Best audio editors and DAWs

An inexpensive, lightweight and extremely customisable DAW from Cockos with a 60-day evaluation.

The best-known free, open-source audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS and Linux.

A modern DAW with clip launching, a modular sound-design environment and native Linux support.

An open-source DAW for recording, editing and mixing on Linux, macOS and Windows.

Apple's professional DAW for Mac and iPad, with a large bundled library of instruments and loops.

A free, open-source music production app for making beats and songs with patterns and a piano roll.

Adobe's professional audio editor and multitrack mixer for podcasts, video and audio restoration.

Pattern-based DAW from Image-Line, famous for beat making and lifetime free updates.

A DAW built around clip launching, popular for electronic music production and live performance.

A cross-platform DAW with a free, unlimited edition and a paid Pro version.

A free online music studio and social platform that runs in the browser and on mobile.

The DAW formerly called PreSonus Studio One, now sold under Fender's name.

A free, lightweight audio editor with real-time effect previews for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Apple's free music-making app for Mac, iPhone and iPad, with instruments, loops and virtual drummers.

Adobe's browser-based tools for recording, editing and AI-enhancing speech.

An audio editor made for spoken-word work: podcasts, radio journalism and audiobooks.

Steinberg's long-running DAW for composing, recording and mixing, with especially strong MIDI tools.

BandLab's Windows DAW and successor to Cakewalk by BandLab, free to evaluate with a paid membership.

A specialised audio repair suite for removing noise, clicks, hum and other problems from recordings.

An automated web service that levels, cleans up and masters podcasts and other spoken audio.

A fast, polished audio editor for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and the web.

Avid's DAW that has long been the standard in professional recording and post-production studios.

A free-software DAW focused on automation and electronic music, with optional paid installers.

An AI podcast editing service that removes filler words, mouth sounds, silences and noise.

A long-running Windows audio editor for recording, editing, restoration and mastering.

A community-run, open-source fork of Audacity for recording and editing audio.

A browser-based music and podcast studio with real-time collaboration, widely used in schools.

MOTU's veteran DAW for recording, MIDI and film scoring on Mac and Windows.

Rogue Amoeba's Mac audio editor for fast, lossless trimming, joining and converting files.

An approachable Windows DAW from Acoustica, sold as an affordable one-off licence.

A voice-over and narration editor that lets you edit audio by editing its transcript.

A DAW built around a virtual rack of instruments and effects you wire together, also usable as a plugin.

A modern music tracker: compose with a vertical, keyboard-driven pattern editor instead of a timeline.

A long-running, low-cost DAW for desktop and mobile, with projects that move between devices.

A lightweight open-source audio and MIDI multitrack sequencer for Linux.