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We know it: sound effects libraries can be expensive. Whether you’ve already spent your budget on some highly specific sci-fi vehicle sounds, or simply lack the budget to begin with, knowing where to find sounds for free can save your behind when deadlines are looming.
Of course, something being truly free in this world is rare. One of the negatives of searching for free sounds is the likelihood that you’ll have to wade through badly categorised – and often bad quality – sounds. In this article, we’ll outline the pros and cons of each site and help you navigate the roadblocks that may become apparent when incorporating free sounds into your projects.
With our free high-quality SFX packs offering everything from general atmospheres and Foley elements to specifically designed laser and gunshot sounds, it’s likely that we already offer what you’re looking for. Created using our very own Krotos Studio and completely royalty-free, these packs are a great place to start if you want a quick fix without any of the extra hassle. These sounds can be downloaded directly to your device to use in any way you wish; however, we recommend using them within Krotos Studio so you can layer and shape sounds to match your project with ease.
So whether you want to make your own lightsaber sounds for your fan video, or some keyboard Foley for your short film, give our free SFX packs a try.
Freesound is an internet staple at this point, full of both the best and worst sounds the internet has to offer. With over 625,000+ samples hosted, the quality of the sounds featured fluctuates on a user-to-user basis, but if you know where to look and are clever with your search terms, you can find some real gold. Just be sure to double-check the attributions of what you want to use to make sure the uploader is happy with their work being used without credit or a license.
Freesound is, at the end of the day, a community of sound recordists from various walks of life. So audio quality and format can never be a guarantee, but we don’t know a sound editor who hasn’t had to use it one time or another.
While this is a time-limited free trial (7 days), we feel it's worth mentioning simply due to the overwhelming amount of SFX available through Krotos Studio. Full to the brim with everything from combat sounds and cinematic atmospheres to everyday foley such as footsteps and doors, there's plenty of quality that can be wrung out in no time. Paired with the intuitive Krotos Studio software, the range of sounds possible expands exponentially. Sculpt in real time your sounds to image, or record a session of experiments to give yourself a range to work with later. You can certainly put those seven days to good use.
See our easy walkthrough of Krotos Studio and our other tutorials over at our blog to help get started as quickly as possible.
The BBC’s legendary audio archive contains some of the most iconic SFX ever recorded, many of which you will have heard in countless productions throughout your life. With over 33,000 categorized sounds, an easy way of searching the database, and a built-in web-mixer, you can almost be certain they have something you're looking for. However, this does come with a catch. Taking a look at their licensing page reveals that things aren’t as simple as they seem, with limitations on what type of content the sounds can be used in, and other legal specifics. Be sure to read through carefully if you’re planning on using these sounds.
That being said, for non-commercial and educational projects, or for students learning sound design, this collection really is an invaluable slice of sonic history.
The Internet Archive is full to the brim with media that has fallen through the cracks of copyright and licensing (or just outright public domain). You truly never know what you will find, multiple lifetimes' worth of forgotten art and media stored away simply to preserve the past. Amongst all this, there are countless soundpacks and field recordings from now-defunct 90s companies, internet hobbyists, and fellow sound archivists uploading their additions in the archive. It can be hard to find what you're looking for, but collections such as the one linked above do what they can to herd the ever-growing ‘library of Babel’.
Well worth exploring, but with the open nature of these sounds’ sources, professional sound quality is certainly no guarantee. It may be worth doing some research to make sure that particular cat sound you found is legal to use.
Founded by sound designer Alan McKinney, Zapsplat is an ever-growing archive of (mostly) free sound effects and music. With the site currently hosting 160k+ sound effects, there's plenty to trawl through, and with dedicated library curators, you can be sure that what they have is up to their standard. While it is true that most sounds on their site are free to download, to do so, you must register an account, and even then, the quality is capped off at MP3. To download WAVs of the sound, you must either be a premium member or pay a one-off price.
So not really viable in professional contexts unless you're willing to pay, but it could be worth it for smaller-scale personal projects or as a way of testing out sounds before buying the higher quality version.
A straight-up library of sound effects with no bells or whistles, Sound Dino has over 30,000 sounds in categories ranging from ‘edible’ to ‘firearms’. Gearing more towards online content creation for platforms such as YouTube, Sound Dino only provides MP3 downloads for their sounds. Which certainly isn’t up to scratch for professional work, but could maybe be useful as a temporary sound until a better quality replacement is found. To add to that, not all sounds are necessarily recorded well. Within a short search, I did find some clipped recordings of cars, for example.
All that being said, Sound Dino is refreshingly straightforward with no need to register an email account or anything like that.
With a lot of the SFX sounding as old-school as the website looks, Free Sound Effects has a nostalgic charm to it that reminds us of the early days of the internet. Unlike the above, Free Sound Effects do offer WAVs of their sounds, but since the recordings themselves are of such low bitrate, it won’t do much to improve their usability. If you're working on something that is purposefully shooting for some old-school, late 90s or early 2000s aesthetic, then this site is a goldmine for you, as it has all the crunchy sounds your heart desires (more than 50,000 free sounds by all accounts).
They offer a paid VIP account with access to ‘pro’ recordings; however, we can’t vouch for their quality, as it is hard to ascertain what sounds on their site would be included.
A community-led website that has been designed to make things as easy as possible for content creators to find sounds, stock images and video. Pixabay offers free-to-use sounds which are mostly of high quality, being community-led, some are, of course, better quality than others. With a broad royalty-free and license-free model, you can use these sounds in most contexts, short of selling them off as your own. However, these sounds are again limited to MP3 quality, so they’re not up to scratch for use in movie or video game projects.
It is nice that the sounds are often sorted by popularity, so the quality stuff does tend to float to the top.
Another SFX site that is geared towards the internet video creator, Free SFX hosts an impressive variety of sounds that cover a lot of niches your videos may need. Specifying pieces of technology, such as vacuum cleaners or cassette players, or genres of music, your royalty-free needs are mostly met here. But like the last few examples, the audio quality is limited to MP3, and it seems to be that way to usher you towards their paid sites for access to the higher quality stuff.
Not bad and certainly has its uses, great if you're just dragging and dropping sounds into a video editor for a YouTube skit.