Everything on this page is free, and every one of them charges you something else — an install, a platform, a use restriction, or a feature held back to sell you the paid tier. Here is what each one actually gives you, what the catch is, and who should pick it. We make one of them, and it is not top of every row.
Mixxx. Free with no tier above it, four decks, and vinyl control. Nothing else free is this complete.
On an iPad or iPhone
djay. The best touch interface in the category, and its free tier is genuinely usable.
Nothing installed, any device
Azimuth. Full rig in a browser tab, MIDI included, and the same layout on a phone in landscape.
You want to mix in 3D
Azimuth, because nothing else here does it. Each deck gets a position around the listener, not just a place between their ears.
Every option, with the catch
Ordered by nothing in particular — there is no single winner, which is the whole point of the table. The row that matters is the one describing the machine you actually own.
Mixxx
Desktop · open source
How free
Entirely. No tier, no upsell.
What it is best at
The most complete free DJ application there is. Four decks, beatgrids, key detection, effects, recording, internet-radio broadcasting, and timecode vinyl control — which almost nothing else free supports.
The catch
Desktop only, and built for a mouse and a controller. No mobile version, no touch layout, and an interface that assumes you already know what a beatgrid is.
Pick it if
You are on a laptop, you want everything, and you never need it on a phone.
djay
iOS · Android · macOS
How free
Free tier, with a Pro subscription around £40–50 a year.
What it is best at
The best touch interface in DJ software, on any platform. Genuinely pleasant to use on an iPad, and the free tier is usable rather than a demo.
The catch
A per-platform install, and the features people most want — including the good stem separation — sit behind the subscription.
Pick it if
You are on an iPad or an iPhone and you want the most polished mobile experience, paid or not.
VirtualDJ
Desktop
How free
Free for home use. Paid the moment you are earning from it.
What it is best at
Enormously featured, been going for decades, huge community, supports nearly every controller ever made.
The catch
The free licence is use-restricted, not feature-restricted — playing a paid gig with it requires a licence. The interface shows its age and its ambition at the same time.
Pick it if
You want maximum features at home and you are not gigging.
Serato DJ Lite
Desktop
How free
Free tier of a paid product.
What it is best at
A genuine on-ramp to Serato, which is what a large share of working DJs actually use. Familiar layout if you ever move up.
The catch
Deliberately limited — two decks, reduced effects, and several things removed specifically to sell you Pro. It is a funnel, and does not pretend otherwise.
Pick it if
You expect to end up on Serato Pro and want to learn the layout now.
YouDJ
Browser
How free
Free, ad-supported.
What it is best at
Genuinely zero-install, and it will mix SoundCloud and YouTube as well as your own files.
The catch
Reviewers consistently describe it as buggy, and the free version is thin. It is the closest thing to Azimuth on access and the furthest away on polish.
Pick it if
You want to mess about for ten minutes on a machine you cannot install anything on.
Beatport DJ
Browser
How free
Free to open; the music is not.
What it is best at
Excellent if your library already lives in Beatport — tracks stream straight in with no downloading or importing.
The catch
You cannot load your own files, so it is a shop window rather than a DJ tool. Users report lag, especially with a controller attached.
Pick it if
You buy from Beatport and want to test whether two tracks mix before purchasing.
Azimuth
Browser · any device
How free
The whole instrument, free. Paid tiers only sync and publish.
What it is best at
The only one where each deck has a position around the listener’s head rather than just a place in the stereo field — and the only browser tool with headphone pre-listen through a single output. Full rig on a phone in landscape, MIDI included, nothing uploaded.
The catch
No library. Load a track per deck each session; a reload loses your crates and cues. That is exactly what the paid tier fixes, and it is the honest gap.
Pick it if
You want a real instrument with nothing to install, or you want to mix in three dimensions, which nothing else here does.
Pricing and tier boundaries move; figures were checked on 30 August 2026 and the judgements are ours. Correct something we have got wrong and we will change it — the page is only worth reading if it is right about the competition.
The thing none of them do
Every tool above treats position as left, right and loud. That is not a gap anyone forgot — it is what a stereo mixer is. Putting a track genuinely behind a listener needs a head-related transfer function running live on both decks at once, which means building a spatial engine and a DJ engine and having them share a clock.
Azimuth grew out of an 8D audio renderer, so the spatial half existed first and the decks were built on top of it. Deck A can sit behind the listener on a slow orbit while deck B arrives from dead ahead, and the eight-bar transition hands over between the two positions on beat.
It needs headphones — over speakers both ears hear both channels and the effect collapses — which is also true of every 8D track anyone has ever posted.
The free tier is the whole instrument, and that is a deliberate decision rather than generosity: a paywall in front of readable JavaScript is theatre, and the moment one person patches it out the gate is gone for everyone. Whatthe paid tiers sell is the part that genuinely needs a server — your crates, cues and mappings following you between machines.
Capability
What it actually means
Spatial placement, per deck
Drag either deck anywhere in a 360° field around the listener, with distance, elevation and beat-synced orbits. An eight-bar transition hands over between two positions on beat.
Key-lock that survives a scratch
Time-stretching needs a window of upcoming audio, and grabbing the platter destroys it — so playback hands off to true varispeed while you hold on, then crossfades back to pitch-locked.
Two-handed multi-touch
Every control captures its own pointer. Hold a platter to backcue while the other hand rides the crossfader, or scratch both decks at once.
Headphone pre-listen, one output
Split-cue puts the master in one ear and the cued deck in the other, so a £3 splitter replaces a second sound card. Where the browser supports it, a real second output device works too.
MIDI, free, no account
Every control on both decks and the mixer is mappable. No default map ships — controllers disagree too much for a guess to help — so each binding is learned and saved. Chrome, Edge and Opera only.
Beat and key analysis
Automatic BPM with an autocorrelation fallback for tracks the detector gives up on, plus Goertzel-based key detection matched against the Camelot wheel.
Frequency-split waveforms
Low, mid and high drawn separately at 150 buckets a second, so the kick pattern and the hats are both visible and you can see a breakdown coming.
A second screen
Open the decks on a laptop and put the mixer, a single deck, or the spatial field alone on a tablet or a display facing the room. One window owns the audio; the others mirror it.
Recording that matches what you heard
A master limiter sits before the recorder, so a capture is what came out of the speakers. Lossless WAV or Opus, and the recording tap branches before the cue split so takes stay full stereo.
Nothing uploaded, ever
Files are decoded and played inside the browser. There is no server to send them to, which is also why there is no queue and no account.
Every row is implemented and audible today. The gap, stated plainly: there is no track library yet, so a reload loses your crates and cues.
Questions
What is the best free DJ software?
It depends on the machine you are on. Mixxx is the most complete free desktop application and the best answer if you are on a laptop and never need it elsewhere. djay has the best touch interface if you are on an iPad. Azimuth is the strongest option if you do not want to install anything, need it to work on a phone as well as a laptop, or want spatial mixing — which none of the others offer at all.
Is there genuinely free DJ software, or is it all trials?
Both exist and the difference matters. Mixxx is free software with no tier above it. VirtualDJ is free but only for home use — earning from a gig requires a licence. Serato DJ Lite and the free tiers of djay are funnels toward a subscription. Azimuth is free for the whole instrument, including MIDI, and charges only for syncing your library between machines and publishing mixes.
Can I DJ in a browser without downloading anything?
Yes. Browser DJ tools run on the Web Audio API and need no install, plugin or account. The historic catch was that they were noticeably worse than desktop software — thin features, laggy controls, or no way to load your own files. Azimuth exists because that trade-off is no longer necessary: AudioWorklets run the audio on their own thread, off the main thread that draws the interface.
Can you DJ on a phone for free?
Yes, on any of the mobile apps, and in the browser. Azimuth lays out by aspect ratio rather than screen width, so a phone held in landscape gets the full rig rather than a cut-down mobile mode — a landscape phone is already mixer-shaped. Portrait shows one deck and an A/B switch.
What can free DJ software not do?
The reliable gaps are library management that survives across machines, streaming-service integration, and high-quality stem separation — all three cost the vendor money to run, which is why they sit behind subscriptions almost everywhere. Everything to do with actually mixing two tracks is available free somewhere.
Do I need a DJ controller to start?
No. Every tool here works with a mouse, a trackpad or a touchscreen, and a controller changes the ergonomics rather than the capability. If you do have one, MIDI support is free in Mixxx, VirtualDJ and Azimuth; Serato DJ Lite restricts which hardware it will talk to.
Try the one that needs no install.
No download, no account, no trial timer. Load a track and see whether it feels like an instrument within about thirty seconds — that is the only test that matters here.