Audacity

Indie podcasters on a budget

Audacity is the default answer to 'how do I edit a podcast for $0' and it's still a perfectly reasonable one. Interface looks like Windows XP, the workflow is fiddly next to modern tools, and the recent ownership change rattled the community — but it's free, runs everywhere, and does the basics well. If you're starting out and don't want to commit to a subscription, this is where to begin; you'll outgrow it within a year if you stick with podcasting.

Audacity has been the on-ramp for new podcasters and amateur audio editors for over two decades, and that durability is the main reason it still gets recommended. It's free, open source, and runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux without phoning home to a subscription server. The toolkit covers what most beginners need: multitrack editing, format conversion across WAV, MP3, FLAC and Ogg, basic effects, plugin support for VST3 and Nyquist, and recently some AI-powered plugins on Mac for noise suppression and source separation. Recent versions added a cloud companion through Audio.com for collaboration. The downsides are baked into its age. The interface is distinctly retro, the editing model is destructive in ways modern NLEs abandoned years ago, and there's no text-based editing or filler-word AI of the kind Descript built its brand on. Workflows for podcast episodes work but feel fiddly — exporting, re-importing, managing levels by hand — and once you've used Hindenburg or Descript, the friction is hard to unsee. The real role of Audacity in 2026 is as a free starting point: ideal for someone publishing their first ten episodes who isn't ready to commit a monthly fee, or for occasional audio cleanup tasks where firing up a heavier tool is overkill.