Alternatives to Audacity
A multi-track audio editor and recorder that has been the free default for twenty-five years. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Audacity
A multi-track audio editor and recorder that has been the free default for twenty-five years.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Audacity.
Tenacity
A fork of Audacity created after the 2021 telemetry row, built to record and edit audio with nothing phoning home.
Tenacity is an Audacity fork under GPL-2.0 with no telemetry or account, keeping the older interface but trailing current Audacity features with slower releases.
Ardour
A full digital audio workstation for recording, editing and mixing, with no subscription and no dongle.
Ardour is a full open-source multi-track DAW with MIDI and a flexible mixer, though official prebuilt binaries are paid and the learning curve is steeper.
REAPER
Full digital audio workstation for multitrack recording, editing, mixing and MIDI.
REAPER is a paid, closed-source DAW for Windows, macOS and Linux with non-destructive multitrack editing and MIDI, after an unlimited evaluation period.
Steinberg WaveLab
Mastering suite with phase scope, multimeter and loudness analysis tools.
Steinberg WaveLab is paid mastering software for Windows and macOS, adding phase scope, multimeter and loudness analysis to audio editing.
GarageBand
Apple's free music creation studio for recording, playing and mixing songs and podcasts on a Mac.
GarageBand is free but closed source and limited to Apple devices, adding a loop library and virtual drummers with fewer detailed editing tools.
ocenaudio
A free, cross-platform audio editor built for fast, straightforward editing of audio files.
ocenaudio is a free but closed source editor for Windows, macOS and Linux with a simpler interface for quick edits, and it is not multitrack.
Adobe Audition
A professional audio workstation for recording, editing, mixing and restoring audio for video and podcasts.
Adobe Audition is subscription-only for Windows and macOS, needs an Adobe account, and adds spectral editing and restoration tools tied to Adobe video workflows.
Fission
A Mac audio editor for trimming, joining and splitting files without quality loss, plus batch conversion.
Fission is a paid macOS-only editor for lossless trimming, joining and batch conversion, without multitrack editing or heavy effects.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Audacity as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Adobe Podcast
Adobe's browser-based tool for recording, transcribing, editing and cleaning up spoken audio.
Audacity is free, open source and works offline on Windows, macOS and Linux, but lacks built-in transcription and AI speech enhancement.
Amadeus Pro
Paid multitrack audio editor and sound recorder for macOS with batch processing.
Audacity is free and open source under GPLv3 and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, though its version 4 interface change means many tutorials show the older layout.
iZotope RX
An audio repair and restoration suite for removing noise, clicks and other problems from recordings.
Audacity is free and open source under GPLv3 on Windows, macOS and Linux, with built-in effects for cleaning up voice or music, though it is a destructive editor.
Kwave
A KDE sound editor for recording, playing and editing audio files on Linux.
Audacity is a free GPLv3 multi-track editor and recorder with many built-in effects, running on Windows, macOS and Linux with the same project format.
Steinberg SpectraLayers
Spectral audio editor for noise removal and AI-assisted source separation.
Audacity is a free, open-source GPL-3.0 editor for Windows, macOS and Linux with many built-in effects for cleanup, but it offers no spectral editing or AI source separation.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Spek
Drops an audio file on the window and draws its spectrogram, so you can see where the quality really stops.
Mp3tag
A tag editor that fixes the metadata of a whole music folder at once, with online database lookups.
Sonic Visualiser
Inspect the contents of audio files through waveform and analysis displays.
Krisp
AI noise cancellation app that strips background noise from calls and voice chat.
Whisper
An open-source speech recognition model from OpenAI for transcribing and translating audio on your own machine.
