Best Rhodes VST Plugins in 2024 (Free & Paid)

Air Music Technology Velvet 2 includes 5 different electric piano/ Rhodes models (Fender Rhodes Suitcase, Rhodes Mk1 & 2 stage pianos, Wurlitzer, and a Hohner Pianet-T.

You also get a bunch of effects, including tremolo, auto-pan, distortion, wah, modulation, and a range of reverb and delay types.

All the envelope and shaping options you need. It has control for blending mechanical noise including keyboard and pedal sounds for extra realism. You can change the timbre, velocity curve, and dynamic responses.

This vintage electric piano plugin uses dynamic modeling mixed with sampling techniques, this hybrid system creates ultra-realistic sounds that come close to that of a classic Fender Rhodes.

It mostly revolves around simulation and synthesis rather than sampling. This might give it a slightly more digital sound than fully sample-based plugins, but it also is a massive hard drive and RAM saver, using only 200MB of disk space.

AIR Music Technology Velvet 2 also has a vintage mode which gives you a retro sound at the click of a button, and it comes with 350+ presets for instant inspiration.

This professional-grade plugin is based on Arturia’s cutting-edge modeling engine, which creates highly realistic Rhodes sounds with extensive tweaking and customization.

Arturia Stage-73 V has multiple interface modes. The basic “performance” mode gives users quick and broad control of the plugin. You can also go under the hood and tweak the sound in an unprecedented and almost intimidating level of detail.

If you know your way around a real Rhodes, then you will be very happy to see the options Arturia gives you. You have total control over the sonic aesthetic produced by this Rhodes modeling plugin.

The customization offerings are impressive in Arturia Stage-73 V electric piano plugin – you can change hammer hardness, and velocity curves, change the tone bar resonance and the dynamics, and you have complete control over the simulated electronic pickups, giving you even more tone power.

The Arturia Stage-73 V electric piano also offers a range of ambiance layers to increase realism, such as humming from the pickups to tine overtones and key and damper noise.

Arturia Stage-73 V is a beauty to work with. It comes very close to the level of depth a real Rhodes instrument offers, although without the huge cost and physical effort.

Arturia Stage-73 V also features a range of presets to give you some quick inspiration (you can also easily save your own presets).

The design also features an amp simulation (based on a vintage tube combo amp) with a range of effects pedals(including a wah-wah pedal) to further color your incredible sounds. All you need is a midi controller and you’re ready to jam!

AIR Music’s AIR Electric offers a range of electric keyboard simulations including Rhodes, FM keyboards, Wurlitzers, and more.

All of them come with a decent level of customization and flexibility to change their timbre.

This plugin is built with over 20 years of sampling and modeling experience and offers incredible fidelity thanks to its dynamic modeling engine.

The interface is highly intuitive and designed with live performance as a benchmark use case. It lets you change the pickup, envelopes, resonance, and noise parameters to craft the perfect e-keyboard sound. It comes with over 80 presets that cover everything from a vintage sound, to tones closer to synth sounds.

The built-in effects are decent too, coming with all the staple Rhodes tools, including spring reverb, delay, chorus, tremolo, and even some tube distortion to add crunch and warmth. These can all be controlled with midi controllers.

The effects are the same effects algorithms used in the Pro Tools AIR FX bundle, which is widely known to be an industry standard.

The sound might not be as exciting, rich, or deep as the premium plugins on this list, however, for the price, it’s a great deal and offers a wide range of Rhodes and electric keyboard sounds for your productions.

Lounge Lizard EP 4 was the first Rhodes plugin I ever bought, many years ago. I’ve got a lot of use out of this beast, and it’s easily one of those industry standards that you hear all over the charts.

Lounge Lizard is a solid Rhodes emulation all around, but I think this is one of the best choices for live performance too. This is thanks to the high level of resource optimization, quick preset recall, and the simple and intuitive interface.

This is another physical modeling instrument, which uses synthesis rather than sampling to offer a greater level of versatility and depth. It sounds fantastic and comes very close to the real deal.

Lounge Lizard EP 4 comes with a bunch of controls and features for shaping the character and tone of the piano, including a compressor, 4-band equalizer, flanger, distortion, tremolo, and reverb.

The main sound shaping controls give you everything you need from a Rhodes, including the hammer noise, tine bar, and tone bar volumes, pickup symmetry, and even a character control for the finishing touch,

The preset library for Lounge Lizard is huge and has a bunch of experimental patches which push the sound beyond what you would normally expect from a Rhodes simulation, all hand-made by Applied Acoustics Systems’ finest engineers.

It’s responsive and resource-efficient, and there isn’t much to criticize. Maybe Lounge Lizard EP 4 doesn’t have quite the depth as the Arturia Stage-73, but it certainly has enough for most users.

Radicall Keys provides a trio of iconic electrical keyboards bundled into one nifty Reason Rack Extension. Using a hybrid system of both samples and audio modeling, Radical Keys gives you the sound of the Fender Rhodes Mk 1, the Pianet-T, and the Wurlitzer.

Thanks to the unique design, you can mix all three types together. A notable feature is the mic selection, where you can blend between a direct line recording, an amplified signal, or even an ambient room mic. This gives you the chance to quickly create the perfect electric piano blend for your track.

It offers a pretty decent level of customization. The core controls offer velocity response manipulation, tuning with drift, resonance, envelope shaping, and even blend controls for mechanical noises like key and pedal tones.

It also comes with a nice bunch of onboard effects, which have a deeper level of control than most of the others on this list which can be a little flat.

You get a tremolo, compressor, overdrive, EQ, phaser, chorus, and reverb section for extra color and excitement. The character control gives you a broader shift, letting you switch from subdued to agitated.

Propellerhead has also been kind enough to throw in over 100 presets with the plugin that covers a range of sounds and is very useable.

The only issue with this Radical Keys is that it’s a Reason Rack Extension, so it only runs inside Reasons itself and won’t work in other DAWs.

Unlike the other plugins on this list, the PSound Vintage Electric uses 100% real samples, rather than digital modeling. This means it has arguably the most realistic and accurate sound because you are really hearing a Rhodes piano, rather than digital synthesis.

The controls are a little more limited than others here, giving you a basic dynamic response curve, and a release and resonance setting.

There isn’t much else that controls the raw tone itself, but it does come with a few onboard effects for coloration, you get a tremolo, chorus, reverb, and EQ.

It’s powered by the UVI sampling engine, which means you will need to download the free UVI workstation (or UVI Falcon) plugin, which isn’t much of an issue anyway. XLN Audio addictive keys is a similar plugin I also recommend.

This is a more streamlined plugin compared to others on this list, but it has a super realistic sound, and you’re getting the real deal.

Where other plugins can sound a little digital and synthetic, this sounds like a real Rhodes. It does lack some customization, but if you want a sound that works, then this is a great choice.

Looking for more virtual instruments? See my review of the best flute vsts!