Free Vst Instruments List
Best Free VST Instruments (2020/2021) Spitfire Audio – Labs Although the Labs series has been available for a while now, new library keeps turning up and continues to bring us a host of new, creative, and esoteric sounds. Currently in the collection, we have instruments like the Chinese Moon Guitar, Hand Bells, and a Music Box. VST Categories: Drums, Synths, Instruments, Samplers, Vintage. VST Planet: Nicely laid out site. Good range of popular vsts and an “Editors Choice” list of plugins which is cool. VST Categories: Synths, Drums, Piano, Bass Synths, Organ. Gersic: “The Giant Plugins List” – really does have quite a lot of VSTs on it. VST plugins play an essential part in modern computer-based music production -both as a result of the fantastic variety of different plug-ins to choose from, and as a result of the vast number of freeware and donationware VST's available on the Internet: Today there are more than 2.000 free VST plug-ins (virtual instruments and effects) to choose from, and more are being added every day! Finding good plugins, especially free ones that sound great, can be quite a challenge. This is why I put together this extensive list of free Plugins; from Synth, to Piano, Orchestra, Guitar, Drums, Bass, and more. Since it’s such a long list, there will be a navigation menu, as well as a “Scroll back to Top” button after each section.
Virtual instruments are software emulations of traditional instruments or hardware electronic musical instruments.
There is a staggering range of virtual instruments available nowadays, covering multi-timbral rompler modules to dedicated emulations of guitars, basses, drums, keyboards, and more.
Some of these VSTi plugins (as they’re also called) are free. So in this article we’ll take a look at some of the best free virtual instruments you can download today. Many of which are pro worthy.
Find more great gear here:
Intro: About Virtual Instruments
The benefits of virtual instruments are fairly obvious. They take up much less space than their hardware equivalents, they don’t overheat, and many of them have virtually unlimited polyphony. They are also much easier to edit and they almost never break down.
Here we run down some of the most intriguing virtual instruments currently available. Although some purists may scoff at the idea of these replacing their well-loved guitars or keyboards, there is no denying that they provide a surprising range of great sounds at a price that even professional musicians will appreciate.
Best Free VSTi Plugins
The List
The Roundup
Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player is arguably the Don of all free virtual instrument plug-ins. Based on the company’s own hugely successful Kontakt sampler, Kontakt Player effectively hosts all sample-based instruments developed for its more fully-featured big brother.
The compatibility goes the other way as well. All free instruments developed specifically for Kontakt Player will load up and play in the full version of Kontakt. Between the two, there is a staggering assortment of free and paid instruments, all boasting of the trademark Native Instrument quality.
To get budget-savvy musicians and producers started, NI offers a free Kontakt Factory Selection consisting of 50 premium instruments. Some of these are slightly cut-down versions of the instruments developed for Kontakt, while some are full versions developed specifically for Kontakt Player.
While Kontakt Player focuses mainly on standard instrument libraries, Native Instruments’ Reaktor Player is geared more towards the synthesis side of things.
Demonstration
Reaktor is of course the full-blown modular synthesis environment that gives users unparalleled and unlimited opportunity to design virtually any type of synthesizer, sequencer, or signal processor they could think of from scratch. With Reaktor Player, users are able to play back a wide variety of instruments and effects developed in and for Reaktor, with a more modest set of editing capabilities.
As with Kontakt Player, there is a huge range of ready-made instruments available for use in Reaktor Player. NI even offers two free devices to get you started: the Blocks Wired pre-patched modular synth and the Mikro Prism synthesizer.
Reaktor Player obviously doesn’t come close to providing the depth of power and customizability offered by the full version of Reaktor. Nevertheless, it is a good introduction to modular synthesis. Furthermore, the availability of hundreds of Reaktor instruments cover a board range of sound-crafting options.
Ample Guitar M Lite is the free version of Ample Sounds’ popular AGM guitar simulator. Emulating the warm, rich tones of the Martin D-41 acoustic guitar, Ample Guitar M Lite is now on its second version.
For the price of a free download, you get an enhanced set of features that now match the capabilities of the full version. The note range now spans E1 – C5, and the plug-in now works as a standalone instrument. Even if you do opt to use the instrument in your DAW, multiple instances will take up much less resources than before, and they will load up faster as well.
Demonstration
As you may have guessed from the name, Ample Bass P Lite is Ample Sound’s free bass guitar sample player plug-in. A cut-down version of the full Ample Bass P II component of the company’s Bass Series product line, this plug-in has fewer samples and fewer round robin variations than the full version. It also has a smaller note range than the paid product, covering D1 to F4. Nevertheless, the Ample Bass P Lite does a good job of cranking out the distinctive tones of the Fender Precision Bass, which it models.
Manda Audio’s MT Power Drum Kit is a free drum sampler that has a fairly wide selection of acoustic drum kit sounds. Great care has been taken to record and process the original samples, giving users a range of high-quality drum sounds perfectly suited for pop, rock, and even metal.
Those who wish to process their drum sounds with their own plug-ins might not appreciate the fact that the MT Power Drum’s sounds are already processed. Nevertheless, EQ and compression were applied quite tastefully, and the sounds should fit in well in most mixes.
Demonstration
Togu Audio Line has garnered quite a bit of acclaim for its excellent line of synthesizers and effects processors, a number of which are free. NoiseMaker is one of these, and it compares favorably to the company’s own paid emulation of the Roland Juno 106 analog synth, the TAL-U-NO-LX.
The NoiseMaker incorporates some of TAL’s more popular effects processors on board. There is the Juno-derived chorus with two modes for starters, along with a reverb, a delay, and a bitcrusher, all of which exist as free standalone plug-ins.
DistroCore’s DC Bazz::Murda is a bass and kick synthesizer that is capable of a surprisingly wide array of sounds. Although aggressive and distorted industrial sounds are its forte, it can be dialed back for more subdued tones as well. Even so, this is one plug-in that was obviously designed to get as loud and nasty as possible. For some users, that could be a good thing!
Top Pick
Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player and Reaktor Player are a couple of the best free virtual instruments that you can get, without a doubt. They provide a superb one-two punch that simply can’t be beat.
Between the two, you pretty much have all your bases covered, whether you need bread-and-butter rompler sounds, exotic World Music libraries, or synthetic sounds ranging from vintage to cutting-edge.
Given the wide range of sounds they cover and the trademark NI quality, these two are neck-and-neck as our top picks for best virtual instrument plug-ins.
I’ve been storing a list of websites where you can download a large number of free VSTs to play around with VSTs . Its not a complete list, but the amount of VSTs that are on all these sites combined should be enough to keep you pre-occupied for quite a while If you’re interested in getting more cool VSTs check out VSTBuzz – a music software deals website!
The starred ones are my favourites, but the other sites in the list are well worth checking out aswell for some great little gems.
Tweak Bench : Great site. Really nice clean lay out, and allows you to donate money towards any vsts you like.
VST Categories: Synths, Samplers, Percussion/Drums
KVR Audio: Absolutely excellent site. Probably the “Daddy” of all VST and audio technology sites. Has a news section with the latest news in music technology. Developers challenges – competitions for people to make the best VSTs, banks and patches, the ability to rate plugins, huge community on the forums. One stop resource for pretty much all of the plugins out there.
VST categories: All
Rekkerd : Rekkerd only hosts good plugins. Some of the best ones hosted on there are the DSK ones – well worth a look at.
VST Categories: Instrument, effects, synths
Delamancha : Really nicely laid out site – easy to search, easy on the eyes. Has a freeware section, and a paid section (with demos). NB – All software on here is Windows ONLY
VST Categories: All
Don’t Crack : Brilliant website – well laid out, easy to navigate, has all the VSTs you need. Has RTAS, and MAS formats aswell. Allows you to sort by OS. This site has a huge amount of information and options on it – well worth checking out!
VST Categories: All
VST4Free: Pretty well laid out website. Lots of great VSTs on it. Easy to sift through
VST Categories: Drums, Synths, Instruments, Samplers, Vintage
VST Planet: Nicely laid out site. Good range of popular vsts and an “Editors Choice” list of plugins which is cool
VST Categories: Synths, Drums, Piano, Bass Synths, Organ
Gersic: “The Giant Plugins List” – really does have quite a lot of VSTs on it. 1957 in fact. Contains VST effects aswell as VST instruments. Good description for each plugin and pictures of all of them.
VST Categories: Ambience, Analog, Bass, Beat Slicer, Chip/LoTech, Drum, Frequency Modulation, Granular, Other, Phase Distortion, Physical Modeling, Sample Based
GTG Synths: Nice short list of only about 15 VSTS – quality over quantity on this site.
VST Categories: Synths, samplers, drums/percussion
AM VST : Nicely laid out site – great feature is that it gives you minimum system requirements for each vst. Only about 10 vsts on here.
VST Categories: Synths
Home Musician VST plugins : 29 free vst plugins – mainly synths – some vst effects too.
VST Categories: Synths
Free Plugin List : Easy to navigate – can search for Mac OS, or Windows, which is handy. Has wide range of plugins – random plugin selection also.
VST Categories: Mixed
Sad Glad : 670 VST plugins. Not a very attractive website, but it does the job. No ads anywhere on it. Directs you to the original homepages of the plugins, so if you’re searching for something specific, you’re better off just going to its website, rather than here.
VST Categories: All
Free Music Software: Clean site, easy to navigate. Has a number of good plugins on it.
Top 10 mastering vst plugins. VST Categories: Bass, ,Bass Guitar, Brass, Drum Machine, Drums, Electric Piano, Emulators, Exotic Instruments, Flute, Guitar, Lofi, Mellotron, Music Generator, Nature Sounds, Organ, Percussion, Piano, Saxophone, Strings, Synths
Audio Mastermind : Has one of the largest collections of vsts out there. Has pretty much everything you could want on it – 17348 links and 1112 categories.
VST Categories: All
TPG : Small amount of plugins – only about 12 overall. Quite harsh on the eyes – lots of retro synths on here.
VST Categories: Synths
VST Central : I’m having a hard time deciding if this is laid out well or not. In some ways its good and in other ways its difficult to follow. Handy in that it lists the OS for each VST, but not easy accessible in that you can’t sort by category – you have to search for a keyword, and hope it brings up what you want. Most of the links are user submitted which is different from the rest of the sites.
VST Categories: All
Shuttlebug Records : Mainly VST effects – some good ones on here, not much to offer though.
VST Categories: Synths, Effects
Free VST Blogspot : Some good VSTs on here. Not a huge range to offer, but worth a quick look
Free Vst Instrument Plugins
VST Categories: All
Free Loops : Generic VST site – has all the usual vsts on it, raning from instruments and synths to effects.
VST Categories: All
Destroy FX : Some good plugins on here, not a huge range, but whats on offer is good.
VST Categories: Mainly synths
Jeroen Bree Baart : Well laid out – allows you to download all of the vsts in a free .zip bundle which is nice.
VST Categories: All
Numerisson : Only windows VSTs on here. A good selection of VSTs
VST Categories: Synth and FX
Free Download Vst Instruments
MDA : Well laid out – has a nice option to download all of the vsts in a bundle (one bundle for Windows and another bundle for Mac OS) – which is always nice
Free Vst Instrument Pack
VST Categories: All
There you have it – a list of plenty of plugins for you to play around with. Honestly, I can say I havent tried many at all. However, one of my favourites that is just a lot of fun to play around with is Toad by Tweakbench – recreate those classic Nintendo sounds!