Best Rent To Own Service. Most plugins available with the most flexible plans (extras are great)
✅ Widest range of plugins available, including huge brands
✅ Get Serum, iZotope, Arturia, Softube, XLN Audio & more
✅ Rent To Own DAW payment options make getting into music production cheaper than ever
✅ Pause, pick up where you left off and cancel at any time.
✅ 0% interest
✅ Unlimited Cloud Storage with Splice account
❌ None
Pricing Options
Best Analog Rent To Own Plugins. Huge range of classic hardware gear as emulations, with cheap monthly payments.
✅ Huge range of analog plugin emulations with classics such as the Pultec & more
✅ Incredible sounding plugins that replicate original circuitry
✅ Flexible payments. Pause and pick up where you left off, cancel at any time
✅ 0% interest
❌ Have to connect to the internet
❌ No cloud storage
❌ Need an iLok
Pricing Options
Most innovative Rent To Own Service. A range of plugins and effects, and an interesting cloud-based service.
✅ Amazing synths, effects and more for a low monthly cost
✅ Pause your subscription & pick up where you left off, cancel at any time
✅ Innovative cloud service that allows multiple devices to run multiple plugins at once
✅ 0% interest
❌ Have to connect to the internet once per month
❌ No cloud storage
Pricing Options
VST Effects
- Compressor
- Sidechain
- Mastering Limiter
- Metering
- Noise Reduction
- Noise Gate
- Pitch Shifter
- UAD Plugins
VST Instruments
Misc
What if you could mortgage your favorite plugin just like you would while purchasing a house or a car? Big players within the music industry have jumped on board to give us jaw-dropping deals on some of our favorite plugins!
Contents
What The Hell Is A Rent To Own Plugin?
A Rent To Own plugin allows you to purchase a plugin on a monthly subscription. However, instead of paying indefinitely or paying any interest on the plugin, you pay over a course of 12-24 months until you own the plugin outright.
Benefits
✅ Possible to own your favorite plugins over some time.
✅ Ability to pause/resume allows for flexibility when your pockets are tight.
✅ Completely interest free payments – 0% interest
✅ You get your license for life once installments are paid off.
✅ Great way for beginners to own their first DAW or spread expensive plugin payment costs.
✅ With up to 25-month installment options, expensive plugins like Ozone 9 Advanced are within reach.
Drawbacks
❌ The available plugins under rent to own are still limited.
❌ Need an active internet connection at least once a month while paying installments.
❌ Can’t go completely offline.
Using this model, producers can freeze payments if they can’t afford them for one month, picking up where they left off the next. It makes getting expensive plugins like Serum, iZotope, and others a lot less of a burden on the wallet and gives you access to them right away!
I personally used the rent-to-own model to pay off Serum. It was a fantastic way for me to do so at the time because I was an extremely poor student.
At $9.99/month, until you pay it off, it’s a great way to access Serum for a cheap price and keep it. iZotope subscriptions start at $23.99/month too, making the mixing and mastering software incredibly cheap.
What Is The Best Rent To Own Service?
Splice Rent To Own Plugins
Price: Starting from $9.99/month – $24.99/month, interest-free payments, freeze anytime you like
While most would’ve heard about Splice’s loop and sample library, which has become an industry standard now, some might be unfamiliar with the company’s venture into the ‘Rent-to-own’ space.
The USP of the innovative model is the time it gives producers to own the actual license without any extra interest being levied.
Much like how a bank would help you buy a house by mortgaging it, Splice gives you the option of paying for your plugin via monthly installments. But unlike in the case of the house, you pay 0% interest along with the option of stalling your payments if you’re not going to be using it anymore.
On top of that, you can pick up where you left off when you decide to resume payments (that’s if you do at all).
This might come in handy if you need to use a specific plugin for a project. Say you need the Juno-106 or the Jupiter-8 for an ’80s style track or a granulator like Portal for a Glitch-Hop or an IDM track or a movie score for a few months, you can pay a small fee to access it right away, instead of having to pay the full amount.
Producers who’re just starting might need to practice on a good synth. Having Xfer records’ Serum on board means you can get access to a high-quality synth within the rent-to-own model at $9.99/month for 19 months.
You could even get Arturia Pigments 2 for $24.99/month over 24 monthly payments (a little more, but still much more affordable than just $600 straight up)
There are additionally some cheaper alternatives. These are: Parallels, Zone, Circle 2 and Punchbox.
With Studio One 5 priced at $16.99 for 24 months, Splice additionally offers a way to get a professional DAW without breaking the bank. Other than the Studio One 5 DAW, the rent-to-own model includes 56 effects and 8 instruments.
Probably the most useful feature amongst all these is the ability to back up your projects onto the Splice cloud.
Besides freeing up your hard drive, Splice also remembers previous instances of your project, allowing you to go back to them at any time. This is also great for collaborative projects where changes can be made to a file by multiple artists. All this by just owning a Splice account!
You can get the rent-to-own plan on Splice’s website.
Apogee Rent To Own
Price: $24.99/month, 0% interest, freeze at anytime, pick up where you left off
Known for its dominance in the audio world, Apogee doesn’t need much introduction. As makers of the legendary Symphony interfaces and some of the most sought-after mixing and mastering plugins in the market, Apogee is in a league of its own.
Learning about Apogee’s entry into the rent-to-own space may be wonderful news for most small studios and engineers who find their plugins to be too expensive to own. At 0% interest and the option to pause/resume payments, owning world-class mixing and mastering plugins has never been easier.
Apogee’s rent to own collection includes:
- Pultec EQs
- Opto-3A’s
- Bob Clearmountain’s custom plugins (reknowned mix engineer)
- ECS Channel Strip
- ModEQ
- Mod Comp
We find the transparency on the website to be refreshing as every product provides a rent-to-own option, while other rent to own brands have put plugins in their collection that aren’t available to rent.
We had a great experience trying out their revered Pultec EQP-1A and MEQ5 in tandem. Just having the EQP1A on the Master alone can add some mid-range analogue mojo to your sound.
Overall, it’s difficult to do a ‘bad’ eq on a track with such a smooth Pultec on it.
You can find the full list of plugins on Apogee’s website.
Imaginando Rent To Own Plugins
Price: From €8.9/month, 0% interest, freeze at anytime, pick up where you left off
Imaginando are a fantastic plugin company that offer a range of extremely interesting granular, FM, Polyphonic synths and intuitive effects with beautiful user interfaces, and an incredible eco-system that uses the cloud to talk between devices.
You can grab these on rent to own payment options from as low as €11.90/month.
One of our favorites is the Granular Synth – but we’re biased because we love making granular sounds.
It has a huge range of modulation capability that isn’t possible in many of the free granular picks, the ability to layer different samples and individually affect them, as well as a lot more packed into a beautiful, easy-to-use interface.
One of the coolest things is the MPE support it offers. Allowing you to use something like a ROLI keyboard to control your granular patches with expressive playing.
Logging into the dashboard, followed by a few clicks on your plugin of choice is all it takes to get started. The fairly uncomplicated procedure on Imaginando’s website goes a long way in favouring this over the others.
They’re additionally one of the few plugins to offer so much support for the new AUv3 plugin format, which is great if you’re a mobile producer.
With Imaginando’s current updated version of 2.9.0, a Polyphonic Synth like the DRC can be operated on up to 4 separate devices at a time.
They also have this really cool thing called ‘Cloud Sync’.
Using their platform ‘Could Sync’ allows you to work in an unhindered way, opening different windows of a project on multiple devices. The Cloud Sync automatically saves your presets as you’re working, meaning you can open them across multiple computers without having to annoyingly transfer everything every time.
All you need is an Internet connection to access it, and a little bit of money. You can upload up to 50 presets for €2.99/month in the Standard plan and stretch up to 500 presets in the €4.99/month plan in the Pro plan.
The real USP for Imaginando is the cloud-based cross-compatibility between devices which frees up so many possible workflows.
Say, for example, you’re designing a Lead patch for your EDM track on DRC. You find yourself wanting to side-chain the Lead to the kick-snare pattern which changes in the verse and the chorus.
Instead of clogging your computer screen with multiple windows, you could organise it better. Keep the main Oscillator window open on your computer screen.
Simply open up the Step Sequencer on a phone to tap in the different kick snare patterns on your phone’s touch screen. Open up a mixer window on a tablet or iPad to mix the Lead patch’s level with the step-sequenced drums and the other instruments.
Having a mixer window open up on a wide touch screen device like a tablet, allows for a more intuitive way to move faders, improving the overall work experience.
You’ll know how useful this is if you’ve ever done it. And it’s one of those things that you use, and if it’s taken from you, you really, really miss it.
Imaginando’s usability and innovation is close to that of Apple’s with the iPhone – just in the production world.
You can find the full list of plugins on Imaginando’s website.
Sylenth Rent To Own Plan
Price: €9.95/month for 14 months
Released for the first time in 2006, Sylenth has stood the test of time, as it has been the heartbeat of popular EDM for the better part of the last decade.
As a virtual analogue subtractive synthesizer, Sylenth’s reputation isn’t built on being “A one-stop solution for all your synth needs”. It’s rather liked for being able to produce a commercially likeable sound that can resonate with a larger audience.
Known to have been used by the likes of Skrillex, Avicii, Armin Van Buuren and Swedish House Mafia to name a few, you’ve probably already heard Sylenth at a party, in a club or on the radio.
Top that with an uncomplicated interface with only 8 wave shapes and 2 sets of 2 Oscillators + 1 Filter, you don’t need to be a pro-level producer to start using Sylenth.
The sound quality of Sylenth is fantastic, and you can create some of the richest, chords, basses and pads using the plugin. It’s got a nice retro feel to it, with a lot of modulation options and layering abilities.
If you have a fairly decent understanding of sound design, you should be able to produce these sounds elsewhere (for instance using Serum), so it depends on your workflow and what GUI you ike best.
Sylenth’s USP is its easily recognizable EDM sound. If you find yourself leaning towards the popular EDM genres, then Sylenth is a great investment.
With the ability to be able to rent Sylenth1 for €9.95 a month (incl. VAT), you can easily pay off the full amount in about 14 months.
And, if you didn’t use Sylenth1 for a few months, it would be possible to pause your subscription for a while, by clicking on the ‘Stop/Resume’ button on your account page. You can then resume again by clicking on the ‘resume’ and continue from where you left off, paying until you’ve paid the full sum.
You receive the full license once you’ve paid all your installments.
It’s a great option if you don’t want to shell out €139 in one go. It’s also a great option if you use Sylenth1 semi-regularly. The ‘Stop/Resume’ option gives you the flexibility to pay only while working on a project.
This means you could use Sylenth for a month in sound design sessions, then take those samples the next month and use them to make beats – skipping a month of payments if need be to save cash.
The only downside to this is if you work remotely without a regular internet connection. You’ll be asked to verify once a month for which you’ll need an internet connection. If purchased outright, you get the license and the freedom to be offline.
You can get the rent-to-own plan on Sylenth’s website.
Landr Rent To Own Plugins
Price: Ranging from $5.49/month to $24.99/month
Landr, a company known for its powerful AI mastering and royalty-free sample packs in the musical community is soon catching up on the rent-to-own space too.
Landr offer quite a range of rent to own plugins on the platform, but are nowhere near Splice or Apogee in terms of choice.
However, they do offer the highly successful (highly expensive outright) Auto-Tune for a small monthly fee, which makes using Landr rent to own really attractive if you’re looking for an auto tune plugin.
Auto-Tune Access is available for $5.49/month for 18 months. Slap an Auto-Key on top of that for a bundle of $7.98/month for 18 months and you’ve got yourself an offer that is quite hard to resist!
On further investigation, we find that Antares’ website provides its subscription model starting at $14.58/month, going up to $24.99/month.
(which is more expensive and you’ll never even own it)
Auto-Tune along with Auto-Tune Vocal EQ and Auto-Tune SoundSoap and all vocal effects are available within this model. But, since it’s a subscription model, you won’t ever own the plugin as you do on Landr after paying the instalments.
Landr also offers Lethal – a great synth with 1100 instruments, presets and 2140 drum samples, and a load of available expansions.
Priced at $9.99/month for 20 months with the usual pause/resume options and zero interest, Lethal might be a tad overpriced for what it offers and isn’t anywhere near the level as Serum, but it’s a good synth to use alongside it.
It’s important to mention that Landr doesn’t just offer rent to own serivces and actually has a number of plans that include a number of music services like, Mastering, Distribution, Rent to own plugins and more.
The all encompassing plan is called Landr Studio and it costs $12.50 – $24.99/month. The diagram below outlines the Landr Studio model.
Ranging from $12.50/month to $24.99/month, the Landr Studio plan includes Landr’s renowned Mastering, along with Distribution, Royalty-Free Samples and more. It seems like an amazing plan at first glance and probably is, for people who aren’t specifically looking for high-quality plugins alone.
However on closer inspection, you can see that the FX Suite is the only real plugin along with Chromatic and VocAlign Project 5. And, you’ll have to pay for the rent to own plugin plans on top of that subscription.
Sticking to plugins alone, there are a lot of interesting free plugins offered by Landr.
Cableguys’ PanCake, BlueCat Audio’s Blue Cat Flanger, Triple EQ 4 and Voxengo’s Beeper, Boogex, and Latency Delay amongst others are quite eye-catching. But, you could easily just download these for free from their respective manufacturer’s websites.
While Landr’s rent-to-own model might be a no-brainer for something like Auto-Tune, Splice’s sheer variety of plugins is yet to be matched.
You can find the full list of plugins on Landr’s website.
FAQ
Can You Rent To Own Waves Plugins?
Waves used to have a rent-to-own model, which has been discontinued currently. Alternatively, you can opt for their Silver, Gold, or Platinum Package, which is a subscription service ranging from $6.99 to $19.99, and get up to 75 plugins.
Can I Rent To Own Omnisphere?
No. Unfortunately, this highly sought-after Synth with available Hardware Integration is not available on any of the rent-to-own platforms. You can buy it for $499 at the Spectrasonics website.
Plugin Subscription Model or Rent To Own? Which is Best?
While the subscription model gives access to vast libraries of quality plugins for a monthly fee, you will never own the plugins. We found the Rent-to-own model to be great if you’re eyeing an expensive plugin whose full price is beyond your budget.
For example, Ozone 9 Advanced or Bitwig Studio which spans 25 monthly installments, with pause/resume options, makes it possible to own on a low budget.
Is It Worth Getting A Rent To Own Subscription?
We recommend trying out subscription models with large libraries before zeroing down on the plugins you want to invest in. Once sure, rent-to-own is a no-brainer as it doesn’t make sense to pay outright, other than in the case of internet inaccessibility. With pause/resume and zero interest levied, it’s a great business model.
Of all the rent-to-own plugins we saw, the Auto-Tune + Auto Key, Serum, Studio One, and Bitwig Studio seem to offer the best value for money.
