Plugin comparison
Specs, price and the Dubspot Score, side by side — with our verdict on which sampler to buy.
Independent score / workflow fit / buying signal
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Contenders
Battery 4 is Native Instruments' drum sampler plugin for building, editing, and triggering drum kits from a cell-based sample grid.
Soundpaint is 8Dio's free sampler engine. Version 5.0 adds the Brush sample editor, a 2000-step arpeggiator, and new Racks, for macOS and Windows.
Technical matrix
| Signal | Battery 4 | Soundpaint |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $199 | Free |
| Dubspot Score | 7.2 | — |
| Formats | VST, VST3, AU (macOS only), AAX | VST, VST3, AU, AAX, Standalone |
| Plugin formats | VST, VST3, AAX (Windows); VST, VST3, AU, AAX (macOS) — 64-bit only | — |
| Built-in effects | Solid EQ, Solid Bus Comp, Transient Master, tape saturation, LoFi, and convolution reverb | — |
| Install size | 4.6 GB for complete installation (0.6 GB free disk space required to install) | — |
| System requirements | macOS 13, 14, or 15 (Intel or Apple Silicon) / Windows 10 or 11, with 4 GB RAM | — |
| Graphics | Graphics card supporting OpenGL 2.1 or higher required | — |
| Type | — | Sampler engine and instrument platform |
| Update | — | Soundpaint 5.0 (22 September 2026), free |
| Headline feature | — | Brush, a built-in sample editor and mapping system |
| Sample editing | — | Start, end, and loop points, keyboard mapping, tune, filter, ADSR |
| Time-stretching | — | Time Pro, automatic BPM detection, with Phrase Sync |
| Arpeggiator | — | Up to 2000 steps, per-step stutter and glue, swing and inversion |
| New Racks | — | Micro Tune, Round Robin, Vintage Drift, 505 |
| Formats | — | VST, VST3, AU, AAX, standalone |
| Platforms | — | macOS and Windows |
See the full plugin database for more comparisons.