This is a great FX bundle that has pretty general effects.
This is another great FX bundle that has general effects along with some specialised effects.
Also contains a great EQ.
This is a decent FX bundle, but most are already replaced by the ones above.
I personally recommend getting GClip, GGate, GGrain, GMulti, GTune and GSnap only.
No-nonsense FX bundle. My personal favourites are FreeClip 2 and FreeConvolve.
This FX bundle has pretty archaic design, but the compressor, Xcompressor and EQ are stellar.
The delay also has the potential for really cool effects, due to it having practically unlimited delay variations.
Pretty great FX bundle containing some unique effects. They have no GUI though, so it defaults to your DAW's wrapper for plugins.
Analog Obsession's Free Plugins
Absolutely amazing analog-modeled plugins!
Andrew Reeman's Spectral Suite
Pretty good spectral processing suite, not sure what else to say.
Genuinely amazing plugins with a playful UI. The UIs are kinda goofy though.
Since Spectral Plugins shut down, their plugins (Pancz, Spacer, OCS-45) are free.
A spectral suite full of some pretty unique plugins.
It's OTT. What more can I say?
This is OTT but with a good mix knob, and pre- and post-FX distortion.
Great multi-band distortion plugin that goes beyond just that.
Very, VERY good multiband distortion supporting 16 one-knob distortion types.
Deceptively powerful distortion with lots of modes, a filter and modulation to destroy your sound.
Great distortion and bitcrushing plugin.
Simple, very concise waveshaper. Essentially Fruity Waveshaper.
Tokyo Dawn Records' TDR Molotok
Awesome dynamic compressor with vintage emulation for alive compression.
Have you ever wanted a 16k band OTT? No? Well, here you go. Seriously great spectral compressor.
Pretty great clipping plugin that can go from very harsh clips to softer, more saturated sound. Also contains waveform display.
Great run-of-the-mill compressor with a bit more up its sleeve.
It has three different modes, includes gain to bring back the lost decibels from compression and also has the ability for sidechaining.
Stellar run-of-the-mill distortion plugin with six modes, bias, stereo spread and can bring back the dynamics of the original sound.
A distortion unlike any other. Basically FM, but as an effect.
An upwards and downwards compressor combination.
Great standard bitcrush plugin.
Great for destroying and trashing your sound in pleasant (and horrible) ways.
Stellar reverb and delay with lots of modes and the ability to create
anything from lush landscapes to otherworldy delays.
Stellar delay and frequency shifter combination that can descend into worbly chaos.
Really nice delay with several modes to transform your lingering sound.
"Delay for insane people" as it is called, and it holds that title beautifully.
Valdemar Erlingsson's CloudSeed
An amazing algorithmic reverb unlike any other.
Stellar glitchy delay plugin.
Great convolver, but contains not much impulse responses. The Internet is a thing though, so you can find IRs pretty much everywhere.
Since IRs are just WAV files, you can load pretty much anything into it and create weird FX.
Reverse delay. Great for textures.
Pretty standard reverb with one nifty feature -- a built-in parametric EQ for the reverb tail!
Great LFO-modulated filter, which can also be triggered via MIDI!
Standard filter. Great for sweeps, or just quick filtering of sounds.
An amazing filter with modes for analogue emulation, or nasty madness.
Stellar four-band dynamic EQ.
Tokyo Dawn Records' TDR VoS SlickEQ
Great three-and-a-half-band EQ with EQ models and EQ saturation.
NOTE: Requires JP Cimalando's YSFX to use in other DAWs that aren't REAPER
Basically a clone of one of the greatest EQs of all time, Fabfilter ProQ.
Great standard 6-band equalizer with included tube saturation for more analogue EQ.
iZotope and the people at Native Instruments were generous enough to give us a great EQ completely free of charge!
Great stereo widener with a feature called "Safe Bass" which stops stereo widening at a customisable frequency.
Basic, but good limiter with input and output gain.
Stellar maximizer and true peak limiter with look-ahead.
Stellar maximizer and limiter for getting just a little bit more loudness out of your tracks.
Stellar imager from the guys that created the Ozone suite.
You can use a temporary email service like TempEmail for this.
This also functions as a stellar mastering clipper with oversampling options!
Stellar spectrum analyser with lots of options to view your sound.
Stellar all-in-one analyser with an included vectorscope, oscilloscope, spectrogram and spectrum analyser that are all very accurate.
Very good and simple beat-synced oscilloscope.
If you are on Mac though, you can instead get:
Bom Shanka Machines' occularScope
Yet another good beat-synced oscilloscope, but with sidechain input!
Stellar granulator with the ability to descend into utter chaos.
Stellar flanger with the ability to descend into flanging madness.
Stellar versatile glitch plugin.
Great for those scratches and dust from yesteryear.
A very good transient designer for completely free. Also hard clips at -0.1DBFS.
Literally Kilohearts' Disperser but free.
Kilohearts' Disperser but free. Now with a better UI!
TL;DR: unison but for every single sound that comes through it.
Another great transient designer with a very useful feature -- sidechain!
Great gate sequencer for getting a bit more rhythm out of static instruments.
Very, VERY good realtime pitch shifter with almost no artifacts.
Great stereo widener.
Essentially Ableton's Utility as a VST.
Literally a clone of Cableguys' Halftime but free.
unfamiliartunes' spectralsand (Free Version)
Absolutely stellar spectral plugin that essentially delays little bits of the spectrum by set amounts.
Xfer Records' Dimension Expander
Absolutely amazing stereo widener.
Basically dBlue Stretch, but with more features.
Real-time MP3 compression. Live back in the 2000s!
Absolutely goated plugin for stutters of all kinds.
Wonderful site containing hundreds of sample libraries.
NOTE: You need a plugin like DecentSamples' DecentSampler or Plogue's sforzando to load libraries here.
Native Instruments' Kontakt and Apple's EXS24 are not free.
Absolutely wonderful orchestral libraries.
NOTE: You need Plogue's sforzando to load some of the free libraries here.
Some plugins are a hit or miss, but they are pretty nice.
Also contains a soundfont player.
Absolutely amazing synthesiser that shouldn't even be free.
Great synthesiser modeled on the Yamaha DX7.
Absolutely amazing modular synthesiser. Basically a free VCV rack.
Surge is an amazing synthesiser with a pretty great FX bank also containing some effects from Airwindows.
Great analog synthesizer, and is also pretty beginner-friendly.
Very powerful one-oscillator spectral synthesizer.
Great for when you want to emulate the NES in your modern DAW.
Stellar instrument that contains lots of free high quality instrument libraries.
Spitfire Audio's BBC Symphony Orchestra - Discover
Pretty decent orchestral library.
Stellar 13-instrument library included. Not sure what else to say.
Pretty great virtual bass guitar.
Pretty great virtual guitar.
Ample Sound's Percussion Cloudrum
Nice, peaceful handpan. Great for ambient pieces.
Nice vintage tonewheel organ.
Echo Sound Works' Vinyl Guitar
Great for shitty lofi! (I'm just kidding)
Great vintage guitar sound, perfectly suitable for many genres.
Pretty much THE BEST sampler you can get for free.
Check out the features here to see what you're getting into.
Very, very good granular synth with drag and drop and phase adjustment of individual grains.
Pretty great drum machine that contains acoustic samples more suited towards rock, metal, etc.
Stellar drum machine with the ability to use separate instruments from a loop, built-in compression, shaping, and more.
Bertom make great plugins. My personal favourites are Denoiser, Air Shelf and EQ Curve Analyser.
Stochas is an advanced MIDI sequencer. Perfect for coming up with new ideas for drums or instruments.
Native Instruments
Native Instruments will sometimes have special events where they put certain plugins for free
like Raum, Ozone 9, or Neutron 3.
Be on the lookout for those, they are genuinely good plugins. Raum is a great reverb.
For the Linux producers out there (and god bless y'all), this is a WINE VST bridge for running Windows VSTs on your distro.
I'm only including Freakshow here because they have given you the option to steal their plugins. Not even joking.
Seriously though, their stealing page really makes you rethink piracy. Genuinely amazing marketing.