The Best Piano VST Plugins For Professional Music Producers
- Ezra Sandzer-Bell
- May 4
- 12 min read
Updated: May 6
Piano VSTs are a staple in every great producer's collection. But with dozens of plugins to choose from, and cost sometimes exceeding five hundred dollars, it's not always easy to pick the right one. You've got to do your homework and find the virtual instrument that works best for you.
Some of the most expensive piano VSTs were published years ago. They were the gold standard at the time, but are rivaled by new plugins with more sounds and controls, at a fraction of the price.
Our team tested more than two dozen options, selecting the ones that we felt were relevant for the modern musician. We put together this comprehensive guide to help you cut through the noise, including tips about how to get the most from each instrument.
Check out the video demo above to watch our co-founder Jeff experimenting with many of these virtual pianos and showcasing their strengths.
This is not a sponsored post and there are no affiliate links in this article.
Article highlights
First things first: MIDI keyboards with weighted keys
We're going to walk you through our list in a moment, but first, a quick word about digital pianos. You can download all of the best piano plugins on the market, but you'll only get so far with a mediocre MIDI keyboard.
Keystroke sensitivity on a MIDI controller is intimately tied to the timbre you get out of the virtual instrument. This makes sense, because a real piano responds to the intensity of your key strokes. The foot pedals, piano lid, room ambience and instrument materials all play a factor, but the intensity of your keyboard performance is the final deciding factor.
That's why we highly recommend picking a digital piano with weighted keys, if you don't already have one. This one decision will unlock the full potential behind all of the piano plugins during your live performance in the studio. Otherwise, you'll be stuck manually adjusting the velocity in your DAW's piano roll and that's going to get tedious after a while.
Do a little Googling for "Velocity sensitive MIDI keyboard with weighted keys" to find something in your price range. Even better, try visiting a local store and test them out in person to see how they feel under your hand.
Good luck... now onward to the virtual instruments!
Pianoteq Steinway Model D or Steinway Grand
Price: 188 € for PianoTeq + Steinway Model D, or a free Steinway plugin from PianoBook
Highlights: Realistic piano plugin that sounds like the real thing
Steinway has been a respected manufacturer of acoustic pianos since the 1850s. They are one of the top names in the industry and virtual studio technology has been used to model their distinctive sound with incredible accuracy.
We've tested a few free and paid Steinway VSTs. The Logic Pro X DAW actually comes with one included, however we recommend the Steinway Model D by Modartt or the free Steinway Grand from Pianobook.
The free Steinway Grand Piano plugin was recorded by composer and music production teacher Jon Meyer from the Mediatech Institute in Dallas, TX. Meyer spent a considerable amount of time getting the mic placements just right for this sampled piano, capturing subtle mechanical noise from the keys and pedals to enhance the instrument's realism.
Users have praised Meyer's free plugin for being light on CPU, making it a good fit for those with older computers. It's hosted by Pianobook, a community software library centered on free orchestral VSTs, that we recommend exploring for other non-piano instruments as well.
If you want to go upmarket for an even more realistic piano sound, we can recommend Modartt's New York and Hamburg Steinway Model D pack. You'll need to own the PianoTeq plugin to load those models. Pianoteq currently retails for 139.00 € and the Modartt Steinway Model D pack costs 49.00 €.
A free Pianoteq trial is available, but please be aware that it must be restarted after 20 minutes and 8 piano keys are disabled to limit access.
Garritan Abbey Road Studios CFX Concert Grand
Price: $199.85 one-time purchase
Highlights: Binaural piano performances with exceptional room ambience
Ready for a tongue twister? Try saying "Garritan Abbey Road Studios CFX Concert Grand piano" three times fast! Our team just calls it the Garritan cfx VST for short.
The actual Yamaha CFX is a top-of-the-line studio grand piano retailing for roughly $200,000. You could buy a small house with that kind of money. Consider picking up a digital piano with a weighted MIDI keyboard instead. The Abbey Road CFX VST will get you incredibly close to the real piano sound, at a fraction of the cost.
This VST was recorded with top-tier microphones by award-winning engineers in the legendary Abbey Road Studio One. It comes with three virtual mic placements that change the perspective of where the sound is coming from: Classic, Contemporary, and Player.
Classic mode embodies the natural tone of the piano and was recorded with a variety of different, high-quality Neumann microphones.
Contemporary mode focuses on bright sounds and hard hammer attacks recorded with vintage AKG C12 & D19 microphones for the close recordings and omnidirectional Schoeps MK 2H microphones for the room ambience.
Player mode recreates the perspective you would hear if you were sitting on the piano bench at Studio One. They used Neumann KM84 microphones to get a close stereo image and a Neumann KU100 Dummy Head for a binaural listening experience.
Abbey Road Studio One was chosen for its warm and clear tone. It has a reverb time of 2.3 seconds, making it an ideal acoustic space for capturing the nuances of the Yamaha CFX.
The Giant: Klavins Piano Model 370i by Native Instruments
Price: $99.00 one=time purchase with free Kontakt player
Highlights: A giant piano, perfect for anthems, sound design and cinematic music
THE GIANT is a virtual piano inspired by the Klavins Piano Model 370. Generally regarded as the world's tallest upright piano, it stands twelve feet tall and weighs more than two tons with an enormous soundboard.
Piano experts celebrate the model 370 for its powerful low end, brilliant high frequencies, and rich overtones that contribute to its massive sound. Maybe the length of a piano's name isn't as important as the size of the piano, after all.
This piano plugin comes with a "dark, cinematic alter ego" centered around secondary sounds like overtones, resonance, plucked strings, release sounds, and special techniques like piano hits, kicks, sweeps, and scratches. It's the perfect sound design resource for cinematic soundscapes and dramatic effect, with an FX convolution engine featuring over 100 unique piano effect impulse responses.
You'll need to download Native Instruments' free KONTAKT player to load the Giant. Once you've got that, you'll have access to 40 piano presets so you can get started fast. The audio samples in this virtual instrument were recorded by Uli Baronowsky of Galaxy Instruments, the same company that brought you Alicia's keys. We'll touch on that plugin next.
Native Instruments Alicia's Keys
Price: $99.00 one=time purchase with free Kontakt player
Highlights: Ideal for singer songwriter pop music, with 12 expressive velocity layers
If it wasn't obvious, the "Alicia's Keys" plugin was co-created with pop superstar Alicia Keys, with the help of sample specialists Thomas Skarbye and impulse response expert Ernest Cholakis. The sampled piano audio comes from the same Yamaha C3 she's used on other records.
The sampling process involved the use of vintage microphones and preamps, coupled with a detailed analysis of Alicia Keys' playing style, down to the subtle nuance of mechanical release noises and the sound of her fingers making contact with the keys. Just like the Giant, you'll need the free Kontakt Player or the full version of Kontakt to use this model.
This plugin comes with a sound library of 17 GB samples (compressed to a more manageable 6.9 GB) and nearly 3,000 individual samples, recorded across 12 distinct velocity layers for each key.
Alicia Keys exclusively used this virtual instrument on her 2009 album The Element of Freedom, effectively co-signing on its quality and authenticity.
Addictive Keys by XLN Audio
Price: $79.95 - $199.95 for individual or bundles
Highlights: Advanced mixing and wide range of fx parameters, piano tuning and vibrato
Addictive Keys is a software instrument collection of four distinct virtual piano models: the Modern Upright, described as a contemporary classic; the Studio Grand, considered the quintessential grand piano; the Electric Grand, which is a sampled vintage Yamaha CP-80 electric grand piano; and the Mark One, known for its warm and intimate tonal qualities.
The plugin has a complex interface with beautifully designed panels to control important details, from microphone placement and room ambience to ADSR and EQ. These parameters give you all the control you need to shape the tone and stereo image.
The parent company, XLN Audio, specializes in music production software beyond virtual instruments which may explain why they go the extra mile with their audio parameters on this plugin. There's a lot to say and we thought it might be easier to read bullet points, so here's a play by play overview of the plugin's notable features:
Mixer: A dedicated mixer section allows you to control the level, pan, and send effects for each microphone channel.
"Delerb": Addictive Keys coined this quirky word for an effect unit that combines delay and reverb with adjustable parameters, to create space and depth.
Envelope Controls: Separate ADSR (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) envelopes are available for Volume, Filter, and Pitch, allowing for dynamic sound shaping over time.
Filter Section: Low Pass, High Pass, and Band Pass filters with adjustable Cutoff and Resonance. Keyboard tracking control allows the filter cutoff to be influenced by the played notes.
Pitch Controls: Master Tune (in Hz or cents), Pitch Bend, and a Tune FX section with Dissonance (random detuning), Sample Shift (semi-tone transposition with formant correction), and Vibrato (with Rate and Depth, X-moddable). A Pitch Envelope is also available.
Velocity Response: Adjustable velocity curve to fine-tune how the instrument responds to your playing dynamics. A "Velocity to Sample" slider allows filtering out extreme velocity layers.
X-Modulation (Cross-Modulation): Allows assigning a MIDI controller (Mod Wheel, Aftertouch, or a specific MIDI CC) to control various parameters like filter cutoff or vibrato depth.
Preset Saving and Loading: Users can save and load their custom sounds as presets. Presets can include instrument-specific settings, effects, and envelope parameters. Allows for online storage and synchronization of user presets across multiple computers.
The four Addictive Keys pianos are available separately or as part of discounted bundles, which is why the price ranges from $79.99 up to $199.99 for all four.
Arturia Piano V2
Price: $249 one=time purchase
Highlights: Diverse range of pianos with unique parameters like lid position and string age
The Piano V by Arturia is one of those piano plugins that tries to cover all the bases, and to be honest they do an excellent job. It's on the pricier end of the spectrum for a reason. Equipped with twelve separate piano models, each collection was recorded on a different type of real piano, in a room that compliments its natural strengths.
This plugin has what appears to be a straightforward interface with just a few knobs on each model to control brightness, timbre, dynamic range, stereo width, reverb, and volume.
But behind that simple design is an advanced control panel with mind-shattering detail. You can control string tone with pitch control, unison detune, stretch tuning and even age. Adjust the subtlest acoustic parameters like piano lid position, sympathetic resonance, soundboard, microphone stereo width and ambience. Noises and timbre related to hammer hardness, position, dynamics and release time are also on the menu.
As for the actual instrument selection, you'll find a piano suited for every genre. Pick from traditional grand pianos like the American Grand, German Grand, and Japanese Grand or go for upright pianos designed for Classical, Jazz, and Pop. They even have unconventional models like a Plucked Grand, Tack Upright, Glass Grand, and Metal Grand for sound designers.
Spectrasonics Keyscape LA Custom C7
Price: $379 one=time purchase
Highlights: Special felt tip hammer for tone and round robin triggers for more sonic variety
The LA Custom C7 is a virtual grand piano from Spectrasonics Keyscape collection. All of the sounds were recorded on a custom Yamaha C7, modified by the famous LA piano technician Jim Wilson.
Wilson equipped his C7 with Renner “Blue Point” hammers using Weickert felt, a special type of wool that was used by Steinway pianos, since before the Cold War. This modification causes the hammers to produce an exceptional, wide tonal spectrum.
Pulling back for a moment, Spectrasonics' Keyscape is a comprehensive software instrument with 36 different keyboard models and over 500 distinct sounds. The company uses lossless audio compression across the whole sample library, resulting in over 200GB of uncompressed sounds and, fortunately, boiling down to just 77GB of disk space after installation.
The instrument features deeply multisampled sounds with up to 32-way velocity switching and round robin variations. For those not familiar, round robins refer to triggering different samples while striking the same key repeatedly. This results in a richer sound even when the performer is playing that note at the same velocity.
Synthogy Ivory II Grand Pianos
Price: $349 one=time purchase
Highlights: 18 velocity levels, physical modeling and mixing parameters
The Ivory II Grand Pianos VST was once recognized as the "platinum standard" for virtual pianos. It includes the Bösendorfer 290 Imperial Grand, the German Steinway D 9' Concert Grand, and the Yamaha C7 Grand.
Depending on who you talk to, some will argue that you can get a comparable product at a lower price these days. The Ivory II piano VST has been around since 2017 and a lot has changed since then. But to Synthogy's credit, the plugin comes with 18 different velocity levels. That's 50% more than Native Instruments popular "Alicia's Keys" plugin from 2024.
Ivory II is powered by Synthogy's Ivory 2.5 DSP engine, using harmonic resonance modeling to reproduce the sympathetic vibrations of undamped strings for a more realistic sound. It has parameters for pedal noise, half-pedaling response curve, timbre shift, key noise, lid position, shimmer, user-editable tuning maps, release time, EQ, ambience, chorus effects, and synth layer controls.
House Pianos by Echo Soundworks
Price: Free to download, requires the full version of Kontakt ($299.99 one=time purchase)
Highlights: Designed specially for house music producers seeking the Korg m1 sound
Echo Soundworks' House Pianos is a sort-of-free VST made specifically for dance music producers to achieve the Korg M1's iconic "House Piano" sound from late 1980s. You can download this electric piano for free but you'll need the full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 6 to access it.
One thing's for sure; you won't fill up your hard drive with this lightweight instrument clocking in at just ~400 MB. On the other hand, the file size speaks volumes about the diversity and depth of the instrument. It's probably the least sophisticated piano VST we've covered, but it's a solid choice for achieving this one particular aesthetic.
It's got 10 classic and hybrid sounds to choose from, with 9 macro controls over the transient (attack), bowed keys (sustain), synth (for blending), effects (low-pass filter and reverb), and performance-related adjustments.
Download this instrument pack if you want to sound like popular house music artists Jonas Blue, MK, Joel Corry, Sigala, Nathan Dawe, and Kygo.
Blueprint Textural Pianos by Fracture Sounds
Price: Free to download and runs in the free Kontakt player (version 8 or later)
Highlights: Sound design and experimentation
Blueprint: Textural Pianos is an actually-free Kontakt instrument that comes with a collection of acoustic and electric piano instrument packs for creating textural soundscapes.
Users load three out of 20 different pre-recorded piano performances into their layer blending engine, to generate over 1000 possible sound combinations. Shape those sounds with global envelope controls for attack and release, along with low-pass and high-pass filters that affect all layers simultaneously.
The VST comes with integrated delay and reverb effects, with controls for solo and lock functions manipulate individual layers of the blended mix. Hit the shuffle button if you're feeling adventurous to generate new sound combinations instantly.
Foundations Piano by Heavyocity
Price: Free to download and runs in the free Kontakt player (version 6 or later)
Highlights: Built in arpeggiator with soft piano and ambient piano texture
Foundations Piano is another entry level virtual instrument for Kontakt. It features two distinct sound sources: a soft grand piano and an ambient piano texture blended in real-time using a dedicated 2-channel mixer. It's more versatile than House Pianos and more melodic than Blueprint's textural pianos.
The plugin comes with 10 presets that you can use as a starting point and an ADSR envelope to make changes from there. Unlike most of the piano's we've reviewed so far, Foundations includes an arpeggiator and Gate so you can generate rhythmic patterns while holding down a key or chord.
Most DAWs have built in arpeggiators so you'll have to decide whether Foundations is worth the 1.2GB of space it will take up on your harddrive.
Using Controlla's AI voices with your piano VST
Now that we've covered all the bases, a quick and final word for those of you reading this article as a Controlla user. Our intention with this article is to help you find the right piano sounds for your track. Hopefully you're close to making that decision now and we'd like to explain how you can combine that piano with Controlla for the best outcomes.
If you're singing a solo vocal track and using Controlla as a voice changer, we recommend Alicia's Keys, Addictive Keys, or one of the Arturia V grand pianos. Those are middle-of-the-road for price and were designed with dynamic pop singing voices in mind.
For creepy piano sounds and atmospheric voices, try one of the prepared pianos we mentioned. Blueprint's textural pianos could be a good starting point because it's free. Otherwise, go upmarket and grab Native Instrument's The Giant to access a smorgasbord of weird sounds and textures. Combine them with haunting oos and ahhs from Controlla.
Controlla has a new AI choir feature that you can use with the Giant or Abbey Road CFX to create a huge, cinematic sound. Combine it with other orchestral instruments like kettle drums, strings and horns to take it to the next level.
Try Controlla for free and start experimenting with your new piano VSTs today!
Comments