What Audacity offers
Audacity edits multi-track audio, imports and exports WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg, supports VST3 and Nyquist plugins, and includes spectrogram view and analysis tools. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Alternatives / Adobe Audition
1 open-source alternative
1 Best Open Source Adobe Audition Alternatives in 2026
Looking for an open source Adobe Audition alternative? Only one project we verified fits: Audacity, a free GPL-3.0 audio editor and recorder. It covers editing, recording, and analysis, but not Audition's advanced restoration and multitrack mixing workflow.
Written by Maxime DERAME
Last updated:
Best Adobe Audition alternatives at a glance
| Alternative | Best for | License |
|---|---|---|
| Audacity | Free multi-track audio editor | GPL-3.0 |
How we chose these Adobe Audition alternatives
We looked for open-source audio editors. We verified Audacity's license, recent activity, stars, and platforms in its repository. See our methodology for the full criteria.
License details
Audacity is GPL-3.0.
Maintenance status
Audacity had commits within days of this update and has over 18,000 stars.
Why look for a Adobe Audition alternative?
Audition is a proprietary editor sold by Adobe subscription. Audacity is free, but its editing is mostly destructive and it lacks Audition's integration with other Adobe tools.
audacityteam.org
Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, and Linux with multi-track editing, WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg support, VST3 and Nyquist plugins, and spectrogram analysis. It is released under the GPL-3.0, and its destructive-editing model is simpler than a full digital audio workstation.
18.8K2.7KGPL-3.0Desktop app
Pricing: Free and open source.
- Free with no feature limits
- Runs on all desktop platforms
- Plugin support
- Not a full DAW for mixing and MIDI
- Mostly destructive editing
Compare Adobe Audition alternatives
| Alternative | Type | License | Self-hosted | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audacity | Audio editor | GPL-3.0 | Desktop app | Recording and editing |
Which one should you choose?
Want a free audio editor
Audacity supports multi-track editing, VST3 plugins, and spectrograms.