This article features the best free sound effects you can download in 2020. We handpicked seven websites from which you can download over 100 GB of top-quality royalty-free sound effects.
Here’s the best part – we ONLY included sites that don’t require you to sign up for a user account. There are plenty of pages out there that offer a handful of free sound effects and force you to provide your email address before downloading. Not the case with the sound effect libraries featured below.
Sound effects are the secret ingredient of every movie trailer and every modern cinematic soundtrack. You’ll hear them used in most pop and electronic music nowadays, too. Music producers use SFX samples to make their tracks sound more dramatic and polished.
Whether its an impact sample used in a blockbuster trailer or a long whoosh sound used in the breakdown of an EDM tune, using the right sound effect sample can make or break a track. Without further ado, read on and download free sound effects!
Free Sound Effects by 99Sounds
99Sounds is an indie sound design label launched by Bedroom Producers Blog. “A shameless plug,” I hear you say, but not really! The website features dozens of freely downloadable sample libraries provided by talented sound designers from around the globe. All sound effects supplied by 99Sounds are 100% royalty-free.
The best place to start when visiting 99Sounds for the first time is the main Releases page. It features all the SFX libraries in one place. You’ll find tons of high-quality free sounds, ranging from cinematic sound effects and foley to rain sounds and earth-shattering thunder samples.
Another highlight is the recently released 99 Sound Effects collection. It features 99 premium-quality SFX samples for use in trailers, movie scores, video games, and music production.
Some of the other popular 99Sounds libraries are World Sounds, Cinematic Sound Effects, Rain And Thunder, The Warehouse, Sound Design Tools, and Punching Percussion.
No registration required. You get unlimited free downloads.
More info: 99Sounds
GDC 2019 Special by Sonniss
Sonniss is an online marketplace where you can download sound effects. Many of the sound packs hosted on the website were used in popular TV Shows, award-winning movies, as well as indie productions and various software apps. How cool would it be to get some of those professional-quality sound effects for free?
Good news! You can download over 25 GB of Sonniss sound effects for free!
The thing is, Sonniss releases a massive collection of free sound effects every year. They do this to celebrate the Game Developers Conference and to support the development of indie video game titles. But everyone benefits from it.
The latest free SFX pack by Sonniss is an enormous download. Thankfully, there are multiple download options available.
No registration required. You get unlimited free downloads.
More info: GDC 2019 Special by Sonniss
BBC Sound Effects
BBC Sound Effects is an extensive collection of sounds made available for free download by the BBC. In total, there are 16,011 high-quality SFX audio files that you can download for free.
The sounds can be used for free under the terms of the RemArc Licence. To put it short, you are free to use these sound effects for “personal, educational or research purposes”.
The cool thing about the BBC Sound Effects website, as opposed to 99Sounds and Sonniss, is that you don’t have to download a bunch of sounds in one massive package. Instead, you can search their sound effects database and only download the sound effects that you really need.
No registration required. You get unlimited free downloads. Available for personal, educational, or research purposes only.
More info: BBC Sound Effects
Audio Library by YouTube
We all know YouTube as a platform for sharing video content. But did you know that it is also a great place to download free sound effects?
And by that, I don’t mean ripping audio from random YouTube videos. Nope, YouTube actually provided a library of royalty-free sound effects to help its creators produce better videos. You don’t have to be a YouTuber to download these sound effects, though. Anyone logged in to their Google account can access the YouTube Audio Library.
Much like BBC Sound Effects, the YouTube Audio Library lets you download each sound effect individually. The files are organized into various categories like Foley, Impacts, Horror, and Cartoons for easy browsing. A powerful search feature helps speed up the browsing process even more.
Google account required. You get unlimited free downloads.
More info: YouTube Audio Library
Adobe Audition Sound Effects
Adobe is offering over 10,000 high-quality sound effects for free download from their website. The sound effects are organized into bundles, with each pack covering a different SFX category. There are 27 bundles in total, including audio effect categories like Foley, Explosions, Drones, Crashes, Science Fiction, Weather, and more.
The only disadvantage of the Adobe Audition Sound Effects repository, when compared to the previous entries in this article, is that you can’t preview the sounds before downloading. They don’t even offer audio demos of the included sound effects. But still, with such a quick and easy download process, you might as well download these free sound effects and browse them on your local hard drive.
According to the license, you are allowed to use, display, modify, reproduce, and distribute the associated content. What you can’t do is distribute the downloaded content on a standalone basis.
No registration required. You get unlimited free downloads.
More info: Adobe Audition Sound Effects
Premium Beat by Shutterstock
Premium Beat offers a free collection of sound effects that will be equally useful for sound designers, music producers, and video editors. The thing is, they include a set of free stock video clips to go with their free SFX packs. So, if you’re downloading free explosion sound effects, you will also get a pack of explosion video clips. Pretty cool.
The sound effects library at Premium Beat is not the biggest one on this list (only 280 free SFX samples at the moment), but the quality is excellent. Worth checking out. By the way, if you work with video, be sure to check out our list of free video editing software.
No registration required. You get unlimited free downloads.
More info: Premium Beat
Free SFX by Bluezone Corporation
The final entry on the list is a small collection of sound effects provided by Bluezone Corporation. Sci-fi movies mostly inspired these sounds. The sound library is worth the download if you’re looking for a set of futuristic sound effects for a music track or a video project.
To download the free sound effects, scroll down to the bottom of the Bluezone Corporation homepage. The company has also released a selection of free sounds via Rekkerd.
No registration required — unlimited free downloads.
More info: Bluezone Corporation Sound Effects
Free Sound Effects – Honorable Mentions
Yes, there are more sources of free SFX samples out there, but we decided only to include those that don’t require you to sign up before downloading. When you’re searching for a free sound effect to use in your project – who wants to waste time signing up?
Still, here’s a quick look at a couple of other excellent websites to find royalty-free sounds. Register (it’s free) and you’re good to go.
- Freesound – A popular website offering free sounds. There are tons of sound effects you can download from Freesound, but not all of them are high-quality. It takes more time to find better quality sounds because there is so much content on offer.
- AudioMicro – A marketplace for stock music and sound effects with a section offering exclusive free sound effects. The sounds are sorted into categories, and the quality is quite good.
Well, that’s plenty of sound effects to download already, but it’s not all we had in store for you, yet!
Free Sound Effects – Reader Suggestions
Many thanks to our readers who suggested these additional free sound effect libraries in the comments section!
- Free To Use Sounds – Suggested by our reader BB, this website features an enormous library of high-quality sound effects. Not all of them are free and you do need to sign up, but there’s some great free SFX to be found nonetheless.
- SampleRadar – Jan W. suggested SampleRadar, which is MusicRadar’s free sample repository. A fresh batch of free samples is published every month and you don’t need to sign up before downloading.
- Glitchmachines Free Bundle – Our reader bmovie suggested this free collection of sound effects and VST plugins from the sound design experts at Glitchmachines.
If you know of any other free sound effect downloads that should be included in the article, leave a comment and let us know.
If you find this article useful, consider sharing it with your fellow music producers. Thank you! ♥
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16 Comments
BCB
onDont you have to buy a pricey license from BBC to use their sounds in commercial releases? Anyway let me check again & great list as usual Tomislav!
Tomislav Zlatic
onYikes, you’re right! Thanks for letting me know. I updated the article to reflect this.
Alex
onafter saying a couple of days in another comment not much i happening here anymore, don´t know if you remember now that one boom nice one ;) i thought i know all resources of that stuff on the web. thanks i check my archive maybe i´ll find something for that i´ll totally forget about, then i will share the link. there where so much nice free releases over the years.
Tomislav Zlatic
onOh, there’s a lot more cool stuff coming to BPB. Stay tuned!
Alex
onsure i always comeback ;) i follow your blog for over 10 years. to say it correct or what i wanna say years ago there where more news and stuff anyways. but i know time chanes for everyone bla bla ;)
on that page there are some really nice clap samples and some others not much but in very good qualitiy
georgievsound.com
Tomislav Zlatic
onYes, the focus has changed a bit. Back then I tried to cover every single freeware release in the news section. Nowadays, the news section is for the stuff that is (in my opinion) higher quality. The reason for writing fewer news articles is so that I could dedicate more time to writing about the best free VST plugins in each category, as well as the best free sample libraries out there (as is the case with this particular article).
alex
onyou´re right its maybe a better way to do it and we all have to much free stuff collected over the years ;) and we don´t need all. thanks for all the work over the time. so i stay silent now, till i find some good samplelinks i can share here.
BB
onTons of free stuff at https://www.freetousesounds.com
Its real world ambiences, crowds, foley, etc recordings from the man that travels around the world. All 96 Khz or 192 Khz. Not all are free but there is a great amount of free ones. Pricing is also low and read license, in the past donators of any amount could get unlimited license to use sounds even for creating commercial sample libraries.
*Note, these aren’t designed effects but mostly raw recordings
Tomislav Zlatic
onNice one!
Rafael
on“When you’re searching for a free sound effect to use in your project – who wants to waste time signing up?”
Speaking what we all wanted to say but had no voice to
Tomislav Zlatic
onYeah, well… happened to me too many times to stay silent. :)
Jan W.
oni feel i might just mention ‘SampleRadar’ here, not focussed on just SFX but there are quite some packs to dig through, cheers
Tomislav Zlatic
onGood call, plenty of samples there!
bmovie
onI would consider adding Glitchmachines free packs to the list. They DO require your email address but it’s really a simple process and you get the download links immediately without confirming, so you don’t have to give them your real email address if you don’t want to…
Tomislav Zlatic
onHey, that’s a great suggestion! I will add it to the article today. Cheers!
The Green Man
onProjectSAM released a free pack last year as ‘the free orchestra’ (sign-up required though).
KLANG is a collection of really small but beautiful packs by Cinematique Instruments. Yes, yes, e-mailadresses and such required.
Black Octopus Sound’s free packs are well worth the hassle as well