Our users love FL Studio, in fact it was picked as the top DAW in our poll. At $99 it’s not cheap if you just want to give it a test run.

FL Studio makes jumping into music production a breeze, with simple composing, arranging, recording, sequencing, editing, mixing, mastering, plugins and effects.

The FL Studio trial can be downloaded for free on Mac or Windows. The trial limitations are as follows:

  • You can SAVE FL STUDIO projects.
  • REOPENING saved projects is NOT possible.
  • Some functions that use save/load capability don’t work in the trial. For example, “Clone channel” and the “Save preset as…” menu options.
  • You can EXPORT to WAV and MP3
  • The TRIAL allows you to test all features and plugins we create.

This should be enough to get you hooked and decide whether to take a dive into the full version. Prices for the full version range depending on what you need:

  • $99 – Fruity Edition – Basic melody & loops creation
  • $199 – Producer Edition – Full song creation & audio recording
  • $299 – Signature Bundle – Full song creation & extra plugins
  • $899 – All plugins Bundle – Complete access all unlocked

These do get quite steep, quite quickly, but Image-Line’s promise of lifetime free updates and no subscription is to be commended and increasing a rarity in music production and software as a whole.

Check out our latest pick for the best DAWs.