People search for an iZotope RX alternative for two reasons. RX costs more than they want to pay, or it does far more than the job needs. RX is the pro tool for audio repair, and that is a fair place to start. The question is whether your recordings need repair or just cleanup.
Gleam Audio cleans speech with one slider
Gleam Audio is a small desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux. It has five tools: Remove noise, Enhance, Cut, Split and Convert. Every file stays on your computer, and nothing is uploaded.
Remove noise uses a deep learning model trained on speech, called DeepFilterNet3. You set one Strength slider, and you don’t need a noise sample first. Enhance evens out loudness with presets for podcasts, audiobooks, music streaming and broadcast. It also cuts the low rumble a desk or traffic puts under a mic.
Remove noise, Enhance and Convert take a whole list of files at once. Cut and Split work on one file at a time, on a picture of the sound. Convert saves mp3, wav, m4a, flac, ogg, opus and more.
The app is free for personal use, up to 20 files a week. A license adds commercial use and removes the limit. You pick the price, from $5, and you pay once. The source is on GitHub under the AGPL.
iZotope RX is a full repair suite for post production
iZotope calls RX 12 the industry standard for audio repair in post production. It comes in three editions. Elements costs $99, Standard costs $399 and Advanced costs $1,399. RX is also part of iZotope’s Plus and Pro subscriptions, at $15 and $25 a month.
Elements is a set of 6 plugins: De-click, De-clip, De-hum, De-reverb, Voice De-noise and Repair Assistant. Repair Assistant analyzes the audio and suggests fixes at light, medium or aggressive strength. You use Elements inside a host like a DAW or a video editor.
Standard adds the standalone RX editor and 18 plugins. That brings Spectral Repair, Spectral De-noise and Dialogue Isolate. It also adds Breath Control, Mouth De-click, De-plosive, De-ess, loudness tools and a Batch Processor. Advanced has the full set of 50+ tools, with extras for film work like Ambience Match, De-rustle and Scene Rebalance.
RX runs on macOS and Windows. Its plugins come in AU, AAX, VST3 and ARA formats. iZotope lists hosts such as Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Audition and Reaper.
Where Gleam Audio and RX overlap
Both remove background noise from speech, and both run on your own computer. Both can even out loudness and work through many files. For a fan, a hum or room noise under a voice, either one does the job.
They part ways on control. RX lets you see a sound on its spectrogram, pick it, and repair just that spot. Gleam Audio treats the whole file the same way, with one Strength slider. That makes it fast, but it can’t target one moment.
When iZotope RX is the better pick
RX is the stronger tool for hard audio problems. Pick it when:
- A single sound lands on a word, like a dog bark or a chair creak. Spectral Repair in Standard can paint it out.
- The recording has clicks, crackle, clipping or mouth noise. RX has a separate tool for each one.
- The room echo is the problem. De-reverb is in every edition, and Dialogue Isolate also treats noise and reverb.
- You edit inside Pro Tools, Logic, Premiere or Resolve and want the fix as a plugin on the track.
- You work on film or TV and need tools like Ambience Match, De-rustle or Scene Rebalance in Advanced.
- You need to hit a broadcast loudness spec with detailed meters. Loudness Control is in Standard and Advanced.
The trade is cost and time. Standard is $399, and the full suite is $1,399. RX has many tools, and learning them well takes practice.
When Gleam Audio is the better pick
Gleam Audio fits a creator who records speech and wants it clean without learning a repair suite. Drop in a day of recordings, set the Strength, and clean the whole list in one run. Then run Enhance to bring each file to podcast or audiobook loudness.
It is also the easier buy. It is free for personal use up to 20 files a week. Paid work needs a license, at a price you choose from $5, paid once. It also runs on Linux, and it works fully offline.
Some people use both. Clean and level the batch in Gleam Audio, then open only the problem files in RX. For more ways to fix damaged audio, see the sound repair software guide. For a free editor next to RX, read Audacity vs iZotope RX.
One honest limit each
Gleam Audio’s Remove noise is tuned for speech. On music it can take out more than you want, so lower the Strength for songs. It also has no spectral repair, de-click or de-reverb, so it can’t fix a single sound over a word.
RX does far more, and that is its limit for a simple job. The tools that make RX powerful take time to learn. Its cheapest edition is $99 and works only as plugins inside another app. The standalone editor starts with Standard at $399.
If you are still choosing a cleanup tool, the voice cleanup guide walks through a full pass. The offline noise removal list compares more apps that keep your audio on your computer.