Carter Temm

Sounds and Music

Last updated:

Searching for high quality sounds and music for that upcoming project? Stop right here!

This page is a frequently updated collection of resources with an emphasis on games and audiogames, but useful in other cases just as well. While many are freely available, cost is not a requirement. Finding all free content should be as easy as using your browser's find function and searching for "price: free".

A Few Notes

For years this was a living topic on the Audiogames forum. I moved it here as it kept growing past what could reasonably work within the bounds of a single post and BBCode.

Sources are grouped by sound effects, music, both, free packs from paid vendors, and AI sound generators. Each category is a heading, and the entries are sorted alphabetically.

Please remember to provide attribution where required. Many authors on this page have worked hard in bringing all this content to the table, the least you can do is respect licensing. Every link, price, and license on this page was last checked on October 30, 2026. Sites change their terms, so do the creators (and yourself) a favor and read the license.

Some links don't contain information on where content can be used, simply due to the fact that I couldn't find anything. They have been included here to give a wider array of options. I recommend reaching out to the maintainer if you decide you want to incorporate them into your project. If you have licensing info for any of these, let me know and I will make sure this page is updated accordingly.

What is Included

A source may be listed here if it offers sounds or music you can legally use in your own projects, and the people running it have the right to give them to you.

New sources require a public license or terms page. If a site has no license at all, I won't add it, no matter how good the sounds are.

Some sites collect sounds that other people made, sometimes from commercial libraries or games, and give them away with no license. Content from those sites can potentially get your project taken down hence why I have left them off this page. If you aren't sure about a site, here are a few good signs:

Sound libraries that are low quality, or aimed only at music producers (drum kits, synth presets), are also left out because these are a dime a dozen and there are better resources out there.

Contributing

This page is a living resource and updated regularly. If you know of a source that belongs here, I'd love to hear about it. Stick to the format below and include as much detail as possible, especially licensing info. You can reach me through my contact page.

Things I'm actively looking to improve:

Licensing

There are a number of licenses commonly used here. They are listed below, along with a rather rough description. Consult the actual license for more information.

zero: Content is admitted to the public domain. You can copy, distribute, whatever just so long as you don't claim you are the original author.

attribution: You are permitted to freely share, copy, and redistribute. However, you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and tell if the content was modified.

attribution sharealike: Same as attribution, but anything you make from the content must be released under the same license.

attribution noncommercial: Same as attribution, but you are unable to use the content commercially, in any project that isn't completely free.

Many paid and freemium sites use their own license instead.

Sound Effects

99Sounds

type: sounds

price: free, with a few paid packs

description: A place for talented sound designers from around the world to collaborate and promote their work in the form of packs. The stuff is heavily based on drones and impacts and the like, good for sci-fi and horror. New packs were still being added in late 2025, along with some free plugins.

licensing: According to the downloads page, "The sounds hosted on 99Sounds are completely royalty free. You can use them for music and video production, game development and any similar creative process. Our sounds may not be redistributed or resold as part of another sound library or virtual instrument." See the license page.

A Sound Effect

type: sounds

price: paid

description: Another big reseller of curated, hand-picked, high quality, professional content sort of like Sonniss. It has more than 7000 libraries from over 600 independent sound designers.

licensing: You get a perpetual, royalty-free license, but sounds must be used together with at least one other media element (video, music, an app, et). No ringtones or sound packs. You may not use the sounds to train AI. The end user license agreement

Adobe Audition sound effects

type: sounds

price: free

description: Adobe offers thousands of uncompressed, royalty free sound effects from a wide range of categories. They are those used in the Adobe Audition suite and of pretty high quality. Downloads are split into categories, so you can get specific sections. Altogether you're looking at around 11.3GB. Highlights are probably the blades, gun handling, footsteps, ambient sounds both indoor and outdoor, material impacts, explosions/fire, and SciFi UIs/alarms.

licensing: The Adobe software license agreement. The gist is this. You may use, display, modify, reproduce, and distribute the sounds as part of your work. However, you may not distribute them on a standalone basis, where the sounds are the main value of what you're distributing.

Airborne Sound

type: sounds

price: paid, with about 15 free packs (see Free Packs From Paid Vendors)

description: Airborne Sound contains the content from a small group of collective field artists. The site features recorded effects that have been created, gathered, and even featured in a couple films. Main points of interest are probably the high quality blades and firearms. The full library is over 30,000 sounds.

licensing: One payment, unlimited projects, forever, but the sounds can only be used combined with other media. Games and apps are fine as long as the sounds are embedded and users can't extract them. Check the sound effect use guidelines for more info.

BBC Sound Effects

type: sounds

price: free for personal and educational use, paid licenses for everything else

description: Over 30,000 high quality sound effects from the BBC's various productions. The site has a search and a mixer. One downside, the free license doesn't cover commercial projects.

licensing: Free for personal, educational, or research use. For anything else, including a commercial game, you need to license the sounds through the site.

Blastwave FX

type: sounds

price: paid

description: A store for sound effects libraries recorded by Ric Viers, a well-known field recordist.

licensing: Not stated on the store pages I could reach. Check with them before you buy.

Boom Library

type: sounds

price: paid, one-time buyout or subscription, plus free packs for newsletter subscribers

description: Professional sound effects libraries used across the game and film industry, sold as themed packs or as the BOOM ONE collection (125,000+ sounds). Libraries are also resold through stores like Best Service.

licensing: Royalty-free for commercial use. Each product links its own EULA, read it before you buy.

Defender's collection of 2733 HQSFX from freesound

type: sounds

price: free

description: Defender from the Audiogames forum threw together a bunch of rare yet high-quality content from Freesound. He has weapons of war both modern and medieval, footsteps, gore, UI elements, emergency, alarms, cinematic, ambience, a bunch of other good stuff. More information on the forum topic.

licensing: Same as Freesound below.

Free to Use Sounds

type: sounds

price: paid bundles, with a small free selection on Bandcamp

description: More than 25,000 field recordings from over 30 countries: nature, rain, cities, oceans, animals, and more. Quality is hit and miss, but there's a lot of it.

licensing: Paid sounds need no credit, but the license only covers individuals and companies with up to 5 employees. Free sounds need credit with a link, such as "Sound effects obtained from Free To Use Sounds". More info here.

Freesound

type: sounds

price: free, account required to download

description: Freesound is probably the biggest resource for coming by a large variety of pretty much anything, with over 700,000 sounds. Anyone is free to contribute, allowing the database to expand at a rapid rate. With that said, quantity does not always mean quality. Most of the content found here isn't exactly professionally ideal. When navigating, you might find it easier to search by specific and reputable users, tags, and packs as opposed to names/types of sounds.

licensing: Various. Each uploader picks zero (cc0), attribution (by), or attribution noncommercial (by-nc). This info is always listed on the respective page. See the Freesound FAQ.

GameSounds.xyz

type: sounds

price: free

description: A mirror that hosts free game audio made by others, such as Kenney's sound packs and the Sonniss GDC bundles from 2015 to 2023. Handy if an official download is slow or gone.

licensing: Depends on the resource in question. Read the license file in each directory.

HISSandaROAR

type: sounds

price: paid, with a free sounds page

description: About 60 unusual, high resolution (24 bit, 192 kHz) sound effects libraries, sold one by one or as a complete bundle.

licensing: Royalty-free use under their EULA and multi-user license.

jalastram from itch.io

type: sounds

price: pay what you want, free if you enter $0

description: jalastram (Jesús Lastra) from itch.io has about ten packs of custom made 8-bit, retro, GUI, and puzzle game sounds fit for use in productions.

licensing: Some packs list Creative Commons attribution 3.0. Others, including the 500 Sound Effects pack, don't state a license. Check each pack's page.

Noise For Fun

type: sounds

price: free

description: All synth, and has some weird stuff that I can't really see being useful in games, but also lots of nice UI sounds and some nice drones/flourishes. Kinda reminds me of Sound Image's stuff. The site doesn't seem to have been updated in years, and its security certificate is broken so your browser may warn you.

licensing: Creative Commons License, no royalties. I couldn't confirm the exact version.

PacHD

type: sounds

price: free

description: Similar to PacDV below but different content. The music is super 90s and most of the ambients have no real stereo spread, but still, it exists at least.

licensing: "All sound effects on this web site are royalty free and you can use them wherever and however you want." You may not resell them, host them for download elsewhere, or link directly to the files.

Sonniss

type: sounds

price: paid, one-time purchases with lifetime access

description: Sonniss is a massive reseller of sound effects, with nearly 5,000 libraries from over 400 publishers. Most libraries are of superb professional quality. All content is only listed after going through a strict quality control procedure. They don't accept AI-generated sounds. Also see their free yearly GDC bundles under Free Packs From Paid Vendors.

licensing: Royalty-free and commercially usable, no attribution required. Terms are listed on each library's page.

Sound Bible

type: sounds

price: free, with separate paid premium sounds

description: Sort of like Freesound, although a lot smaller. Various designers are given a place to share their work. Mileage may vary where quality is concerned.

licensing: Listed on each sound's page. Most are Creative Commons attribution 3.0, some are marked royalty free or public domain.

Sound Bits

type: sounds

price: paid, plus a 2.1GB free collection (see Free Packs From Paid Vendors)

description: High quality sound libraries created by sound designer and recordist Saro Sahihi.

licensing: Sounds can be used in commercial and noncommercial projects. You may not resell or share them on their own, and you may not store them on web-based storage. Complete terms here.

Sound Effect Lab

type: sounds

price: free

description: A high quality library primarily composed of anime and Japanese style sounds including Samurai swords and the like. The site is in Japanese. An English version exists at en.soundeffect-lab.info, but its security certificate is broken.

licensing: Free for commercial use, and you don't need to report, give links, or credit. You may not redistribute the sounds, which includes products where a sound is the main feature. Terms (in Japanese)

Sound Effects Plus

type: sounds

price: free, with paid Pro packs

description: Over 5,000 free, high quality sounds designed for use in your productions. Create an account and you should be all set. Something to keep in mind, the site makes a point of letting users know that systematically grabbing everything is not permitted. Instead, download only what you know you'll use. You may only download up to 100 sounds per month, or your account will be suspended.

licensing: Free and royalty free for commercial and noncommercial projects, as long as you don't claim ownership, resell, or redistribute. You may not use the sounds to train AI. A complete rundown here

Sound Gator

type: sounds

price: free

description: A smaller collection of everyday sounds, with no account and no download limits.

licensing: Free to use in your projects without attribution, as long as you don't resell or redistribute. Full license info here

Soundly

type: sounds

price: free plan, paid subscription for the full library

description: A sound effects manager for Windows and Mac with a searchable cloud library of 250,000 sounds. The free plan includes a smaller free library and unlimited downloads.

licensing: Covered by the Soundly EULA.

SoundMorph

type: sounds

price: paid, although some free samples have been offered which follow the same licensing scheme

description: Yet another high quality, professional retailer. These guys have testimonials from a number of big names in the industry including Transformers, Skywalker Sound, The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies.

licensing: Pretty straightforward. You may rerecord, duplicate, and use in your productions through any medium. You may not include content in a library of your own without consent, share, or redistribute. Complete license

The Match Maker Collection

type: sounds

price: free

description: About 200 current sounds plus an archive of around 1,600 older ones, with lower and higher quality versions kept separate. The page is in Japanese, so use a browser that translates pages, but it's a pretty good resource! You might recognize a lot of these from games such as BK and Shadowline.

licensing: Use them in any kind of work, modified or not, with no credit required. You may not redistribute the sounds on their own or link directly to the files. If you enter a contest, you have to say you used them. Terms are on the same page.

Music

audionautix, aka music by Jason Shaw

type: music

price: free, donations welcome

description: There's a bunch of stuff here, and nearly all of it is really great. The front page has a detailed search/filtering system by genre, mood, and tempo that makes finding what you're looking for a no-brainer.

licensing: Creative Commons attribution 4.0. Commercial use is fine. Credit with something like "music by audionautix.com".

Bensound

type: music, plus a few sound effects

price: free tier, plus paid per-track licenses and a subscription

description: Royalty-free music in a wide range of styles, running since 2012.

licensing: The free tier requires credit, check the terms on the site. Paid licenses are perpetual: music you license stays cleared even if you cancel your membership.

CC Mixter

type: music

price: free

description: A community driven, remixing area featuring a great variety of remixes, samples, and a cappellas fit for your production.

licensing: Depends on the track, with more details shown on each page. Most are Creative Commons attribution, but some are noncommercial so you will want to filter for attribution or zero if you're making something commercial. See how to attribute ccMixter tracks.

Fesliyan Studios

type: music

price: free, donation required for commercial use

description: Free background music in many styles, for videos, games, and podcasts.

licensing: Credit is required unless you donate, and a donation is required for a commercial-use license. The music is only for non-musical uses. You can't build your own songs from it. Policy

Free Music Archive

type: music

price: free for personal use, paid licenses for commercial use

description: You can find a lot of weird niche stuff that might be a little hard to integrate but it's at least mostly high quality, community driven and a few truly awesome composers there like Kai Engel, Creo, Pocketmaster, Captive_portal, and VYVCH. It's owned by Tribe of Noise, which sells commercial licenses through Tribe of Noise Pro.

licensing: All depends on the track. Most are Creative Commons, but the site now describes itself as free for personal use - for a commercial project you should either pick a track with a commercial-friendly license or buy one.

HolFix Royalty Free Music

type: music

price: free

description: A YouTube channel by a Swedish producer, containing freely usable tracks for use anywhere. Also on Bandcamp.

licensing: Use is permitted anywhere, be it commercial or noncommercial. Credit the creator's name and channel in the description of any video, or in the credits of anything else.

Incompetech music

type: music

price: free with credit, or pay per track to skip the credit

description: Music produced by Kevin MacLeod. All tracks are of excellent professional quality, undoubtedly some of the best and most popular to be found online.

licensing: Creative Commons attribution 4.0. The credit must be easy to find, such as your game's credits screen. You can buy a standard license per track to skip the credit.

Jamendo

type: music

price: free to listen, paid licenses for commercial use

description: A large catalog of independent music. Free downloads follow each track's own Creative Commons license. A separate service, Jamendo Licensing, sells commercial licenses per track, starting at 29 euros.

licensing: Varies per track. Many tracks are noncommercial.

Josh Woodward

type: music

price: free

description: Music by Josh Woodward, a singer/songwriter who's decided to give all his 250+ songs away for use anywhere. Interestingly, and in contrast to most other royalty free music sites listed here, quite a few of his tracks contain vocals. Not exactly ideal for games or podcasts but could work quite well for backgrounds.

licensing: Creative Commons attribution. In his words, "My music is 100% free to use with attribution!"

kongano

type: music

price: free

description: Music produced by Eino Toivanen, from ambience and jazz to metal and cinematic. Pick from the categories, play, and have fun. New tracks are still being added.

licensing: Credit only, commercial use is fine. Credit with "Music by Eino Toivanen, kongano.com". See the FAQ.

Looperman

type: music

price: free, account required

description: This site caters to music producers more than anything, so a good amount is in the form of loops and a cappellas. Unfortunately they don't have a way to sort out simple beats and backing tracks/beds from full songs but there are plenty still. This is another community based one but seems to have a lot of bigger names posting stuff.

licensing: Loops can be used in commercial and noncommercial projects, including games, as long as you use them in a new composition of your own. You can't redistribute the loops as they are. Loops don't need credit, but some a cappella uploaders require it. Terms

nihilore

type: music

price: free

description: A collection of high quality, royalty free music composed by James Opie, browsable by genre and mood. Still active.

licensing: "All music is released under Creative Commons - Attribution." See the license and crediting pages.

NoCopyrightSounds

type: music

price: free for videos and streams, license required for games

description: A record label dedicated to giving content producers and streamers music to use where they won't run into copyright limitations. They're not the only one, but undeniably the most popular. A lot of EDM, some new age, but misc overall. Tracks are added with frequency.

licensing: Credit the artist and song in your video's description. Games always count as commercial use, so you need to request a license through their commercial license form. They say they work with game developers of all sizes. Usage policy

OverClocked ReMix

type: music

price: free

description: OverClocked ReMix is a not-for-profit site that accepts high-quality submissions of arranged or "ReMixed" video game music from talented ReMixers the world over. These arrangements are more than just updated versions of the original tracks, but are reinterpretations, often in an entirely different musical genre than the source material.

licensing: You can use remixes in other works, even commercial ones, as long as nobody pays to listen to them, they aren't used in ads, and you credit both the ReMixer and OverClocked ReMix. It is probably best practice to contact the ReMixer before using a track in a game because games aren't mentioned and the original songs belong to their composers. Content policy

Podington Bear, from The Sound of Picture

type: music

price: paid, from $13 per track or by subscription

description: High quality and widely recognized music library. This guy uses the same melody quite a bit, but the content is still good. It used to be free, but now requires a paid license. Some older tracks may still be on Free Music Archive under a noncommercial license.

licensing: Paid licenses, one-time or subscription. See the shop.

TeknoAxe

type: music

price: free

description: Over 1,300 high quality tracks for use in videos and games alike, in genres from techno and metal to orchestra and horror. Site navigation is a bit weird, but you'll get used to it.

licensing: Creative Commons attribution 4.0

Tim Beek

type: music

price: free with credit, or a small fee per pack to skip the credit

description: Well put together, custom made tracks and music packs, mostly cinematic and orchestral. The packs are also on itch.io.

licensing: The free Creative Commons version requires credit. A paid premium license per pack (about $2) allows commercial use without credit.

Vindsvept

type: music

price: free

description: Fantasy, orchestral, and game soundtrack music, with hundreds of tracks on Bandcamp and YouTube. The site has extra notes for game developers.

licensing: Creative Commons attribution 4.0. Commercial use is fine with credit, such as "Track Title by Vindsvept, released under CC-BY 4.0" with links to the channel and license.

Sounds and Music

AudioHero

type: sounds and music

price: subscription from $9.99 a month, plus a free sounds section

description: A subscription library of over 300,000 sound effects and music tracks.

licensing: Games and apps are allowed, and you can use each sound as often as you like. You may not give away or distribute sounds on their own. It isn't clear whether projects you finish after canceling are covered. end user license agreement first.

AudioJungle

type: sounds and music

price: paid, per item from about $1

description: A marketplace from Envato where independent creators sell over 2 million sound effects and music tracks. Quality varies, but the previews help.

licensing: Both single-use and multi-use licenses allow use in an end product that's sold, such as a game. You can't use items in stock items or templates. Sound effects licenses

AudioMicro

type: sounds and music

price: paid, per item or by subscription, plus a free sound effects section

description: A stock audio marketplace for royalty-free sound effects and music.

licensing: A perpetual, single-use license per item. Projects you make while your license or subscription is active are covered, but anything you make after it ends is not. Games aren't named in the general terms. Terms of service

Free SFX

type: sounds and music

price: free, account required

description: More than 4,500 sound effects and 850 music tracks from content producers across the net.

licensing: Commercial and noncommercial use is allowed, in games, apps, video, and podcasts, but you must credit freesfx.co.uk. You can't use the sounds in isolation, or in a product where the sounds are the main focus, like a sound guessing game. See this page for more info.

GameDev Market

type: sounds and music

price: paid, with some free assets

description: A marketplace where creators sell game assets, including sound effect and music packs. Quality and prices vary, and you can preview packs before you buy. There's some overlap with itch.io and Open Game Art in the free section.

licensing: Most assets use the site's pro license. See the terms.

Humble Bundle

type: sounds and music

price: paid, usually a bundle at a low tiered price

description: Every so often, Humble Bundle sells game audio bundles with thousands of sound effects and music tracks for very little money. They're only around for a few weeks, so keep an eye out.

licensing: Each bundle has its own license from its publisher. Check it before you buy.

itch.io

type: sounds and maybe some music

price: free, pay what you want, and paid

description: While this site isn't directly based on sound, there are game assets, and the free sound effects tag alone has over a thousand packs. There's no way to filter by license.

licensing: Varies per pack. Check each pack's page.

Kenney

type: sounds and music

price: free, donations welcome

description: Kenney makes free game assets, including ten audio packs: UI and interface sounds, impacts, sci-fi, RPG sounds, casino sounds, voiceovers, and music jingles.

licensing: Zero (cc0), so no credit is needed. Check each pack's page.

Open Game Art

type: sounds and music

price: free

description: Another community driven site, one which has both sounds and music. It's focused on gaming, so it has more voice acting stuff and more sounds for genres that others may not, like card games and RTS games. Quality is generally hit and miss but you can find lots of high quality simpler stuff which doesn't require much recording knowledge, like UI, 8Bit, and retro. There are a few people, like Kenney and Little Robot Sound Factory, who are doing more complex stuff though. Not insignificant overlap with Freesound.

licensing: Varies per asset and is shown on each page: zero (cc0), attribution, attribution sharealike, OGA-BY, or GPL. See the FAQ.

PacDV sounds

type: sounds and music

price: free

description: A smaller collection than other sites, but quality is decent. This direct link points to the URL where sounds can be found. The main site's homepage is a bit inaccessible.

licensing: Free to use. You may not resell or re-license the sounds, post them for download elsewhere, or link directly to the files. Terms are on the same page.

Pond5

type: sounds and music

price: paid, per item or by subscription

description: A large stock media marketplace, mostly known for video, that also sells sound effects and music.

licensing: Royalty-free, with several license types. Read all about their licenses before you buy.

Pro Sound Effects

type: sounds and music

price: paid, subscription or one-time "Buy & Own"

description: Pro Sound Effects is home to over 1.2 million professionally recorded sounds and 25,000+ music tracks. As the name suggests, everything is said to be used in the field by industry leading audio professionals so superb quality is a given. They also sell the complete BBC Sound Effects library for commercial use.

licensing: Royalty-free commercial use with both the subscription and the one-time purchase. Read their end user license agreement for the details.

Sound Ideas

type: sounds and music

price: paid

description: With over 40 years of experience and over 500000 professionally recorded sound effects, production elements, and royalty free music, Sound Ideas is quite possibly the industry's most well-known and trusted vendor for high quality content. It also owns The Hollywood Edge and Sounddogs.

licensing: The Sound Ideas end user license grants the rights to use each and every sound on a project to your heart's content. Limitations include the inability to make multiple copies and redistribute libraries without the purchase of a multi-user license.

Sound Image

type: sounds and music

price: free with credit, or paid to skip the credit

description: High quality royalty free music (thousands of tracks), sound effects, texture images, game art, and video footage for your projects by Eric Matyas. None of it is made with AI.

licensing: Credit is required in the project itself, such as your game's credits. You can pay to skip the credit: $30 per music track or $5 per sound effect. More info here

Sound Rangers

type: sounds and music

price: paid, per item, per pack, or by subscription

description: Royalty-free sound effects and production music. They say they own the copyright to everything they sell.

licensing: Royalty-free. Read their end user license on the site before you buy.

Sounddogs

type: sounds and music

price: paid, per item or by subscription, plus 60 free sounds when you join the newsletter

description: Over a million sound effects and music tracks, including the classic libraries from The Hollywood Edge. Owned by Sound Ideas since 2020.

licensing: Games and apps are allowed. You may not give away or distribute sounds on their own. Sound effects end user license

SoundJay

type: sounds and music

price: free

description: Free sound effects and music in many categories: ambience, machines, buttons and beeps, people, nature, and transportation.

licensing: Free for commercial and noncommercial use. Credit is appreciated but not required. You may not post the sounds for others to download, link directly to the files, or resell them. Terms of use

Storyblocks (formerly AudioBlocks)

type: sounds and music

price: paid subscription

description: With a monthly or annual subscription, you gain access to a large and rapidly expanding library of music, sound, video, and image content, including over 33,000 music tracks.

licensing: Royalty free. Check the license for your plan to see whether downloads stay licensed after you cancel.

YouTube Audio Library

type: sounds and music

price: free

description: As the name might suggest, the YouTube Audio Library is designed to provide freely obtainable music and sound effects usable in videos posted to YouTube. You need a YouTube account because the library is now made available directly inside Youtube Studio. The stuff might not be of the highest quality, but still there's quite a bit available.

licensing: Tracks use either the YouTube Audio Library license, which needs no credit, or Creative Commons attribution, where you credit the artist. YouTube doesn't say you can use the standard license outside YouTube, for a game you probably want to stick to the Creative Commons tracks. YouTube help page

ZapSplat

type: sounds and music

price: free account with credit, paid Gold membership

description: ZapSplat claims over 150,000 free sounds, all recorded professionally, plus a growing amount of content only available with Gold. The quality is decent, and you can choose from a wide array of categories. Additionally, a collection of royalty free yet good quality music can be found. Free accounts get MP3s, while Gold adds higher quality files.

licensing: Free downloads require credit to ZapSplat. Gold removes the need for credit. Information on the standard license

Free Packs From Paid Vendors

Many paid vendors give away free samples of their libraries, often in exchange for your email address. These are usually high quality and a good way to try before you buy.

Airborne Sound free sound effects

type: sounds

price: free in MP3 or CD quality, $0.99 for the 96 kHz version

description: About 15 free packs, including jet fly-bys, airport ambience, crowds, construction, whooshes, button sounds, and household sounds.

licensing: Same as Airborne Sound above.

Articulated Sounds free global sample pack

type: sounds

price: free, requires signing up for their newsletter

description: 137 sounds from Articulated Sounds libraries, about 3.4GB in high-resolution WAV.

licensing: "You get a lifetime non-exclusive royalty-free grant for the use of these samples inside your projects." Commercial projects are fine. License

Sonniss GDC Game Audio Bundles

type: sounds

price: free

description: Sonniss gives away a large bundle of sounds from many different libraries most years, to let creators show off their work. Every bundle is on the official page, as zip files and torrents. There was no 2025 bundle.

licensing: Royalty free, commercially usable, no credit needed, on unlimited projects for life. You can't sell the sounds as sound effects, and you can't use them to train AI. GDC bundle license

Sound Bits free sound FX collection

type: sounds

price: free

description: 285 sounds, 2.1GB, taken from the Sound Bits libraries.

licensing: Same as Sound Bits above. "Feel free to download and use these sounds in any commercial or non-commercial project."

The Sound Catcher free sounds

type: sounds

price: free, requires signing up for their mailing list

description: 26 high quality sound effects from their catalog.

licensing: Private use only. You can't use the free sounds in anything you earn money from. License agreement

AI Sound Generators

These tools make new sounds from a text description. Quality is improving fast and they can fill gaps that libraries don't cover. Some players avoid audio that clearly sounds AI-generated

ElevenLabs Sound Effects

type: sounds

price: free plan, plus paid plans

description: A web tool that generates sound effects from a text description.

licensing: Royalty free and usable in commercial projects. On the free plan, commercial use requires credit to elevenlabs.io. Paid plans don't need credit. Commercial use FAQ

Changelog

Credits

Below is a list of everyone who has contributed to this page. Without them, it wouldn't be a fraction of what it is today. Thank you!

If you would like to help out but don't want your name to show up here, just let me know at the time of contribution.