Last Updated on May 13, 2025 by IDS Team

How do we make a complete list of mastering VST plugins? It would be impossible to ever create a ‘complete list’ of any and all plugins for mastering out there. New plugins arrive on the market all the time, and many plugins that are not designed specifically for mastering can easily adapt to the process if an engineer decides to use them in the right way. Nevertheless, this list is a comprehensive overview of the options out there by focusing on core areas: compression, mastering EQ, exciters, enhancers, saturators, and, of course, limiting.

This is not a ‘best of list’, we don’t recommend any of these over the others, but instead want to showcase the key features to offer engineers options and snapshot what’s available – so read on for the lowdown – our complete list of vst mastering plugins that spans compressors to saturators and combinations in the middle.

Our Complete List of Mastering VST Plugins

Voxengo Drumforger

This drum-specific plugin from Voxengo contains a multiband compressor/expander, Harmonic enhancer and exciter, Special saturation effects, Side-chain compressor, Stereo, mono, mid-side compressor, 7.1, 5.1 surround sound compressor, Drum mic bleed attenuation, noise gate, and guitar overdrive. Despite its stated use it is ideal on lower frequencies at the mastering stage, especially for mastering in surround sound.

Price: Free

iZotope Ozone 11 Mastering VST Plugin

Contains targets by genre, tonal balance, sustain mode, vocal balance, and loudness features. iZotope Ozone 11 is one of the most acclaimed mastering plugins and also has options for gain matching and a subjective ‘character’ slider than can offer guidance into the desired overall sound of the track.

Price: 189 USD

LANDR Smart Mastering VST Plugin

Contains warm, balanced, and open features, loudness meter, de-esser, and Q with low mid and high knobs. It’s available in a PRO version and a Standard Edition (SE) and has many of the same capabilities as LANDR’s online smart mastering service, however, it gives you more detailed control into the exact tonal qualities you want to chang at the mastering stage. It can also give you AI based masters while you work so you can compare, contrast, and adjust as you go along.

Price: 261 USD

Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor

Emulation of a legendary real compressor with threshold and gain features, optical and discrete vca, nickel, iron and steel transformer types. This compressor pays a large amount of attention to the overall tone of the compression and can operate both subtly and aggressively.

Price: 299 USD

Mastering the Mix Expose 2

Tonal balance, loudness match and playback, loudness, peaks, stereo/phase information and dynamic range monitoring allows you to expose issues. Features presets depending on the end goal of where you want your track to end up.One unique feature is the ability to compare multiple tracks as a reference to give you a more targetting view of how you want your ultimate track to end up.

Price: 65 USD

Curve Bender by Softube

A high quality mastering grade analog equalizer, this plugin is aimed at rock and roll, classic rock, and other similar genres. This plugin is based on a legendary British mastering FX chain from Abbey Road studios, used on albums such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It contains mid and side processing, and new high and low pass filters.

Price: 259 USD

Elevate by Eventide

This plugin bundle contains an equaliser, maximiser, and limiter, as well as a separate EQ plugin, saturation plugin, and multiband transient modulator, designed to analyse and subtly alter sound to create the perfect master. This is an adaptive plugin that uses intelligent technology to analyse your mix and subtly alter gradients and parts of the EQ curve to create a master that preserves the dynamism o your original tracks. The plugin has been praised for it’s subtlety and powerful technology.

Price: 201 USD

Acon Digital Mix and Mastering Suite

Contains a multiband dynamic processing, limiter, and equaliser with minimum phase and limited phase modes as well as an algorithmic reverb and dithering plugin. This is a combination of mixing and amsterin gplugins that work together to create a cohesive sound throughout the pre-master and on to the mastering stage.

Price: 129 USD

Softube Drawmer S73 Compressor Mastering VST Plugin

It contains a wide variety of sounds such as clarity, neutral, gentle comp, more air, de rumble, punch, wide mix, ambience, and vocal enhance. This is designed to fill in the gaps of a multiband compressor to account for human error as an analog inspired intelligent mastering plugin that adjusts your sound as needed.

Price: 101 USD

Modern Mastering VST Plugin from New Gen Audio

This mastering bundle is designed specifically for certain mastering situations including mastering for distributors such as spotify or  certain endpoints like Youtube. Mastercheck is a plugin that helps you master for the listener, whilst a powerful visualiser allows you to compare and contrast the different aspects of your master.

Price: 278 GBP

DynaOne Compressor by Leapwing

Featuring detection, channel link, global band trim, weighting, parallel mode, crossover filters, offline render master and more, this is a powerful parallel dynamic processor that allows you unprecedented control over different parts of your mix.As a multiband compressor it offers a granular look at the different band allowing you to weight them individually, enter parallel compression mode, and more.

Price: 238 USD

Weiss DS1 MK3

This is a compressor, limiter, and de esser bundle that has both full band and band selective compression as well as parallel compression. It has been praised for it’s flexibility by leading mastering engineers and internal floating 40 bit joint arithmetic for digital precision. This plugin is an emulation of studio gear that has been in use for over 30 years and is now available to the public for slick and professional sounding masters.

Price: Free

iZotope Mix and Master Bundle

No complete list of mastering plugins would be finished without the iZotope Mastering Bundle. This bundle is a collection of plugins including the Ozone 11 as well as tonal balance control, neoverb, Melodyne, and the vocal specific nectar 4. It also has smart features that connect your different plugins via ‘communication’ and which use AI to quickly analyse input and get you industry ready masters. On top of this, it has the ability to master to genre specifications and has smart graphs to help you visualise your master such as ‘tonal balance’, honing in on what makes a good master vs a great one in terms of listener requirements.

Price: 639 USD

Fab Filter Mastering Pro Q 4

FabFilter mastering is a plugin that is based around EQ and includes the pro Q 4, spectral monitoring, and sketchable EQ feature for maximum usability. It is a granular plugin that looks at your EQ curve in depth and allows precise and focussed control over different bandwidths. One of the main draws of this plugin is the level of detail with which you can adjust the Q-factor, in order to give more nuance to your EQ sculpting and the overall results of your track.

Price: 179 USD

Tokyo Dawn Records TDR Kotelnikov

64bit multi-rate processing structure for highest accuracy, “Delta” oversampled signal path (bit transparent at 0dB gain reduction), Super fast, yet natural sounding compression, “Crest factor” based control scheme offering independent release controls for peak and RMS events, Flexible sidechain highpass filter, Advanced stereo linking options optimized for the stereo bus, Delta preview mode previews the difference between compressed and original signal, Latency compensated, click free bypass (i.e. processing never interrupted), User interface rescaling (100%, 125%, 150%) It also comes with a ‘Gentleman’s Edition’ (pictured second) which offers additional features like frequency dependent ratio and equal loudness workflows.

Price: Free

Vlad G Sound Limiter No. 6

Comes with a compressor, clipper, and peak limiter, this plugin has two general user interfaces as well as an envelope skin that allows detailed control over limiter parameters. It has gained a reputation as a powerful limiter that is idea for use on a master bus or generally at the post production stage. It also includes options for upsampling, the ability to set a ceiling, and a high frequency limiter making it a truly powerful and versatile compressor.

Price: Free

Brainworx Intelligent Mastering VST By Masterdesk

This plugin is designed as a halfway option between full on automated intelligent AI mastering, and having to work through the entire post production signal chain yourself. It’s creators aim for musicians to be able to develop a professional sounding master in under one minute with a simple 3 step process. This process, consisting of volume, foundation, and tone stack, synthesises the different features of this virtual mastering desk into a simple and streamlined order that beginners can understand. Nevertheless, the separate components are also usable for those who want more individual control over the different parts of the mastering process, such as a compressor, resonance filters, and varying tone knobs.

Price: 75 USD

Levels Mastering VST Plugin by Mastering the Mix

Levels by Mastering the Mix is a modern and intuitive visualiser with a wide range of attributes it covers. These include true peak, LUFS, stereo field, stereo filter (which allow you to edit out frequencies), dynamic range, loudness range, and bass space. It’s also designed to help you learn as you go along and visualise changes. Plus, it has features that can match your production to the needs of specific platforms such as Spotify.

Price: 65 USD

Waves Infected Mushroom Pusher Mastering Plugin

Contains low, high, magic, input, body, and push. This plugin falls into the ‘sweetening’ category of post production which is designed less to edit out unwanted noise or frequencies, or glue to mix together, but instead to subtly highlight and emphasise the parts of the track that should stand out the most. Used subtly, this plugin is able to apply subtle character to tracks with a focus on trance, pop, edm, hip hop, and other genres. It’s based around exciting frequencies, pushing your mix to the max, and adding fullness, tone, and character.

Price: 34.99 USD

Waves L2 Ultramaximizer

This is a powerful ‘brickwall’ limiter and maximiser developed for ultimate levels and power. Going up to 48 bit digital precision, it employs a combination of intelligent, automatic release control that responds to the dynamics of your track as well as manual features. Dithering options and a look ahead give more scope for precision control too.

Price: 34.99 USD

Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain

This plugin is based on the EMI TG12410 Transfer Console, the mastering signal chain that defined the sound at Abbey Road studios. Modelled by waves audio, it contains modular Input, Tone, Compression/Limiting, Filter/EQ, and Output/Stereo Spread sections and faithfully replicates all the 5 modules of the actual signal chain at the world famous studios themselves. This plugin has been designed officially in tandem with the studios via waves audio and contains the Abbey Road TG Meter bridge plugin as well as an updated ‘modern’ feature to alter the quality of your sound if you want to translate the classic studio tones to something tigher and punchier.

Price: 39 USD

BusterSE by Analog Obsession

With boost, tilt, mix, and external sidechain options, the sidechainfeature on this plugin is tightly integrated with it’s overall compression capabilities. From Analog Obsession, this is a classic console compressor that has a turbo mod feature that helps apply compression to the whole signal, making it perfect to implement during masetering and post production.

Price: Free

Niveau Filter Elysia

This is a free plugin from plugin alliance that balances the frequency spectrum, with a particular ability to tilt it to the highs or lows. This unique feature earns it a spot as an invaluable addition to any complete list of vst mastering plugins. It has potential to work during the post production stage to give your mix an overall tendency and help you master towards the requirements of a particular genre. Ideal for distribution ready tracks or fixing tracks that have issues with muddiness or toppiness.

Price: Free

Subfilter Mastering VST by Brainworx

This is another free plugin from plugin alliance that focusses on the low ends of a track. It’s designed to directly target issues that affect the low end of tracks such as muddiness or mushiness, and helps tighten and polish the frequencies in this range.

It has a simple interface with gain in, gain out, tight punch, and low end knobs as well as a resonance slider that varies from low to extreme. This plugin is ideal in post production if you want to balance out low-end issues overall or find that your low end does not have as much of a punch as the rest of the frequency spectrum.

Price: Free

Sonible Pure Intelligent Limiter VST

The purelimit intelligent limiter from sonible is another plugin that offers a hybrid of Ai sound sensing and manual options for sculpting your sound. It’s AI capabilities sense imperfection in your mix and balance these out, but it’s manual options also give you scope to control features such as tone and richness which can often get lost with intensive limiting. This kinds of features are accessed through the ‘style’ and ‘inflate’ parameters, which allow your respectively to set the forcefulness of the limiter as well as add richness.

Price: 52 GBP

Mastering the Mix Limiter Plugin

Mastering the Mix Limiter smart mastering plugin is another plugin that allows you to select the end destination of your master, such as spotify. It also uses Ai technology to adjust the final master to the requirements  of the platform you have chosen, but still has plenty of manual options such as attack, release, link, and ceiling knobs. A unique feature of this plugin is the visualiser and targets combo that indicates directly where you need to balance your mix and what to do (or, your ‘target’) in order to get there. This makes this plugin ideal for beginner musicians who want to learn in a hands on manner and it is one of the few options on the mrket with this exact combination.

Price: 65 GBP

IK Multimedia T-Racks Multiband Limiter

This multiband limiter gives you powerful, granular control over each individual band, allowing you to apply the limiter selectively to sculpt the final loudness of your track. This plugin is also noticeable for significantly boosting loudness without losing your track’s finesse. It can cope with high levels of drive and is ideal for tracks that require more power and punch. the limiter is also part of T-Racks 6, a bundle that has other smart mastering features such as saturation.

Price: 66 USD

MLimiterMB from Melda Production

This is another multiband limiter, with lookahead and saturation features to give your track the subtlety it needs. Character, crossover, drive and tone setting form the backbone of this plugin whist attack, release, and look ahead are classified under advanced settings yet come in a user friendly interface that splits them up by frequency band. This is a subtle limiter that allows granular control over bandwidth and band interactions for smooth and glossy masters.

Price: 226 USD

MTransientMB from Melda Production

Unlike some of the others, this may not be the most obvious option for a complete list of VST mastering plugins. However, Transient is a multiband processor that is designed specifically for drums. However it’s also ideal at the post-production and mastering stage for adding power if a track feels lacklustre. This plugin is designed to give you control over transients and contains a compressor with the ultimate aim to deliver a ‘pumping’ effect that can easily boost an EDM or similar track that has emphasis on the beat.

Price: 56 USD

MUltramaximizer from Melda Production

With similar features and interface to their limiter, this is  maximiser from Melda production that contains saturation to boost the warmth of your sound. It is modelled after analog equipment and whilst it gives a flatter frequency spectrum, this is a useful feature at the post mixing stage if you need to emphasiee loudness. T is designed around a simple workflow that allows you to achieve professional quality sound with the turn of a few knobs and easily hit your goals for a track without too much analysis.  

Price: 45 USD

Waves L3 Multimaximizer Mastering Plugin

This maximiser is modelled after technology that has been in use in the industry for decades and is now faithfully and officially recreated from an analog maximiser by waves audio. It contaisn 5 distinct frequency bands which you can control the dynamics of as well as phase crossover which prevents artifacts appearing in your track (think the sotrs of sonic glitches and weird noises you want to ensure y’u’ve edited out at the mixing stage, but which can unfortunately show up post mixing too).

Price: 34.99 USD

McDSP ML4000 Mastering Limiter

The ML4 from McDSP is a unique limiter and dynamic processor that is built aound real time analysis, meaning you can see what is going on frequency wise with your track and adjust accordingly down to the individual section. The interface allows you to control different frequency bands meaning it can also technically double as an EQ, although it isn’t one. The real time analysis features means it’s usable as an invaluable tool post-mixing and at the mstering stage but it also has the capacity to enhance live performances.

Price: 149 USD

IK Multimedia T-Racks 6

Tracks-6 is a series of bundles from IK multimedia that focus on professional standard mixing and mastering plugins and it’s one that’s impossible not to include on any complete list of mastering vst plugins. It’s home to the classic limiter that we have also featured on this list, however, the whole bundle contains other mastering features such as the smart master match X. This allows you to match your audio to an external reference track and is one of the few plugins that does this at the mastering stage. It also contains a quad saturator, brickwall limiter, and other features such as EQ and harmonic enhancers.

Price: 112 USD

Limited Z/max LVC Audio

Limited z-max from LVC audio is an integrated, wholistic limiter that focusses on custimosability. It allows users to deal with high intensity sections with fast transients through technology specifically designed to manage these but also excels at subtlety through a fast peak limiter and waveshaper. It allows users control beyond typical features such as attack and release, and instead enables sculpting of low and high frequencies through a noise shaping algorithm as well as other features like dithering and DC filtering.

Price: Free

Frontier from D6 Audio Group

Frontier is an audio limiter that comes free from D16 audio group members on signing up. It’s an adaptive, versatile limiter, which uses a combination of intelligent lookahead technology and manual parameters. It has configurable input control for increased subtlety and adaptive gain meaning it adjusts to the needs of your track. However, it’s the soft clipping option which takes it beyond the range of a typical limiter and allows it great potential as a tool for sound sculpting.

Price: Free

DBComp from Analog Obsession

This is a smart compressor/limiter combo which is initially designed for drums but hase huge potential in the post-mixing and mastering stages too. T’s great for adding tightness to low frequencies and it’s analog warmth means that it can add color to parts of your track that may have been left a bit muddy.

Price: Free

Kilohearts Limiter Mastering Plugin

This is a simple, bare bones own brand limiter from Kilohearts and has a smooth and easy to adapt to interface. It can work well on sigle tracks and busses but is also simple and flexible for quick mastering. The Limiter features look ahead technology and a modern and powerful ability to cope with a range of sound without flatting it too much and losing transients.

Price: Free

Sonic Anomaly Unlimited Limiter Plugin

The unlimited limiter plugn from sonic anmaly is a mastering specific limiter plugin that combines with a maximiser and works in stereo and 5.1 surround sound too. It has a big picture approach that is ideal for mastering in stereo or surround with sliders for character and respece as well as aurround, centre, and low frequency effects (lfe). These allow you to shape your overall master. This plugin was designed to balance the distortion of hard limiting with potential flatness of over-limiting and over-compression.

Price: Free

Clipshifter from LVC Audio

Clipshifter is a multiband clipping tool that uses smart digital controls such as oversampling to give you control over clipping in any parameter and at any stage of your mix, including the mastering stage. Clipshifter subtly breaks down audio into left and right ignals allowing you to merge, combine, and balance these wherever in the track you want across 4 distinct clipping modues, shifter, stereo, m-band, and master.

Price: Free

A1 Stereo Control from A1 Audio

A! stereo control is a limiter that is also designed to expand stereo wideness. It has an easy to use interface that allows you to visualise wideness and easily control this through pan laws and pan curves that lets you expand or limit stereo wideness. It’s not just hands on technology, however, as the safe bass feature centres your bass frequencies to maintain solidity, rhythm, and groove within your track.

Price: Free

Barricade 4 Pro Limiter Mastering Plugin

The Barricade 4 from Toneboosters is a creative mastering limiter that offers a balance of adaptive, intelligent technology, and manual, do it your self capabilities. It contains 3 input modellers designed to similate both analog and digital character through analog circuitry modelling, tape saturation, an digital clipping. Beyond this it’s true and reliable, focussed on taming peaks without adding aggressie limiting and allowing you to maintain the character of your track through an integrated loudness meter.

Price: 33 USD

Voxengo Elephant Mixed Mastering Plugin VST

Voxengo elephant lives up to it’s name with a whopping array of features including  Audio mastering peak limiter, Stem, sub-mix, drum bus compressor, Loudness maximizer, Stereo, mono mastering limiter, 7.1, 5.1 surround sound mastering limiter, TPDF dither with noise-shaping, DC offset removal filter, EBU R128, K-system level meter. It is a mastering specific dedicated limiter with true peak mastering that avoids inter sample anomalies, as well as oversampling for crisp, clear sound, and headroom estimation to help you become better at mastering while using this plugin.

Price: Free

x10 Multiband Compressor from Cana San Martin

This is a dedicated mastering compressor designed and developed by professional audio engineer and technician Juan Eugenio San Martin under the name Cana San Martin. The X-10 is  10 band mastering compressor that allows controls across a diverse range of frequencies and is particularly good for giving you access to compress specific unwanted frequencies as well as shape and sculpt the highs and lows. The large range of frequencies makes it possible to subtly control the atmosphere of tracks due to the ways their sound changes in relation to each other.

Price: Free

AMT Multiband Peak Limiter by Nomad Factory

This is a brickwall limiter and maximiser with look ahead features that smartly splits up the sound and sculpts each part individually to maintain a warm and analog tone. It’s three bands allow unprecedented control over the shape of the sound, preventing the intense compression usually associated with brickwall limiters. It’s maximising capacity balances between power and nuance, maintaining a naturalistic sound.

Price: 129 USD

FETish by Analog Obsession FEt Compressor Mastering Plugin

This is a classic FET compressor from Analog Obsession that allows you unprecedented control over compression variables. FETish has a release range of 50 ms to 1.1s and over 4 different ratios. Furthermore, it specifically allows you to set the middle frequency and control the amount of compression that affects this bandwidth via a ‘mid gain’ control. This plugin is not strictly for mastering but is instead an invaluable tool to help you focus on the tricker parts of the frequency spectrum that are often overlooked.

Price: Free, but you can support them on Patreon

Pluginbox Limiterbox by Synth Science

Limiter box is a dead simple limiter plugin from synth science that nevertheless stands out with it’s ability to store 32 presets so you can always find the exact features and configuration you may need to get your sound consistent throughout tracks. It really only contains threshold, realease, and in and out monitoring features yet is still powerul, high quality, and is fully automatable too. Ideal for the edn fo your mix bus in the pre-mastering stage as well as during mastering as a limiter for your track overall.

Price: Free

DSP Plug Mark 3

This plugin is an emulation of the rescue mark 2 and is an analog signal modeller with a built in de esser and mastering. Rescue mark 2 was an analog signal exciter, yet the mark 3 goes further and becomes an ideal mastering plugin if you want warm sounding masters due to it’s moog filter and other capabilities. It works based on mid and side processing and a  band EQ system, allowing you to independently work with mono and stereo to add subtle limiting that roudns out your master as a whole and is not too aggressive.

Price: Free

Thrillseeker Vintage Broadcast Limiter Mastering Plugin

Thrillseeker VBL is based on a vintage broadcasting limiter with features that hark back as far as the 1950s, providing plenty of analog warmth. It is based on transformer-coupled tube circuits that would have been found in old-fashioned analog gear, achieving this through a technique called stateful saturation that mimics circuit ‘memory’. These features can also add subtle low-end distortion to your track, making this perfect in the mastering stage if some parts of the track lack oomph or character, which can often be common if you have applied aggressive limiting. This gentler form of limiting adds a vintage touch that can work well for mastering music as well as spoken parts of tracks for those branching out into other areas of sound design.

Price: Free

Steady Pro Bundle

This is an auto leveler, expander, and limiter combo that is designed to make tracks steadier and more centred. Its features aim to balance key components of tracks to keep them grounded and avoid any extremes that may disrupt your eventual master. It’s ideal for applying to a whole mix, although you can also apply it to individual buses. It contains four selectable Steady-models (Heavy, High, Normal, Soft), 4-bands Eq with on/off, Input and output gain controls, global bypass, low cut function, att & rel controls (except heavy), parabolic saturation control with on/off toggling, model dividers, a reset button, I/O + peak meters, and mono and stereo versions.

Price: free

VU2 by Starplugs

This is an adaptable metering plugin designed by Starplugs that can work as a peak meter, program meter, VU meter, or power meter. It has two channels can can easily be used on a mix or mix bus, but is likewise ideal for a master track due to its precision if you desire a glossy and finished sounding master that stays tight. It contains a peak meter, program peak peter, VU meter, power meter, correlation meter, over LED, and peak needle.

Price: free

TSClip Clipping and Limiter Plugin

For those who want to focus on loudness in their final master, TSClip is a clipper and saturation plugin that has a warm, analog sound, and boosts both bass and overall input level. This is ideal for giving your master more power and rounding it out, as it also contains a makeup switch to raise the input level after clipping. It combines clipping and saturation and is ideal for using in tandem with a limiter and equaliser although can fix subtle issues by itself too.

Price: Free

Track Meter Free from DMG Audio

Track meter is an invaluable tool that allows you to visualise your track as you master it and fully identify problem areas. Track Meter FREE is heavy on support for phasing issues, making it ideal at the mastering stage. It has a phase meter and correlation meter too, focusing on the fiddly and difficult phasing issues that can sometimes occur at the mastering stage, and thus making it ideal for this. It’s bui;t around a full-featured FFT spectrum analyser and also contains a 1/3 octave RMS analyser and phase spectrum analyser.

Price: free

TLs Saturated Driver

Saturated Driver is a limiter/compressor combination that can be used on entire mixes at the mastering stage. It has ASDR controls, a warm, analog-sounding ‘boost’ mode, and 10 presets. Its main focus is on making your mix warmer and fuller and focuses on the intersection of saturation, tone, and compression. Input gain ranges from 16dB to 16 dB, making it powerful and easy to use.

Price: Free

The Seeker Spectrum Analyzer VST

The Seeker is an exciting spectrum analyser from HimiltungI Labs, designed as a competitor to the average FFT Spectrum analyser on the market, and developed for a more granular and powerful look at the frequency spectrum with a spectrum resolution up to 1/192 octaves. Its UI shows the intersection of amplitude and dynamics, and a new update allows users to set the spectrum scale, making it an invaluable tool for tracks where you have been discovering problem frequencies that you want to smooth out at the mastering stage.

Price: Free

Variety of Sound Feenstaub Tube Compressor

Feenstaub Tube Compressor is a tube compressor emulation from Variety of Sound that aims to bring the warmth of classic tube compressors to VST users. This is a vintage-focused VST ideal for creating softer, warmer-sounding masters and avoiding aggressive compression or limiting, as well as making up lost depth and color within your mix. It’s based on a transformer-coupled circuit and contains stereo imaging to explore your track in detail; meanwhile, variable mu compression ensures a smooth and velvety finish.

Price: Free

Voxengo Span Free Spectrum Analyzer

This spectrum analyser from Voxengo is a classic FFT spectrum analyser that dives deep, featuring stereo, mono, and mid-side spectrum analysis as well as a surround sound spectrum analyzer and stereo correlation meter. It has a lot of detail for a free plugin and can also detect RMS, true peak level, and clipping. The GUI is smooth and easy to use, graph-based and intuitive, and shows you true peak clipping alongside the true peak itself.

Price: Free

Tokyo Dawn Labs Slick EQ

This is billed as both a mixing and mastering EQ and contains distinct preset EQ models such as ‘British’ vs ‘American’, as well as outputs like ‘toasted’ and ‘mellow’ to easily and intuitively give you a professional sound with very little tweaking. It contains 3 EQ bands and a high pass filter as well as automatic gain control compensated with loudness and Variety of Sound’s ‘stateful saturation’, advanced nd intelligent saturation that makes up the warmth and depth that can be lost in compression. An A/B comparison feature makes this an invaluable tool in the final stages of processing a mix, and it has an efficient workflow with undo/redo features and preset management too.

Price: Free

VST Plug Governor Noise Level Mastering VST

VST Plug Governor is a mastering-specific plugin that is designed to help at-home mastering engineers meet the industry standard -6 dbfs mastering preferences. It does this, but pretty much this, and is ideal for a master bus to ensure final levels stay within a controllable range. It does not contain LUFS and weighting in order to preserve its real-time display. Note that this plugin is only available for Windows.

Price: Free

VPS Scope From Vengeance Sound

VPS scope from Vengeance Sound is a comprehensive scope, spectral, and stereo field visualiser and analyser that allows you to see your tracks in a comparative way that is ideal for picking up anomalies and identifying problem areas. It also has a unique ‘mastering mode’ designed to give you a bird’s eye view of your track. This plugin has detailed monitoring in stereo and a variety of graph formats you can toggle between to zoom in on specific features you want to analyse, such as scope, spectrum, and stereo field, all of which are visible broken down into different formats such as bandwidth too.

Price: Free

Blyss EQ from House of Kush – Subtle EQ Mastering VST

This is a unique, integrated, and wholistic EQ-saturator combination from developer House of Kush, which combines 6 layers of saturation in a ‘stacked’ approach to gradually build up sound processing in a subtle way. It also contains a compressor and regular tree band EQ. This VST is designed specifically for busses and also contains presets. Likewise the saturation is split into input, interstage, and output stransformers and 3 discrete op-amp stages. Perfect for layering saturation and fixing a mix in the mastering stage.

Price: 99 USD

Sqwosh Free Compressor from whiteLABEL

Sqwosh is a feature-packed free compressor from developers whiteLABEL. It differentiates between hard and soft knee, clean static and dynamic drive character features, and even a ‘filth level’, making it great for preserving tone and character. It also differentiates between internal and external side chaining with two stereo inputs, and it has an output limiter chain and input/output flip features as well as an output wet/dry control for increased subtlety – great for finishing touches without an aggressively obvious sense of compression.

Price: Free

Signal Noise Brickwall Limiter VST

Signal Niose (SN05-G) is a very basic yet effective sample peak/brickwall limiter with two release knobs, one attack knob, and 0-24 dB input gain as well as a GR meter and ceiling knob. Free from developers sender spike, it has a fixed attack time and release time from 0.1 m/s to 20 m/s.

Price: Free

Ultra Comp Compressor by Minimal Signal Group

Ultra Comp is a free vintage-style compressor from Minimal Signal Group. Although it is essentially 32-bit, it can run on 64-bit systems with iBridge, as well as on Cubase, Nuendo, Bitwig Studio, Reaper, Tracktion, Renoise, FL Studio, Sonar, Mixcraft, and Samplitude using their inbuilt bridging, although at this stage it is unfortunately Windows only. Apart from this, it has a variety of classic-looking and intuitive controls: threshold, ratio, attack, release, gain, and power, which is especially useful if you want to boost levels at the mastering stage. This is a very simple yet classic compressor.

Price: Free

Tokyo Dawn Labs Feedback Compressor

This designed for purpose compressor from Tokyo Dawn Labs is a powerful machine that offers unique insight into the signal chain by using an output-based monitoring method. It’s ‘feedback compression’ technology (as opposed to feed forward) monitors the output of a signal and adjusts compression accordingly, as opposed to, like most other compressors, monitoring the input signal. This results in compression that is more grounded in the actuality of your signal and leaves less room for error. It also contains a distinct crest factor control and independent release controls for peak and RMS. Lastly, it actually allows you to compare compressed and original signals in ‘delta preview mode’. This is a legacy product so it’s not guaranteed to work in your setup, but is still available for those who want to try it and are happy to figure it out themselves.

Price: Free

Spazial Stereo FX Mastering VST by Synthblitz

This is a stereo processor vst that is designed to expand the sound o fyour mix and comes ith a simple and intuitive interface with six knobs. It’s internal processor contains two EQs and FX options as well as presets, and i’’s separate knobs include vibrato, side, and phase. There is plenty here to widen the sound of a mix, and this is an ideal plugin for adding color if you are mastering in stereo and feel your mix may have lost character by this stage.

Price: Free

Smexoscope Audio Monitoring Plugin Free

The Smexoscope is an audio monitoring plugin from developers SmartElectronics that offers insight into a variety of parameters to give you a more precise master with greater attention to detail. It’s available as both a standard or modular plugin and has a simple display with only two main parameters: time and amplitude. It also comes with a waveform analyser that allows you to get a more in-depth, metrics-based look at your overall mix and identify problem areas for mastering.

Price: Free

Roughrider Compressor Mastering VST Plugin

Roughrider compressor is a free compressor tool from Audio Damage with a novel user interface that identifies sensitivity as well as ratio and makeup, offering more granular control over levels of compression and helping avoid aggressive compression through the ability to fine-tune. It also has a wet/dry mix knob for enhanced sensitivity to your end desired sound, as well as sidechaining capabilities and attack and release knobs.

Price: Free

Refine Exciter and Enhancer VST Plugin

Refine is a dead simple exciter and enhancer from developers ikjb that has three knobs warm helps make up lost tone and character in the mixing process, making it ideal for a master bus to add subtle levels of color to your overall finished track. Space enhances the space in your track, ideal for mastering in stereo and creating a more realistic sounding master. Meanwhile, punch makes your mix punchier and more driving with greater fullness and power. Between these, this plugin adds subtle changes to your mix but does not have high gain or distortion capabilities, nevertheless, its subtlety makes it an ideal tool for mastering as a result. This plugin is now also open source.

Price: Free

You Wa Shock (FL Studio Emulation/Spin Off)

You Wa Shock is a plugin that was originally part of FL Studio and came from developer Image Line. It hs now been redeveloped as a single knob plugin with four presets. The original plugin it was based on (the Maximus Maximiser) was a multiband compressor/limiter and saturator. The You Wa Shock has less subtle control over these parameters and certainly does not let you control levels of FX by EQ band. Nevertheless, it’s an easy and subtle solution to add to a master bus for increased tone and color to make up lost character at the end of the mixing process.

Price: Free

X-Cita Elogoxor

The X-cita by elogoxor is another simple plugin that has only two knobs – low contour and high contour. This split is designed to emphasise the low and the high frequencies, and the plugin takes inspiration from the BBE maximiser. It’s ideal for increasing the depth and power of bass frequencies as well as adding brightness to higher frequencies, targeting these frequency bands more distinctly than some other exciters which focus on the track as a whole, and making it ideal if your bass frequencies have lost punch as a result of the mixing process.

Price: Free

Voice of Snow Synth Plugin With Mastering VST Capabilities

Not an obvious option for a complete list of vst mastering plugins, however, it deserves a place on this list. This is an experimental plugin that technically is a synth but works like an exciter, splitting up frequencies to distinctly separate noise and tone. It contains clipping and tilt controls and allows you to mix your separate and modified signals back together to create subtle color in the same was as an exciter. This plugin does not hve a Gui but instead operates more like a very basic synth, it’s not viable for monitoring and relies on a lot of manual work, there are no presets, nevertheless, it comes with a unique approach that can give you options and detail orientation if you want to improve a mix at the most nuanced level.

Price: Free

THD Saturator Exciter Plugin

With gain, punch, clip shape, and output sliders, this is a basic yet pretty comprehensive exciter plugin that also has options for bypass. This was designed by developer Digitalfishphones to add very subtle warmth and saturation to tracks to make up for lost color or improve tone. It does not have gain or distortion capabilities, and although it sounds analog or like a vintage tube input stage, it’s actually digital. It doesn’t involve circuit modelling at any deep level but is instead inspired by classic sounds to add subtle color.

Price: Free

La Petite Excite Exciter Mastering VST Plugin

It’s impossible not to include this fantastic exciter on any complete list of vst mastering plugins. La Petite Excite from Fine Cut Bodies is a surprisingly comprehensive small exciter with knobs for low and high frequencies so as to give more subtle control over which parts of a mix may need brightening or giving more power. Otherwise it has a handy noise floor knob so that adding color and depth doesn’t need to affect the levels of your overall mix, as well as a CV feature for added precision. Running for both OS and Windows, it has 32-bit and 64-bit options.

Price: Free

Sound Rider Spectrum Analyser

Sound Rider is a powerful spectrum analyzer with three dimensions. It lets you navigate around a 3D model of your track with classic frequency and amplification axes as well as a time dimension for added depth and clarity in seeing exactly how the different areas of your track work together. For added clarity it also allows you to toggle between 2D and 3D views making it as versatile as you like.

Price: Free

Sonogram SG1 Spectrum Analyser Mastering VST

Sonogram SG1 is a unique spectrum analyser with designated options for analysing drums, noise floor, and other distinct aspects of your track. This ‘split up’ sound analysis allows you to focus on distinct areas to see how they fit into your overall master, whilst it’s also possible to adjust the zoom ratio and pause the visualization in real time.

Price: Free

Sonic Visualiser from Centre for Digital Music

This is a basic spectrum analysis tool that allows you to visualise and analyse any audio file, ideal for noting the exact parameters of a desired reference track to identify how and where your master differs or is similar. This is a more academic, high-level tool with a less intuitive UI than some others, yet it also has a level of depth and precision beyond this.

Price: Free

Striptool Channel Strip VST

Strip tool is part of a 3-part series that contains everything you need to master a track, including a de-esser, EQ, compression, and more. However, this free version (Striptool 1) features EQ and compression, with hard, medium, and soft compression capacities.

It contains separate features for EQ post compression too meaning it’s great at sonic details and rounding off your mix to ensure it sounds smooth and professional. Apart rom this, it has the regular useful compressor features such as attack, threshold, and autogain, too.

Price: free

Setechave Compressor by Audio Fusion Bureau

Setechave is an exciting stereo compressor that focusses on power as opposed to tone, ieeal for making your master strong enough to compete with professional tracks. It has basic controls: attack and release, followed by three knobs to control threshold ratio knee. This is an aggressive pumping compressor that has a powerful and driving sound. It is ideal to make up bass frequencies and give a master track more oomph.

Price: Free

Tesla Pro 4 from Variety of Sound

Tesla Pro from Variety of Sound is a saturator style plugin that is based around digital precision and analog warmth and character. Unlike other exciters it has a knob specifically for focussing on bass and is ideal if your tracks have lost character or even feel muddy. Additionally, boost and power switches ensure that you don’t loose any energy at the mastering stage whilt drive and transients knobs bring color and texture and a clear, easy to read VU meter helps keep your mix within your desired parameters.

Price: Free

Waves Vitamin Sonic Enhancer Mastering VST

Vitamin Sonic Enhancer from Waves is a sonic enhancer that works through a combination of EQ and saturation across five frequency bands, the crossovers of which are completely adjustable. This is a powerful processor designed to ‘sharpen’ your track, making the highs brighter, the lows richer, and the range more nuanced. Furthermore, it also allows you to blend the output with the original unprocessed signal in a wet/dry mix style for added control over the sound of your final master.

Price: 149 USD

Modern De-Esser Mastering VST by Antress

This is a de-esser from Antress that is versatile and adaptable. Modern De-Esser is one of the most powerful and comprehensive free plugins of its kind due to how it can work at both extremes of the frequency spectrum. It’s designed to clear up harsh vocal sibilance, but this also means it’s great at removing unwanted high frequencies in general. Due to this, it can balance out top-heavy masters of those with too much piercing noise at the higher range of the frequency curve. Additionally, it#s able to work on muddiness, meaning it can be used to master drums and bass, and has built-in gain reduction so it’s only taking away the sound you want to clear up, not adding anything unwanted.

Price: free

MIA Thin, Muscle, and Fat by MIA Laboratories

The MIA range of audio sculpting plugins are EQ-based designs that work best at the mastering stage to add extra fatness or power to your mix, or, in the case of MIA thin, to even it out and remove unwanted noise to make sure the frequencies you want really shine through. The range now also contains super thin, super muscle, and super fat, which work as more extreme versions of their classic models. Apart from this, all plugins in the range act quickly and intuitively and allow you to add the desired ‘flavor’ of noise to your track with the twist of a knob.

Price: free for all three of them

HUE X EQ Exciter Enhancer Mastering VST

An extremely detailed, varied, and comprehensive exciter and enhancer developed by Mildon that offers a broad range of different tonal qualities and parameters with which to add subtle quality to a final mix or master. These include depth, boom, fullness, warmth, body, clarity, sheen, brightness, sparkle, and punch, offering unprecedented scope for tweaking the subtle details of a recording. Furthermore, it also comes with a visualiser in the user interface. Fundamentally, this is an EQ plugin but one which focuses on tonal quality as opposed to the straightforward metrics of the sound. It’s ideal for mastering with reference tracks if you need to articulate what qualities make a track ideal, and it works in both mono and stereo.

Price: Free

Hexaline Exciter Enhancer

Hexaline by Big Tick is a novel exciter and enhancer that uses stereo to give a nuanced and blended quality to your tracks. Hexaline has separate dials for left and right, which range from feedback, depth, and speed to delay. It has potential as a creative effect in the mixing stage but is also ideal for mastering in stereo due to this split when used in a restrained way and dry and wet mix knobs keep things subtle.

Price: Free

Sixty Five Vintage Compressor

SixtyFive is an emulation of a real 1970s vintage compressor by developer DLM, modelled after a classic 190s sound with a soft knee, harmonics, noise, and saturation. The compressor has added some new features as part of the emulation including parallel compression, extended knob ranges, and peak metering. Apart from this it faithfully recreates the softness, naturalism and character of the original compresso it is modelled after, the dbx 165A, with wet and dry knobs for blending signalsn and rms detection to ensure compression is naturalistic and does not result in flatness.

Price: Free

A Complete List of Mastering VST Plugins – Final Thoughts

This aims to be a comprehensive and complete list of the main plugins available for mastering, both free, paid, indivual, and part of a bundle. The mastering process varies from limiting and compression to spectrum analysis and saturation. So, a complete list of mastering vst plugins for every musician is, like we mentioned, impossible. However, this hopes to provide an overview not of the ‘best’ plugins in each area but the full variety that is out there so as to meet a broad range of needs.

If you enjoy learning more about mastering, check out our articles here and here, and if you’re always on the lookout for more cool VSTs, be sure to check out our software section here.