Best free REAPER plugins for mixing

Most “best free plugins” lists are written for every DAW at once, so they recommend a free EQ, a free compressor and a free gate. REAPER users already have very capable versions of all three. This list starts with what’s already in REAPER, and only then adds the free plugins that do something REAPER’s own can’t, or do it much more comfortably.

Everything below was free when we checked in October 2026. Free plugins do sometimes become paid, so check the developer’s page before you rely on one.

What REAPER already has

Before you download anything, look at what’s already in the FX browser:

• ReaEQ: parametric EQ with as many bands as you want.
• ReaComp: compressor with sidechain input and a filter on its detector.
• ReaXcomp: multiband compressor. With one band around 5–9 kHz it’s also a de-esser.
• ReaGate: gate with a detector filter, which makes it good on toms.
• ReaVerbate (algorithmic) and ReaVerb (convolution): two reverbs. ReaVerb loads any impulse response file, including free ones of real rooms and plates.
• ReaDelay, ReaLimit, ReaTune for pitch correction, and ReaFIR, an FFT EQ that can also learn a noise profile and subtract it.
• A long list of JS effects, from simple utilities to saturation and analysis.

You can mix a complete song with these. We wrote out how in Mixing in REAPER with stock plugins only. The free plugins below are for the jobs where REAPER’s own tools work but take a lot of fiddling to set up.

Free plugins that fill a real gap

Dynamic EQ: TDR Nova

This is the one we’d install first. Nova is an EQ whose bands can act only when a frequency gets too loud. Use it on a vocal that turns harsh at 3 kHz only on the loud notes, a bass with one boomy note, or a guitar that gets in the vocal’s way only when it’s strummed hard. You can build something like this in REAPER from ReaXcomp, but Nova shows you what each band is doing and it’s much faster to set up.

Compression with character: Klanghelm DC1A and TDR Kotelnikov

ReaComp is clean and precise, which is exactly what you want most of the time. When you want something with a sound of its own, DC1A has two knobs and colours the signal in a friendly way on vocals and bass. Kotelnikov goes the other way. It’s a very transparent bus compressor, good for gluing a mix bus without hearing it work.

Reverb: Valhalla Supermassive and Dragonfly Reverb

ReaVerbate works, but it isn’t pleasant to dial in. Supermassive is built for big, long spaces and echoes. It shines on pads, ambient guitars and vocals in slow songs, though it’s less suited to a natural room sound. For realistic rooms, halls and plates, the open-source Dragonfly Reverb set is the better pick, and it’s light on CPU.

Saturation: Klanghelm IVGI and Softube Saturation Knob

REAPER has JS saturators, but these two are simpler to get right. Saturation Knob is a single knob and a good way to help a bass guitar come through on phone speakers. IVGI gives you more control and can stay subtle, which suits a mix bus or a drum bus.

Metering: Youlean Loudness Meter 2 and Voxengo SPAN

These matter more than any effect. Youlean shows integrated loudness in LUFS, true peak, and how your song would be turned down on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. It’s the quickest way to stop guessing about loudness. SPAN is a spectrum analyser that makes a muddy low-mid build-up or a harsh peak visible. Use it to confirm what your ears already suspect.

Getting REAPER to find them

On Windows, REAPER looks for VST plugins in the folders listed under Options ▸ Preferences ▸ Plug-ins ▸ VST. If you installed a plugin into a different folder, add that folder to VST plug-in paths and click Re-scan. On macOS, VST3 and AU plugins installed to the standard system folders are usually found automatically. If one is missing, the same page has a re-scan button.

A plugin that still doesn’t show up is usually the wrong format, such as an old 32-bit VST in 64-bit REAPER, or one that failed its first scan. Clear cache/re-scan on the same preferences page makes REAPER try it again from scratch.

For JS effects and scripts from the community, ReaPack is a free package manager for REAPER extensions. It saves you from downloading and copying files by hand.

Where Mixroadie fits

Mixroadie isn’t a plugin, so it won’t turn up in your FX browser. It runs next to REAPER, measures every track in your project, and proposes a mix that uses REAPER’s own EQ, compressor and limiter, so nothing on this list is required for it. If a track already has your own ReaEQ or ReaComp, Mixroadie doesn’t retune it. It adds its own clearly named one next to it, so your settings stay yours.