the park. When you’re ready you can hit a button to publish to Facebook, SoundCloud, YouTube or whatever.

It has its limitations (like 32 tracks) but that’s as much to do with the limitations of iOS hardware as anything else, and it can’t route MIDI out to external instruments. But it does communicate well with Audiobus and accepts AU plug-ins for further expansion. As something that’s installed by default on your iPad, it’s a pretty awesome place to start making music for free.

Pros & Cons

  • Comprehensive iPad DAW
  • Supports both MIDI and audio recording
  • Comes with great instruments
  • Transferrable to MacOS
  • Limited track count

Apple GarageBand

Beef up your free DAW with our picks for the best free drum VSTs and the best free VST instruments!

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