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Buyer's Guides

Best Piano VSTs - Virtual Piano Plugins Capable of Taking Centre Stage

What else is there to say about the piano at this point? Easily one of the most instantly recognisable and popular musical instruments since music began, there are few instruments that are heard so ubiquitously across every genre, be it classical, jazz, rock, pop, dance, film, and the rest. You may also be aware that owning one or getting studio time with one can be prohibitively expensive. That’s where the best piano VSTs can be a powerful ally.

If you don’t have a piano at home and can’t find a studio that meets your budget, here’s the good news. Not only are piano VSTs sounding more and more impressive, and increasingly tricking people into thinking they are the real thing, but there is a piano VST instrument for every budget also (we’ve even chucked in a fantastic free one below). And while it’s obviously wonderful to use a real piano, you can feel confident in knowing that countless famous pop songs, film scores, and top producers have called on them when needed, whether due to time pressure, budget, or simply preference!

There are many piano VSTs to tinkle on and to choose from, so Headliner is here to whittle down to the top ten best piano VSTs, starting from free and then ending with the most expensive. So limber up those fingers and let’s put the pedal to the metal, and you’ll be channelling your inner Chopin in no time.

Spitfire LABs Soft Piano

Here are two things that don’t belong in a sentence: orchestral VST leaders Spitfire Audio’s LABS Soft Piano is free, and can be heard in the music of Beyoncé. Such is the quality of this piano VST, despite not costing a penny. Recorded at Air Edel Studios by Spitfire, it’s worth noting that this piano uses a very particular soft piano sound, in which a layer of felt is placed on the piano strings. If you need a big, bright, grand piano sound, this probably isn’t the one for you. Note that we’re about to jump up to £/$99 in our next entry, so do check out Spitfire’s range of piano VSTs that only cost £/$29 and offer more features than this free one if you are happy to spend a bit of money.

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Native Instruments Alicia’s Keys

One of many piano VST offerings from Native Instruments, Alicia’s Keys has been one of the best piano VSTs since 2010. Its name belongs to a pop star who has been a veritable force in music since her breakthrough album, Songs In A Minor, was released in 2001. These keys were developed as a collaboration with Keys herself and Ann Mincieli, her engineer.

The focal point for this was her Yamaha C3 Neo, a piano that lends Keys her signature sound, heard throughout her recordings and live performances. Besides the emulation of this instrument, you get to have convolution reverbs, resonance settings, sostenuto and sustain pedals, plus a very handy simulated half-pedalling option. You can fade microphone hiss, keys, and pedal sounds to be as loud or as muted as you like. The bright pink interface goes with the stunning, soulful sound. A very impressive collaboration that comes close to the real thing.

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Native Instruments The Giant

Keeping it Native, but this time with a much larger prospect. While Alicia’s Keys is a soulful, laidback pop piano VST, The Giant is based on a different piano entirely: namely, the largest piano in the world, the Klavins Piano Model 370i. Fittingly, The Giant will eat up 4 GB of memory on your hard drive. However, as only the third most expensive piano VST on our list, the £89/$114 price tag means you’re not taking too gigantic a hit.

As the name suggests, this could be the best piano VST for your needs, if you’re after a huge, bright sound. Neoclassical and ambient composers may not be fans, however, you can achieve some big cinematic sounds as this piano comfortably cuts through the mix. You can also achieve some really alternative sounds with some tweaking — the dynamic range, compression, EQ, reverb, and dynamics are all there for you to edit.

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XLN Audio Addictive Keys Studio Grand

Perhaps you’ll be surprised this is only the second piano VST modelled on a grand piano listed so far, partly because the humble upright piano sound has surged in popularity in recent years. If you are wanting to get grand results, however, then you could do a lot worse than the Addictive Keys Studio Grand. Sampled by recording a Steinway Model D Concert Grand in Sweden using a stunning array of vintage microphones, XLN Audio has achieved some beautiful results here.

Its interface is immediately accessible and easy to get to grips with. With the all-important sound, this piano VST instrument does an exceptional job of getting such a huge breadth and variety of presets and sounds out of one Steinway. There’s the classic grand piano sound, but you can also achieve more understated sounds, ambient, and there are some delightfully experimental sounds too. One noteworthy effect is the piano being run through a Biff Muff guitar pedal, and if you want to get under the piano’s hood, the vibrato, chorus, filters, pedals, and more are fun to mess around with. Addictive is an apt title.

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MODARTT Pianoteq 8

Whether or not a brand name sounding like Mozart is important to you when seeking out the best piano VSTs, note well that MODARTT has created something quite wonderful with the Pianoteq 8. This piano pack uses physical modelling rather than sample-based piano sounds, which keeps the memory requirements down. There is no tradeoff in quality though, as every preset on offer sounds incredible. There are four price points: Stage, Standard, Pro, and Studio.

The latter offers all available instrument packs, including loads of pianos, and even classical guitar, harp, and xylophone. Downwards from there, the number of instruments and bundled effects are trimmed away, so take a look and decide what you actually need; the Standard option is around £226/$292. Some of the pianos on offer are the Bösendorfer 280VC concert grand, C. the Bechstein D 282 concert grand, and several more. They all sound outrageous, and it would likely take a concert pianist to spot that these are VSTs.

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Spitfire Audio Ólafur Arnalds Composer Toolkit

If you felt good about the Spitfire Audio Soft Piano that opened this best piano VST article, then it’s time to take things up a notch. It’s Spitfire’s collaboration with BAFTA-winning composer and felt piano pioneer Ólafur Arnalds. Following the great success of the first Spitfire-Arnalds collab, they worked together for a more piano-specific offering. Spitfire travelled to Arnalds’ studio in Iceland to create these quiet and icy piano textures, on a 1904 Bechstein grand piano, going through the composer’s vintage outboard. There are options for presets of the piano used with a Roland Space Echo for a brilliant Lofi tape piano sound. There are approximately 100 stunning presets. If you are after a BAFTA-worthy piano VST sound and love the felted piano aesthetic, then look no further.

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Synthogy Ivory II

If you’re seeing that heading and thinking ‘But Headliner, there’s a Synthogy Ivory 3 available you silly billies!’ — we hear you, but while that package is another that samples the Steinway Concert D, and certainly deserves a mention as one of the best piano VSTs, we wanted to focus on Ivory II Studio Grands as it offers the sampled Bösendorfer 225 and a nice curveball from the Steinway B. And they both sound brilliant and highly professional, having been recorded at Firehouse Studios in Connecticut. The Steinway is the brightest, while the Bösendorfer brings a darker weight to proceedings. Besides the two piano VSTs, there’s plenty of chorus, reverb, and EQ to tamper with, and even a synth pad as an unexpected but lovely bonus.

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Spectrasonics Keyscape

For Spectrasonics Keyscape, it’s time to add extra emphasis when we refer to this as one of the best piano VSTs. For one, it covers almost every conceivable, whether you are seeking a clavichord with cathedral reverb, upright pianos, toy pianos, Rhodes keyboards, and grands. It actually uses both sampling and modelling, but more importantly, it sounds out of this world. Two of the pianos that star here are the Wing upright piano, which lends peak upright piano charm, and the Yamaha C7 grand, which also sounds phenomenal. There are clean sounds, quirky sounds, and tape LoFi aesthetics also. The interface makes loading up your perfect piano sound a dream.

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Spitfire Audio Hans Zimmer Grand Piano

When we last met Spitfire Audio, we mentioned a BAFTA-winning composer they collaborated with. And now it’s the turn of an Oscar-winning, globally-touring composer who is the most sought-after man in film music. Zimmer was very keen to record on one of his favourite pianos when in London, AIR Studios’ Steinway Model D. He is said to have written some of his favourite music while jamming away on this piano, including the Time theme from Inception.

This isn’t another piano VST that merely seeks to emulate the Steinway sound, instead bringing the big variety of cinematic piano sounds Zimmer has brought to the silver screen. Spitfire and the German composer have done a brilliant job of bringing such a huge spectrum of sounds and seemingly turned one piano into dozens. Straight out the box is a bright and clean grand sound, but there are then innumerable microphone combinations and variations that put the (staggering) 88,000 samples of the instrument into play. A bit of tinkering, and suddenly, you have switched to a washed-out reverb sound. Also, a lot of fun is the piano sound effects, for example, the crashing of the lid, the strings being scraped with various objects, and many more. As you’d expect, an epic offering.

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Vienna Imperial

Bearing the name of the city that was home to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, who know a thing or two about writing beautiful piano music, is certainly one way to introduce yourself to the best piano VSTs conversation. Vienna Symphonic Library knows its audience, and its very classical branding should tell you a lot. The audio demos they provide are largely pieces by the likes of Debussy (Clair de Lune sounds remarkably authentic), Tchaikovsky, and the rest. That said, the George Harrison and Duke Ellington examples still sound incredible if you’re not strictly a classical/film score composer.

In other words, if you’re looking to create quirky and ambient piano sounds, this is less of a built-in feature than some of the others here but it would simply be a case of bringing in other plugins to do the job. The sampled Bösendorfer burns so brightly here, sounding as if you have the most expensive seats in the Royal Albert Hall. You can tinker with microphone positions, pedal noises, convulsion reverb, and built in EQ and reverb. It's little surprise that this one sits magnificently in an orchestral mix, but it will sound good with just about anything. It’s imperial in price also, at around £248/$319 — but if that’s not too harmful to your budget, it’s well worth it.

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Further Reading

Best MIDI Keyboards In 2024: Enhance Your Studio