Within both podcasting and visual media, sound effects often take a backseat to the main event of the content itself. Often, it’s not until the final stages—after laborious writing, recording, and editing—that any thoughts of extraneous sound design become of any concern.
Numerous services exist that offer high quality, professionally recorded sound effects for a premium, either in the form of a subscription service or an a la carte price. Between the time spent developing and creating your podcast or video project and any money you’ve already spent on gear, software, or hosting services, forking out more money on yet another subscription or set of sounds doesn’t sound too appealing.
Luckily, options do exist where creators can find quality sound effects without a price tag. I will detail below some of the places I frequent to find sound effects for my various projects.
First, a Note about Licenses and Attribution
Licensing is the legal authorization of the right to use something made by someone else, in this case a sound, for your own purposes.
The types of licenses we’ll be looking at here are Creative Commons licenses as well as public domain dedication. Creative Commons is a global nonprofit organization that is dedicated to providing a standardization of works and materials accessible to all through their six types of Creative Commons licenses.
This page shows the various licenses offered through Creative Commons. All CC-licensed works are free, with the differences in licenses being under stipulations such as allowance for commercial use and allowance for derivatives.
Creative Commons also standardizes works for the public domain, which they call a “CC Zero” license. All works in the public domain are free to use and adapt without the need to attribute (though creators appreciate if you do).
Freesound
Freesound.org is one of the go-to places to find user-curated sound effects. All sounds are uploaded under a form of CC licensing, which you can filter to your liking ranging from attribution required, attribution required and for noncommercial use, and public domain (CC Zero).
Freesound boasts thousands of sounds dating back to its founding in 2005. Since its content comes from users themselves, quality will vary widely. Some searches will have you deep diving for a while until you happen upon a sound that both works for your needs and is high quality.
Zapsplat
Zapsplat is a sound effects library that easily compares to any premium-priced sound effects service. Offering thousands of free sounds ranging from foley to atmospheres to sound designed sci-fi effects, Zapsplat is a one-stop shop for any content creator.
All sounds obtained through Zapsplat’s free offerings do require attribution. However, if you would rather not provide attribution (which, let’s face it, when using dozens of sounds from multiple sources, is a bit of a pain to remember to do), Zapsplat offers a Gold plan for a small monthly donation of £4, or £30 per year. In addition to granting an attribution-free license to use all sounds, the Gold membership allows access to premium sounds not available to free users.
When compared to the price of a subscription to other premium sound effects libraries, Zapsplat is an absolute steal.
Free SFX
Free SFX is another mainstay of the world of free sound effects. Directly on the homepage of their site, Free SFX offers a comprehensive alphabetical list of dozens of categories ranging from various esoteric sounds such as “sealants and adhesives” to “polystyrene.”
Free SFX, while 100% free, do stipulate that you provide attribution. As with Zapsplat, exact form of attribution is flexible, so long as a link to the site is provided.
Free Offerings from Premium Libraries
A number of services exist out there that offer their sound effects packs for a fee. These are separate from services like Epidemic Sound, which offers professionally recorded sounds for a subscription fee.
These libraries that sell sound effects packs for a one-time price often will have a rotating roster of free packs available, often after signing up for their newsletter. I love perusing these libraries, as the free packs offered often do not require attribution in the way that previously discussed free libraries do. I also enjoy signing up for newsletters, as I’m informed whenever a library has a new free offering available.
Some libraries that operate in this way include:
The last place to find free sound effects I’d like to highlight is Reddit. Reddit is an invaluable platform for finding communities in the form of subreddits. Subreddits where you can find free sound effects are numerous, since there are a variety of applications for which one would need sound effects.
There are some, like r/SFXLibraries or r/GameAudio, which are dedicated to sound effects or audio in general. Others, however, are more loosely related. I’ve found offerings for free sound effects through subreddits such as r/podcasts, r/podcasting, or r/audiodrama. Sometimes, users will simply submit links to a library offering free packs, while other times, users themselves will offer sounds recorded by the user his/herself. Many times, they require no attribution.
Conclusion
The amount of sound effects libraries that exist on the internet today are legion; this list was designed not to be comprehensive in that regard, but rather to showcase the various types of outlets that exist where one may find free sound effects.
Building your personal sound effects library is an ongoing project. There will always be that one sound, that one ambience you need for a project but are lacking in your library. I’m always on the lookout for free sound effects, and I hope that for any other content creators out there, my overview proved to be of practical use.