Is Audacity free? What it costs and what it does not do

Bottom line: yes. Audacity is free and open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL v3, per its Audacity 4 page), with no paid version of the editor and no subscription, and its noise reduction and compression tools are included. The places money can come in are optional: extra cloud storage on audio.com and paid plugins on MuseHub. What free does not buy you is a faster way to cut speech, because editing is still done on the waveform.

Audacity's own homepage is direct about it: "Audacity has always been and will always remain free for everyone." The FAQ adds that "Audacity is licensed under the GNU General Public License", and the project describes itself as open source, with its source code "open to anyone to view or modify". All checked on 17 October 2026.

What Audacity costs

Nothing, for the editor. There is no paid edition and no subscription for Audacity itself. You download it for Windows, macOS or Linux and keep using it. The current version is 4.0.1, and older releases back to 3.0.0 are still on the download site.

The February 2024 announcement about audio.com put the commitment in writing: "Audacity will, of course, always remain 100% free and open source."

What you get for free

A lot, on the processing side:

• Recording and multitrack editing. Record, import, cut, split, trim, move clips between tracks, mix and pan. Unlimited undo during a session.
• Noise Reduction. Select a few seconds of background noise, get a noise profile, then apply it to the rest. Audacity says it works best on steady noise: hiss, fan noise, 50 or 60 Hz hum, buzzing.
• Noise Gate, which silences audio below a volume threshold.
• Compressor, as a destructive or realtime effect, with factory presets.
• Limiter, Graphic EQ and Filter Curve, redesigned for Audacity 4.
• Other effects: reverb, echo, delay, distortion, pitch, speed, reverse and vocal remover.
• Plugins. Audacity 4 loads VST3, LV2 and Audio Units plugins.
• Export to formats including MP3, WAV, FLAC, Opus and M4A (AAC). M4A needs FFmpeg, which Audacity cannot bundle for patent reasons, so it is a separate install.

Where money can come in

None of these are required to use Audacity.

Cloud storage on audio.com. Audacity can save projects to audio.com, which Audacity calls its "online companion", with backups, versioning and sharing. Audacity's FAQ refers to people who "signed up for additional Audacity Cloud storage", so extra cloud storage is something you pay for. Saving to your own disk costs nothing.

MuseHub add-ons. Audacity's site links to MuseHub, which it calls "the official distributor of Audacity". MuseHub itself is optional (you can download Audacity directly) and Audacity says installing through it gives you some free extras, including Muse FX effects plugins. Audacity 4's Get Effects browser lists MuseHub plugins "Including free and paid options", so some add-ons cost money and you choose whether to buy them.

Your time. This is the real cost for spoken word, and it is the next section.

What Audacity does not do for spoken word

Free is not the same as quick. For editing speech, two things are worth knowing before you commit an evening to it.

You cut on the waveform. To remove something, you select it by clicking and dragging in the waveform, then delete it. Audacity's own Cut page lists removing "ums, coughs, and long pauses" as a use for that command, which means finding each one yourself. On a long interview, that is a lot of scrubbing and listening.

It is desktop only. Audacity's FAQ says it is "only available for desktop computers or laptops" and that "There is no mobile version of Audacity available."

None of this is a criticism. Audacity is a general audio editor, built for music, restoration, podcasts and everything else. Word-level cutting of speech is a narrower job.

How Paraphrase prices the narrower job

Paraphrase does that narrower job and nothing else: it transcribes your recording, you click words to cut them or drag them to reorder, and it exports your original recording with those pieces removed. It never generates speech. It also has none of Audacity's processing: no noise removal, no levelling, no EQ, no effects.

Beyond a free allowance it is paid, and it prices by transcription. One credit transcribes one second of audio, spent once. Editing, AI cleanup and export do not use credits, so re-editing and re-exporting are free.

Credit packs are £3.99 for 4 hours, £12.99 for 13 hours 20 minutes and £34.99 for 40 hours, and do not expire while your account is open. There is a seven day Premium trial on the monthly and annual cycles, card required. Prices in GBP, checked 17 October 2026. Full details are on the pricing page and in credits and plans.

Comparing the two honestly

• Audacity costs nothing. If your edits are light, or your time is cheaper than a subscription, it is the right answer and you should not pay anyone, including us.
• They are not buying the same thing. Audacity gives you a full audio workstation for free. Paraphrase charges for a different way of cutting speech: by its words, with an AI pass that proposes the cuts.
• Paraphrase does not replace Audacity's processing. If your recording has hiss or hum, or needs levelling for a podcast platform, you still want Audacity or something like it.

Which is why the honest answer for many people is both: cut in Paraphrase, export WAV or FLAC (both lossless), finish in Audacity. Our Audacity review covers what it is like to use, the alternatives roundup covers other options, and Paraphrase vs Audacity compares the two directly.

Want to see how long word-level cutting takes on your own recording? Create a free account at paraphrase.bot: 15 minutes of transcription, no card.