People often look for an Audacity alternative when noise removal feels like too many steps. Audacity does far more than Gleam Audio. Gleam Audio does a few speech jobs with fewer choices to make. This page sets out which tool fits which job.
Audacity is a free editor and recorder
Audacity is free and open source under the GNU General Public License. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. There is no mobile version.
You can record from a microphone or mixer, then edit many tracks with cuts, fades and mixing. The Audacity manual lists effects for volume, EQ, pitch, delay, reverb and repair. Its Loudness Normalization effect brings a selection to a LUFS target.
Plugins add even more. Audacity 4 supports VST3 and Nyquist plugins on every system, LV2 on Linux and Audio Units on macOS. A free OpenVINO plugin adds Whisper transcription that runs on your own computer.
Audacity 4.0 came out on 3 September 2026 with a new look and a new way to edit clips. Its release notes say some Audacity 3 features are not back yet. The Macro Manager is one of them. Macros are how Audacity 3 runs the same steps on a set of files.
Gleam Audio is a cleanup tool for speech
Gleam Audio runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, and it works with no internet. Nothing is uploaded. It has five tools: Remove noise, Enhance, Cut, Split and Convert.
Remove noise uses DeepFilterNet3, a deep learning model trained on speech. You do not pick a noise sample first. A Strength slider sets how much it takes out. Enhance evens out loudness with presets for podcast, audiobook, music streaming and broadcast. It also cuts the low rumble a mic picks up.
Remove noise, Enhance and Convert run on the whole list of files in one go. Cut and Split work on one file at a time, on a spectrogram picture of the sound. Convert saves mp3, wav, m4a, flac, ogg, opus and more. Each result is a new file, so your originals never change.
The app is free for personal use, up to 20 files a week. A license adds paid work and removes the limit. You pay what you want from $5, and you pay once. The source is on GitHub under the AGPL.
Gleam Audio is not a multitrack editor today. It has no recording, no effects rack and no plugins. More editing tools are coming in future updates.
Noise removal works in two different ways
This is the part most people compare. Audacity’s Noise Reduction works in two steps. First you select a stretch of noise alone and capture a noise profile. Then you select the audio and apply the effect, with three sliders to tune.
It works best on steady noise like hiss, hum, fans and buzzing. Audacity says it will not remove one-off sounds such as a door slam. Pushed too far, it leaves a watery, metallic sound. Audacity’s own noise reduction guide suggests starting low and using Preview.
Gleam Audio skips the profile. The model learned what speech sounds like, so it keeps the voice and removes the noise around it. You set one Strength slider for the whole list. If a voice starts to sound thin, a lower Strength keeps more of the room. Why noise reduction can make a voice sound robotic explains what causes that sound.
In short, Audacity gives you control over each setting. Gleam Audio gives you one setting and a model built for voices.
Where the two overlap, and where they part
Both run on your own computer, and both are open source. Both remove background noise, even out loudness, cut audio and convert formats. For one short recording, either can do the job.
They part on scope and on steps. Audacity is a full editor, so you choose and set each effect yourself. Gleam Audio does a short list of speech jobs and runs them on many files at once.
One honest limit from each side. Gleam Audio’s Remove noise is tuned for speech, so on music it can take out too much. Audacity’s Noise Reduction needs a clean stretch of noise to learn from, and it suits steady noise best.
When Audacity is the better pick
Audacity is the right tool for a lot of audio work. Pick it when:
- You need to record. Audacity records from a microphone or mixer straight into a project.
- You are building one piece from many tracks, like a voice, a music bed and sound effects.
- You want effects beyond cleanup, such as EQ, compression, reverb, or pitch and speed changes.
- You rely on plugins. VST3, Nyquist, LV2 on Linux and Audio Units on macOS all work in Audacity 4.
- You need to fix one sound at one moment. Spectrogram view lets you find it and remove it.
- You want a free tool for any use, paid work included, with no weekly limit.
- You want transcripts that stay local. The free OpenVINO plugin runs Whisper on your computer.
If you choose Audacity for noise, Audacity vs Adobe Podcast and Audacity vs iZotope RX compare it with other cleanup tools.
When Gleam Audio is the better pick
Gleam Audio fits when the job is clear speech and you do not want to learn an editor. It suits a podcaster with a folder of interview tracks. It also suits a narrator with a stack of chapters, or a teacher with recorded lectures.
You drop in every file and run Remove noise. Then you run Enhance with a podcast or audiobook preset, and Convert writes the format you need. There is no noise sample to find and no effect chain to set up. Audacity 3 can batch with a macro, but you build the macro first. Audacity 4.0 does not have the Macro Manager yet.
It also helps when the noise changes over time. Audacity’s guide says other tools usually work better for traffic or crowd chatter. Gleam Audio’s model needs no noise profile, and traffic is one of the sounds it is made to remove.
Many people use both. Clean and level a batch in Gleam Audio, then open the results in Audacity to mix with music. For a full cleanup routine, see the voice cleanup guide. For loudness targets, What is LUFS? explains the numbers.