Music making apps for PC

The best music making app for PC is one you don't have to install. Veena is a free AI DAW with a personal music producer built in: it runs in Chrome or Edge on any Windows PC or Chromebook, and CoProducer builds your song with you as real tracks you can edit, record over, mix and export.

Most music making apps for PC are downloads that want a bigger machine, a paid edition or a licence before they let you finish a song, and none of those downloads runs on a Chromebook. Here is how the ones people install compare, what each costs, and what changes when the app is a browser tab with a producer in it.

Music making apps for PC, compared (September 2026)

The music making apps, one by one

Veena: the studio in your browser, with a producer inside

Sign in at daw.veena.studio and the whole studio opens: a multitrack timeline, a piano roll, the Beat Maker step sequencer, a 16-pad sampler, a mixer, 10 built-in effects, 61 instrument presets and 7 drum kits. Describe the track in plain words, and CoProducer plans the sections, writes drums, bass, chords and melody as real tracks, and offers 3 options for each new part. Change anything by hand or in a sentence, and one undo reverses any change CoProducer makes.

It builds around your own sound too: import voice memos, demos and loops in 13 audio formats, hum a melody and turn it into any instrument, or split a recording into 4 stems, vocals, drums, bass and other. On a Windows PC, your VST3 plug-ins load through the Veena Bridge helper. Export a 24-bit/48 kHz WAV, 320 kbps MP3, MIDI or every track as stems, as often as you like, with no watermark. Free, with a daily CoProducer allowance; Veena Pro is $20 a month and removes the daily request cap.

FL Studio: the classic PC download, priced by edition

FL Studio costs $99 to $449, and its $99 Fruity Edition has "no audio recording, no stem separation" (Image-Line pricing page, September 2026). The trial "never expires", but "You're not able to re-open saved projects" until you buy. It installs on Windows and macOS; on a Chromebook, Image-Line offers FL Studio Mobile instead, with "8 instruments, 1000+ sounds and 30+ effects".

Ableton Live 12: $99 for 16 tracks, $749 for the rest

Ableton's $99 Intro edition stops at 16 tracks, and stem separation is only in the $749 Suite (Ableton shop page, September 2026). On Windows, Live 12 needs "8 GB RAM" and a CPU that "supports AVX2 instruction set", and after the 30-day trial "you will no longer be able to save or export your work".

BandLab: free in the browser, 16 tracks and 15 minutes

BandLab runs in Chrome, Firefox or any Chromium browser on a PC, and its help centre sets the ceiling: "You can create up to 16 tracks with a maximum duration of 15 minutes" (September 2026). Its AI mixing and vocal tools cost $14.99 a month, and of SongStarter's ideas BandLab says "you won't own the rights to the generated track".

Cakewalk Sonar: free, for a PC you just bought

Cakewalk by BandLab is discontinued, and its successor Cakewalk Sonar suggests "Windows 11", "16 GB" of RAM and an "8-core CPU"; its free licence "requires periodic renewal through online or offline activation" (Cakewalk, September 2026).

Audacity and LMMS: free, and from a different job or a different era

Audacity edits audio, and its manual says "Only limited editing can be performed on Note tracks such as cutting, pasting and deleting". LMMS is free, but its latest stable release, 1.2.2, dates from June 2020 (the makers' pages, September 2026).

Looking for Apple's app on a PC? There is no GarageBand for Windows; it runs only on Apple devices.

How to make music on a PC in Veena

1. Open daw.veena.studio in Chrome, Edge, Brave or Firefox and sign in with Google.
2. Click New Project. The studio needs a window at least 1,000 pixels wide, so keep it maximised on a small laptop.
3. Paste the prompt at the end of this page, a 112 BPM amapiano groove in A minor with a Log Drum Bass and Warm Pad chords. CoProducer sets the tempo and key and writes each part.
4. Pick the options you like, then produce: "make the log drum hit harder", "add a 4-bar breakdown", or edit notes in the piano roll.
5. Record a vocal or a guitar over it, then export from the account menu.

In Veena's own data, 3 in 4 new users (75.7%) whose first request asks for a new song get a finished first result on day one.

Who a browser music app suits

• PC owners who want to start tonight, without a gigabyte download or a licence decision.
• Chromebook owners, who get the same studio as a Windows PC. The DAW for Chromebook guide covers ChromeOS in detail.
• Anyone on someone else's computer, a work laptop or a school PC, where installing isn't an option.
• Producers on older hardware, because the AI runs on Veena's servers: see music production without a graphics card.

For the full ranking of Windows studios, see the best free DAW for Windows; for every kind of free music software, start there. The online DAW page tours the studio panel by panel.