Free alternatives to 8 paid vocal plugins

The table

Prices are vendor list prices observed in August 2026 and change during sales; check the vendor before buying. Formats compared on Windows.

1. Waves Vocal Rider, replaced by ELEVATOR

Vocal Rider is the plugin engineers name first when a rapper's level jumps between quiet setups and loud punchlines. It rides the fader to a target so the compressor has less to fix. ELEVATOR does the same job with four controls: TARGET, RANGE, SPEED and a FLOOR below which it freezes, so breaths and room noise are never lifted. The honest difference: Vocal Rider has a music sidechain input that follows the beat's level; ELEVATOR rides to a fixed target. For rap vocals over a finished beat that is rarely missed.

2. Wavesfactory TrackSpacer, replaced by CROWBAR

TrackSpacer made spectral sidechain ducking a normal mix move: put it on the beat, feed the vocal into the sidechain, and the beat dips only in the frequencies the vocal is using. CROWBAR is the same idea with 24 automatic bands, a live display of where it is prying and a DELTA button that plays only what was removed. TrackSpacer has more bands and years of refinement; CROWBAR is free, VST3 and does the thing that fixes a buried rap vocal.

3. Waves DeBreath and RX Breath Control, replaced by WINDPIPE

Breath control is the one category where no free option existed at all: the choices were a paid Waves plugin, a module inside iZotope RX, or an hour of clip editing. WINDPIPE detects breaths on level, texture and noisiness, reduces them by the amount you choose, and can boost them instead for a close-mic intimate sound. LISTEN mode solos what it caught so you can trust it. RX still wins for surgical repair of everything else; for breaths alone, WINDPIPE is enough.

4. Soundtoys Little AlterBoy, replaced by LARYNX

Little AlterBoy is the creative voice box: shift pitch and formant separately, flatten to a robot, add drive. LARYNX covers those four jobs, independent PITCH and FORMANT, a ROBOT monotone and tube DRIVE, and it is built as the creative cousin of the LOCKJAW tuner. Soundtoys' algorithm has its own character that people pay for; LARYNX is not a clone of it, it is BSMT.DSP's own take, free.

5. Waves CLA Vocals and iZotope Nectar, replaced by MOUTHPIECE

All-in-one vocal plugins sell because most producers do not want to learn five processors before they can hear a finished vocal. MOUTHPIECE is a full chain, gate, compressor, de-esser, tone and air, saturation, driven by one MOUTH knob with five trims. Nectar adds an assistant and pitch tools, CLA Vocals adds its namesake's presets; MOUTHPIECE adds nothing you have to pay for, and it is also the answer to email-gated free vocal presets that were tuned for someone else's microphone.

6. Nicky Romero Kickstart, replaced by PUMPJACK

Kickstart turned sidechain pumping into one knob and no routing. PUMPJACK is the free equivalent: a beat-locked duck curve with SHAPE and OFFSET, a live playhead, and a DRAW mode where you paint a 16-step volume pattern. Kickstart is cheap and polished; PUMPJACK is free and adds the drawable pattern, which turns it into a rhythmic gate for hi-hat stutters and vocal chops.

7. oeksound soothe2, replaced by SOLVENT

soothe2 defined dynamic resonance suppression and is priced accordingly. SOLVENT finds the harsh, boxy and whistly peaks that poke above the spectral envelope and dissolves them only while they flare, with SELECTIVITY and DEPTH as the two decisions. soothe2 has more control over the detection curve and sidechain use; SOLVENT covers the everyday case, harsh bedroom rap vocals and piercing sample loops, for free.

8. Antares Auto-Tune, replaced by LOCKJAW

Auto-Tune is the brand name of the effect, and its licensing is a subscription or a substantial perpetual price. LOCKJAW does the job rappers actually ask for: pick KEY and SCALE, set RETUNE to zero for the hard-tune robot or raise it for invisible correction, with a formant-preserving engine so there is no chipmunk. Auto-Tune Pro adds graphical note editing and deep options; LOCKJAW is the fast, free, scale-locked tuner, and it works in FL Studio and every other VST3 host on Windows.

Bonus: three more swaps

• FabFilter Pro-DS (around USD 169) to MUZZLE: level-relative de-essing with SPLIT and WIDE modes, free.
• iZotope Vocal Doubler (free, account required) to XEROX: up to four voices with human-style drift and a correlation meter, no account.
• Xfer OTT (free) to VICEGRIP: three-band upward and downward compression with DEPTH and TIME macros, VST3 and standalone.

Other free plugins worth knowing

BSMT.DSP is not the only free option, and this page would be worthless if it pretended otherwise. Auburn Sounds Graillon (free edition) and MeldaProduction MAutoPitch are solid free tuners; Techivation T-De-Esser 2 is a good free de-esser; TAL-Vocoder is the classic free vocoder; TheMasker is an open-source spectral ducker; Klanghelm IVGI and DC1A are excellent free saturation and compression. What BSMT.DSP adds is a coherent set built around the rap vocal chain, no signup on any of it, and standalone builds. Each plugin page compares against these named tools directly.

How to get the whole set

One installer covers all 27 plugins; tick the ones you want and it installs the VST3 files into the standard folder your DAW already scans, plus the standalone apps. It is an unsigned indie build, so Windows SmartScreen shows a warning: choose More info, then Run anyway. The version on the download button is read live from the releases repository, and the button switches to the Mac installer when that build ships. Then follow the chain in how to mix rap vocals with free plugins.

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