The best free SoundFonts

How these were picked

Every SoundFont here is a free download from the person or project that made it, with a licence published alongside it. Sizes are the SF2 download as listed on that page. I've left out ripped game SoundFonts, the ones built from samples pulled out of commercial games, because nobody who made them owns the sounds, so it's unclear whether you can use them in anything you release. I've also linked to each creator's page rather than straight to a file, so you always get the current version and its licence text.

General MIDI banks

A General MIDI (GM) bank has all 128 standard instruments plus drum kits, so any MIDI file plays back with the right sounds. Start here if you want one file that covers everything.

GeneralUser GS

S. Christian Collins has been refining this bank since 2000. It has 261 presets and 13 drum kits in a small file, and it's tuned so instruments sit well together in a mix. It's the usual first recommendation for good reason.

• Size: 32 MB (SF2, version 2.0.3)
• Good for: MIDI files, sketching, game music, anything General MIDI
• Licence: free to use in your own music, private or commercial (GeneralUser GS License v2.0)
• Note: it leans heavily on SoundFont modulators, and its author rates FluidSynth-based players as the most accurate. Other players, simpleSF2 included, may render some presets a little differently.
• Download: schristiancollins.com/generaluser

MuseScore General

The bank MuseScore used as its default sound set, adapted by S. Christian Collins from Frank Wen's FluidR3, one of the best-known GM SoundFonts. It's bigger and plainer than GeneralUser GS, with a fully open licence.

• Size: 206 MB (SF2), or 38 MB as SF3
• Good for: notation playback, orchestral sketches, a dependable GM bank
• Licence: MIT. Use it for anything; keep the copyright notice if you redistribute the file itself.
• Download: MuseScore's SoundFont mirror

Arachno SoundFont

Maxime Abbey's GM bank is a favourite for playing old game MIDI files, with 128 presets and 9 drum kits drawn from many sources, including samples from classic synths.

• Size: 136 MB (SF2), or 79 MB as sfArk
• Good for: MIDI files, DOS and 90s game soundtracks
• Licence: non-commercial. The author says it's distributed for private, non-commercial use, because parts come from other people's libraries. For music you sell or monetise, pick GeneralUser GS or MuseScore General instead.
• Download: arachnosoft.com

Pianos

Upright Piano KW

A Kawai upright recorded in a living room for the FreePats project. It's warm, a little intimate, and light enough to load anywhere.

• Size: 27 MB (SF2, 2 velocity layers), or a 5.8 MB small version
• Good for: lo-fi, songwriting, soft piano parts
• Licence: CC0, public domain. No credit needed.
• Download: FreePats piano page

Salamander Grand Piano

Alexander Holm's Yamaha C5 grand, sampled with 16 velocity layers. It's one of the most detailed free pianos around, and the SF2 build is on the same FreePats page.

• Size: 296 MB (SF2); the original SFZ is 394 MB to 1.2 GB
• Good for: solo piano, ballads, anything where the piano is exposed
• Licence: CC BY 3.0. Free for commercial use; credit Alexander Holm, for example in your release notes.
• Download: FreePats piano page

Guitars

Spanish Classical Guitar

A nylon-string classical guitar recorded and cleaned up for FreePats.

• Size: 9.5 MB (SF2)
• Good for: fingerpicked parts, bossa nova, RPG town themes
• Licence: CC0
• Download: FreePats nylon guitar page

FSBS Electric Guitar Clean

A Fender electric sampled direct and run through an amp, updated in August 2026. There's a jazz variant and an unprocessed version for your own amp plugin on the same page.

• Size: 6.3 MB (small SF2) or 129 MB (full SF2)
• Good for: clean rhythm parts, funk, city pop
• Licence: CC0
• Download: FreePats electric guitar page

Drums

MuldjordKit

A full acoustic kit recorded by Lars Muldjord: two kicks, four toms, snare, hi-hat and five cymbals, with velocity layers. FreePats mixed it down from the original DrumGizmo kit into one stereo SoundFont.

• Size: 53 MB (SF2)
• Good for: rock, pop and indie drum parts
• Licence: CC BY 4.0. Free for commercial use; credit Lars Muldjord.
• Download: FreePats drum kit page

For a General MIDI drum map, the kits inside GeneralUser GS and MuseScore General are a good place to start too.

Orchestral

VSCO 2 Community Edition

Versilian Studios' free chamber orchestra: strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, harp and more. It comes as SFZ rather than SF2, which doesn't matter if your player opens both.

• Size: about 3 GB of samples, according to Versilian Studios
• Good for: film and game cues, soft orchestral writing
• Licence: CC0, with no rules or royalties
• Download: versilian-studios.com

If you just need a harp, FreePats has a 9.1 MB CC0 Concert Harp built from Versilian's samples.

Retro and chiptune

YaruChipFont

Thirty-nine NES-style chiptune instruments from Yal, the composer behind the Gun Princess soundtracks, including short "slapped" versions for fast melodies and bouncy bass. There are no drums, so pair it with a drum kit from elsewhere.

• Size: 13 MB (SF2)
• Good for: 8-bit melodies and bass, game jams
• Licence: free (name your own price). You can use it in songs and media you sell, but you can't share the samples themselves.
• Download: yaru.itch.io

Going for a PlayStation sound instead? The samples are only half of it: see how to make PS1-style music.

How to play a free SoundFont in your DAW

Most of these downloads are .7z, .tar.xz or .zip archives. Extract the archive first with 7-Zip on Windows, The Unarchiver or Keka on Mac, or your file manager on Linux. Then:

1. Install simpleSF2 and add it to an instrument track.
2. Click Import SF2/SFZ and pick the .sf2 file, or the .sfz file inside an SFZ folder.
3. Pick a preset and play.

Step-by-step guides for FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Reaper, GarageBand, Cubase and Studio One cover the details for each DAW.

Common questions

Can I use free SoundFonts in music I sell?

It depends on the licence, not the price. CC0 and MIT SoundFonts can be used for anything. CC BY ones can too, as long as you credit the creator. Arachno and many SoundFonts on download sites are for non-commercial use only, and ripped game SoundFonts have no clear licence at all. Check the creator's page before you release a track.

What's the best free SoundFont for piano?

Salamander Grand Piano if you have the space, Upright Piano KW if you want something small. Both are on FreePats.

Where can I download SoundFonts safely?

From the creator's own page, or a project like FreePats that checks licences. Large SoundFont archive sites mix original work with ripped and commercial samples, often with no licence information.

Can I use more than one SoundFont at once?

Yes. Load each one in its own instance of simpleSF2, which is free with one library per instance. The one-time £9.99 unlock lets a single instance hold several libraries and play a different preset on each of 16 MIDI channels.