FL Studio vs Reaper

With the producer or signature bundle, updates are free forever.

No complex activation shenanigans. No dongle and such.

The FL Studio DAW utilizes drag and drop, and can generally be learned quickly without any prior knowledge. There are also a lot of resources to help begginers and experienced users learn.

You don't need to install/configure a third party bridge.

Piano roll is a FL Studio's instrument step sequencer. It is considered to be among the most intuitive and flexible tools for quickly creating patterns and manipulating all aspects of each note. A single left click inserts a note, while a right click deletes it. It's possible to mute notes, splice them, stretch them, add shuffle, etc quickly.
The Piano Roll caters for those new to Music Theory as well, containing an array of chords from which to choose, be it a Major, Minor, Minor 5th, Minor 9th, what have you.

The interface adapts to the screen size it's used on.

Forget copy protection USB-dongles and phone-home activation. Just import a reg key file and your license is activated.

Edison is a great way to record and edit samples, sound effects and is a very easy way to create sample packs and sound libraries.

Supports resampling (non stretch) which is something some DAWs don't support.

All the stock plugins look really nice and really show users what is being done, it's a great way to learn mixing theory for a beginner. This approach makes FL Studio easy to learn compared to other DAWs.

Accepts VST/VSTi (v2,v3) Wav, Aiff, Rex, Acid, Apple Loop, Ogg, Mp3 as well as almost every video format including Mov and Mp4.

FL Studio has a very unique sampler which allows all kinds of sounds to be experimented with, be it a siren, a water drop, or more commonly, the infamous "Progressive House" Kick. The Sampler also allows the user to retune a sample to any key he/she desires.

You have basic and advanced plugins right out the box.

When Image Line releases an update, it's safe to assume that there are major improvements in there.

With tools in the piano roll like the "Riff Machine", and the "Randomize" tool, you can literally let the computer automate the production if you want. In addition to plugins like "Gross Beat", Slicex, DirectWave, the ideas can be limitless.

Some DAWs are good for live shows, some DAWs are good for production, but the FL Studio DAW has carved its niche in the studio recording arena.

Compared to other DAWs, FL's UI moves at full monitor refresh rates while others are somehow laggy.

Just as the internal engine bit depth, there's no loss in quality.

So you can use it inside another DAW. There's no other DAW capable of doing that.

No other DAW has that.

Because most DAWs don't scale well yet.

The Playlist mode comes with various tools for cutting out sections of a sample, midi arrangement, or otherwise. One can also clone, mute, solo out, and stretch a sample by any degree, although the sample's key will change.

Its linking engine and controller plugins are very flexible and useful all across the software. For mixing and also for performance mode.

Patcher is similar to Max for Live in Ableton and The Grid in Bitwig and allows you to build your own complex generator and effect chains.

The workflow for creating beats in FL Studio is among the fastest which make mixing and mastering a breeze inserting plug-ins and routing on the mixer.

You can make your own scratches with the "Fruity Scratcher" or "Wave traveller".

You can open several video players.

Version 12 of FL Studio includes a new Generic ASIO driver that's capable of achieving same low latency performance as the native Windows version. Instructions on how to set up the DAW to run on Linux via Wine can be found here.

Buy once, and you're allowed to use it on every computer you own.

Live can, but working with more LPs is a pain.

E.g. Harmor, Flex, Sakura, Sawer, Sytrus, Poizone...

Great software for creating rhythms.

E.g. GrossBeat, Newtime (tuning), Patcher (own complex generators and effect chains), Maximus, Soundgoodizer...

Game Editor . lets you make cool sound-triggered animations in no time

HAHA Soundgoodizer goes brrrrrr

You can easily customize a GUI.

Reaper receives high praise for its stability. It's one of the many talking points of the software.

There are no limits to the amount of tracks or effects that Reaper can run. Reaper is stable enough to handle comically dense projects with style.

Reaper's developers add features based on user request at lightspeed. This is what makes Reaper reliable and trustworthy. Fans of Reaper are so adamant about the software because of this.

Contrary to Music Radar's review of FL Studio, Reaper is the true "People's DAW".

Reaper's will tailor itself to fit your computer's processing power by automatically using the "anticipative FX processing" feature.

No complex activation shenanigans. No dongle and such.

Records in WAV, AIFF, FLAC, WAVPACK, OGG and MP3.

In addition to its powerful inbuilt plugins, Reaper comes bundled with about 300 little plugins written in its own EEL2 (aka Jesusonic) scripting language. This is also open-source so the end user can create or edit preexisting ones to get exactly what they want.

When using a 64-bit installation of Reaper, all 32-bit plugins will still work alongside 64-bit plugins. On computers with an x86-64 CPU and an OS that supports multi-architecture, you can also run bridged 64-bit plugins on 32-bit Reaper.

Reaper is lightweight enough to be run off of a flash drive; the installer weights less than 20 MB and the portable installation option is included in it.

Although it may seem otherwise, Reaper is shareware. After your 60-day free trial runs out, the program remains full-featured. Like WinRAR, the only person forcing you to get a license is you.

Reaper has no limitations. Once you understand it, Reaper becomes a mixing, mastering and editing mainstay. Reaper punches way above its price range in terms of sheer brevity.

Without prior experience with DAW, you can install Reaper, set up ASIO drivers, connect to your amp and mikes, get the hang of recording/re-recording tracks, and render an mp3 in just a few hours. You can accomplish the basics very fast.

Thought has been given to many time-saving features and shortcuts which speed up workflow considerably.

Reaper can be purchased in two different ways: A commercial license (225 USD) and a discounted license (60 USD).

You can use Reaper unhindered with either license. You can only get the discount if your salary does not exceed 20,000 USD.

In Reaper, you can record MIDI and Audio onto the same track. As well, there are no distinctions between any form of audio. Surround Sound, Mono, Stereo files, and anything else you can think of; all of this can be recorded onto the same track.

You can have multiple projects open via tabs at the top left. You can then drag and drop clips, instruments or ideas between projects with ease.

If you want to use it as a glorified tape machine and nothing else, you'll still be able to get work done. If you want to learn all the shortcuts, scripts, custom actions and macros and really unlock what Reaper can do, you can do that as well. Either way, you'll still be able to make music.

No need to install Wine, Reaper supports Linux natively!

You can customize Reaper with hundreds of themes, or make them yourself.

A freeze can be applied to a group, and then picked apart track by track.

Miraculously, composition-focused musicians can now find a home in Reaper.

Allows usage of the basic bundled like EQ's and comp plugins in any DAW.

While some may disagree, the GUI has been widely celebrated for its informative nature. Everything you need to see is there or reachable. For more analytical types, Reaper can be of use.

You don't have to go to a separate editor to edit audio files. You can work directly on the track, and drop/drag pieces to other tracks, sew them together. It's a fun sandbox and easy peasy.

You can control almost everything via OSC (and MIDI, too).

Set the cursor, press a key, done. Reaper's cursor is extremely intuitive. A monkey could understand it.

Unlike Cakewalk, Bitwig, etc., there is no need to switch cursor editing modes or work around "smart" cursors.

Running smoothly with 50 tracks on i5 gen3 RAM 4GB laptop (mixing and mastering work done separately).

These two things are the biggest advantage of Reaper. No other DAW can beat it based on CPU efficiency. Some people say Reaper isn't a professional DAW by look, but it's not true. Reaper is a full-featured professional DAW. You can do anything whatever you want for music production.
The price is also reasonable. They are even generous with the evaluation policy. If they offer the simple and intuitive version, I'll be back to Reaper.

While other DAWs drag their feet on Windows, Reaper hits a solid stride even on Linux.

You can have one version and the future version when its out .

Reaper allows editing while you're recording for a performative and fluid workflow. This feature can also help save time when mixing.

Can run edited Script tools programmed by users.

Not like Ableton which forces all master/track plugins chain to 1-core