Last Updated on March 27, 2025 by IDS Team
It’s hard to choose the best free vst fx as there are so many subcategories. We’ve covered a lot of free plugins on this site before, and it’s always nice to find a bargain or underrated gem – just check out our articles here, here, and here. But sometimes, there are VSTs that many musicians overlook in favor of the big perennial favorites and which we think deserve a bit more love. Therefore we’ve rounded up five of the most underrated but high-quality plugins out there for 2025 to give you the reasons why you should consider those VSTs you may not have considered before.
To qualify for this list, plugins have to be genuinely underrated – so not many people know about them – they have to be free – and they have to offer genuine high quality or something unique and new. As a result, the companies here are much smaller, but sometimes this just means they are more intensely passionate about offering something to the wider music community. So, read on for more – and why they are worth checking out.
Best Chorus Plugin – Dreamwave Tarantula: Stereo Chorus
It’s not immediately obvious which chorus boxes the Dreamwave Tarantula takes inspiration from, but what is clear is that this is a high-quality stereo chorus that excels at sounding true to life. It’s got warmth and character, and sounds lush and bright when applied to clean guitar or other instruments, fleshing it out into an atmospheric soundscape that still doesn’t distract from your original playing. It’s simply one of the best free vst fx around if chorus is what you need.
It’s also possible to apply it subtly, to add to your playing without sounding overwhelming. Or, crank it up to create layers of sound that lap over each other in dreamy harmony. It’s also very high quality for a free plugin, sounding like it could be much more high-end. There’s not much not to like, and Dreamwave are having a 50% discount at the moment, so you can check the tarantula out alongside some of their paid plugins here.
Tarantula contains:
- Simple, clean-cut interface with chorus and LFO options
- Standard and hypertriangle LFO options
- Easy control over chorus intensity and pronouncement
- macOS 10.13 or greater, windows 10 or 11 64 bt VST or AU
- 4 chorus modes
- Inspired by real-life chorus boxes
- Thick, lush, true-to-life sound
Find it here (scroll down!)
Best Throwback Plugin: TAL – VOCODER from TAL Software
We like this one because it’s a vintage vocoder with an analog VCO and fills a niche that not many other vocoders do. With a variety of mainstream and modern options on the market, it’s refreshing to have something a little different that harks back to the early 1980s
The TAL vocoder is capable of both soft, fuzzy, vintage sounds and icy high-pitched warping that sounds futuristic even to this day despite the plugin’s vintage priorities. It’s great for packing a track with overtones and it excels at producing thick, fat sounds that add richness to any input.
Not just content with being one of the best-underrated vst fx music production can provide within this particular niche, it also has side chaining options so you can input a carrier signal. All in all, there is so much thought and dedication in this little plugin that you’d be surprised it’s free. More features and possibilities unravel themselves each time you have a closer look, and it’s one you will be bound to be playing around with for a long time. Finding the best free vst plugins inspired by other decades can be challenging, but this is definitely one of them.
TAL Vocoder contains:
- Windows 7 or higher, MacOS 10.9 or higher and Linux Ubuntu 18 or similar at 64 bit
- VST, VST3, AU, AAX and CLAP formats
- 11 band vocoder emulating early 80s sounds
- Synth and VCO included
- Pulse, saw, sub and noise options
- Transpose, portamento, and harmonic dials
Find it here.
Best Bundle: Kilohearts Essentials Bundle
This one is a bit of a cheat, because it’s technically not free – however, Kilohearts is less well known about and the amount of cool free stuff you get with a subscription makes it worth including if you like the rest of what they have to offer.
The essentials bundle looks like a basic FX bundle on the surface, but look closer and you’ll see that it includes a few things that you don’t always get elsewhere. It comes as part of a $9.99 a month subscription, but it’s worth it if you’re going to use a lot of their gear, and it’s a shame not as many musicians know about them compared to other subscription services.
Kilohearts Essentials Bundle contains:
- Less common FX such as tapestop, trance gate, transient shaper, formant filter, ensemble, comb filter, and bitcrushing
- Easily fits into the Kilohearts ecosystem VST2, VST3, AU, ad AAX format at 64 bit
- Part of monthly Kilohearts subscription
- High-quality and smooth, modern sounds that are versatile and can fit into multiple styles
Best Free VST FX – Reverb: MNTRA Borealis-LE from MNTRA
MNTRA bill themselves as creating ‘animistic virtual instruments and FX’, but what exactly does this mean? MNTRA is a company designed around an intuitive, almost meditative approach to creating plugins. The Borealis LE is the free version of Borealis, an incredible reverb algorithm designed to immerse you in the resonance of different spaces.
In fact, we think it’s simply one of the best free underrated vst fx of all time. Its ‘sanctuary chamber’ modeling means you can really focus on the subtle changes in atmosphere that come from the differing acoustics of these virtual spaces. We’re impressed by how much scope it gives with this for its small size and the fact it’s free.
MNTRA Borealis contains:
- I reverb algorithm (sanctuary)
- 11 Atelier Presents
- 64-bit VST3/AU/AAX
- Windows 10 and MacOS 10.11 and above
- Sanctuary chambers are modelled on real world spaces and acoustics
- Envelope follower (allowing reverb to react naturally to music)
- Mod rate parameter
- Size control for blending chambers
Find it here.
Best Collaboration: Baby Audio x Andrew Huang WARP
This is a plugin that does one thing, but does it well. WARP is designed to speed up and slow down your tracks and give you control over pitch as you do so. Where it really excels is in how it allows you large amounts of flexibility around this. In fact, it has the ability to control pitch independent of time – great value in a free plugin. It’s high quality and intuitive; Andrew Huang is a deep-diving YouTuber whose work in music extends far beyond the videos that have made him famous. All in all, this collaboration is a match made in heaven.
The plugin has stood the test too. It’s essentially an isolation of a feature from Transit 2, a wider collaboration that Baby Audio did with Andrew a while back. However, it’s one which has earned its own unique spot because of its fan-favorite qualities.
WARP contains:
- Based on user favorite data from Transit 2 collaboration with Andrew Huang
- Super easy to use and clean-cut interface with speed, stretch, and mix knobs
- Speed up or slow down audio to your taste
- Ability to control pitch independent of time
- Artifact reduced varispeed control
- Powered by transit 2
- Capacity for extreme pitch and speed mangling
- VST, VST3, AU, AAX 64 bit
- Windows 10 or Mac OS 10.11 and above
- Supports all major DAWs including ableton, Cubase, protools, logic, frootyloops, reaper, reason, and bitwig
Find it here.
Best Free VST FX – Wildcard Edition: Aberrant DSP Digitalis
Free? No. But underrated? Definitely. We’re surprised that more people don’t know about the Digitalis from Aberrant DSP. What it does is really really cool, and there isn’t anything else like it. It’s a digital degradation and glitch tool that will allow your tracks to sound bad – in a good way. What do we mean by this? The imperfections and errors that sometimes come from less-than-stellar or retro technology are sometimes the very things that give sound character. We also like the fact that they’re loud and proud about this. In fact, they describe it as inspired by ‘unearthed CDs, weak internet connections, and catastrophic errors’.
All in all, it’s exciting enough that we’ve allowed it to make the list despite being a paid plugin given the fact it’s only 36 USD – but there’s a lot of good in that 36 USD and if you’re the kind of musician who likes to play around with sound, or even just someone open-minded enough to give the sound of technical imperfections some creative love, this is the plugin for you.
The Digitalis contains:
- Windows 10 VST3 and AAX 64-bit
- or later/Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra and above 64-bit VST3 AU or AAX
- 16 step 4 slot sequencer with tempo syncing
- 98 factory presets and AI assistant
- Time, corruption, and data manipulation windows
- Customizable window order
- Pitch and formant shifting
- Spectral filtering paintbox
- Decimate and dynamic bitcrushing features
- Bitrot section emulating data loss
Find it here.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it – our top 5 underrated FX VSTs for 2025. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and you’ll find plenty of FX plugins in some of our other articles such as this one here, here, here, and here.
However, we do think this list is special as it really gives some love to those plugins that deserve a bit more knowledge about them on the internet. So, we hope that you’ll check them out and show some appreciation to their hard-working designers.
And remember, if you liked this article, we have an entire software section here that has plenty of features on VST plugins. Or, if hardware is more your thing, check out our hardware section.
