BeatEdit alternatives for After Effects: Flexile, Sound Keys and free tools

Four alternatives to BeatEdit in After Effects are Flexile’s Audio page, Trapcode Sound Keys, the free BeatMarker AE plugin and After Effects’ own Convert Audio to Keyframes. Below is what each one does, what it costs and when BeatEdit is still the better pick.

Flexile is our product. Everything about the other tools comes from their official pages, checked on 25 September 2026 and linked below. We have no accuracy data for any of these tools, Flexile included, so this post compares what each one does, not how well it detects the beat.

In this comparison

• BeatEdit and its alternatives at a glance
• What does BeatEdit do?
• Flexile: beat keyframes per frequency band
• Trapcode Sound Keys
• BeatMarker AE
• After Effects’ native keyframe assistant
• Which BeatEdit alternative should you pick?

BeatEdit and its alternatives at a glance

Prices as of September 2026.

• BeatEdit by mamoworld: $149.99 one-time for a single-user licence on aescripts, with a free trial. Turns detected beats into markers, slider animation and layer animation.
• Flexile, our product: free during beta, and paid plans will be announced in advance. Keyframes per frequency band, a hit slider, a marker per hit and the BPM.
• Trapcode Sound Keys by Maxon: included in the Red Giant and Maxon One subscriptions, with a 14-day free trial through the Maxon App. Keyframes from amplitude or frequency ranges.
• BeatMarker AE by samaBR85: free and open source. BPM detection and beat markers.
• Convert Audio to Keyframes by Adobe: built into After Effects. Amplitude keyframes for the whole comp mix.

What does BeatEdit do?

BeatEdit for After Effects is made by mamoworld (Mathias Möhl). It detects the beats in a music track, then lets you create beat markers, animate sliders and layers, and repeat keyframes. It adds beat wiggle and stagger, and you can pick every fourth beat, random beats or subdivided beats. mamoworld says its beat detector was developed by universities in Porto (Portugal) and Victoria (Canada).

The aescripts page lists After Effects CC 2015.3 through 2026.

Flexile: beat keyframes per frequency band

Flexile is an Adobe After Effects extension for transitions, easing, text animation and audio. Its Audio page, new in version 0.17.0 (24 September 2026), reads a song, a voice-over or a video layer, or the whole comp mix, and turns the frequency band you pick into keyframes.

The bands are Auto, Kick (40–120 Hz), Bass (60–250 Hz), Snare (1,500–4,000 Hz), Hi-hat (6,000–12,000 Hz), Vocals (300–3,000 Hz) and Full (30–16,000 Hz). You can also drag your own range on the spectrum, anywhere from 30 Hz to 16 kHz. Auto picks the most rhythmic low band in the song from seven candidate ranges between 30 and 200 Hz.

What Flexile writes

Everything goes on a null named Audio · <layer name> (or Audio · <comp name> for a whole mix), placed above the audio layer:

• A slider with one 0–100 % keyframe per frame, named after the band (Beat for Auto).
• A hit slider, such as Kick hit, that jumps to 100 on each hit and falls back, plus a marker on each hit. Mark each hit is on by default.
• A BPM slider when the tempo is steady. Tempo is detected from 30 to 300 BPM. Above about 170 BPM it reads half tempo, so a 174 BPM track shows 87.

One undo step removes it all, and running the same band again replaces that slider’s keyframes. On our 46-second demo song at 113.3 BPM, the Kick band found 116 hits, and at 30 fps the whole song gives 1,384 keyframes.

Tuning and limits

• Release from 0 to 1,000 ms (default 120), Floor on automatic or from −72 to −6 dB, and Hit sensitivity from 0 to 100 % (default 50), with a Reset button.
• The panel reads mp3, wav, flac, ogg, aac, m4a and mov audio, plus AIFF and AIFC. It mixes precomps and the whole comp itself. Time-remapped layers need an After Effects render first, which you have to allow because it clears the undo history.
• Clips longer than 20 minutes are not supported yet.

Trapcode Sound Keys: frequency ranges in a subscription

Trapcode Sound Keys is Maxon’s audio-to-keyframes plugin in the Red Giant line. You select part of the track in a visual spectrum and Sound Keys converts it into keyframes by amplitude or by frequency range, so you can isolate something like a snare hit and link the keyframes to your layer’s properties.

A Red Giant subscription includes the full toolkit, Trapcode included, and Maxon One includes Red Giant. Maxon’s plan prices vary by region, so we do not quote one here.

Of the tools here, Sound Keys works most like Flexile: both start from a frequency range you choose on a spectrum. If you already pay for Red Giant or Maxon One, it is part of your plan. If you want a Trapcode Sound Keys alternative without a subscription, Flexile is free during the beta.

BeatMarker AE: free beat markers on Windows

BeatMarker AE by samaBR85 is licensed under GPL-3.0. It detects the BPM of a WAV or MP3 file and places beat markers in four colours, for the downbeat and beats 2 to 4, on the layer or the comp. It lists After Effects 2026 (v26.x) on Windows 10 or 11. You can read the BeatMarker AE source code on GitHub.

After Effects’ native keyframe assistant: amplitude only

After Effects has its own option. With the comp active, choose Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Convert Audio To Keyframes. Adobe’s help says it creates an Audio Amplitude layer with three sliders, Left Channel, Right Channel and Both Channels, holding keyframes for the audio amplitude in the work area.

It represents all audio sources in the composition, so you get the whole mix rather than one layer. It measures amplitude only: Adobe describes no frequency bands or beat detection. You then link a property such as Scale to a slider with an expression. Our guide to built-in audio keyframes covers its limits and the usual workarounds.

Which BeatEdit alternative should you pick?

• BeatEdit if you need its beat tools: picking every fourth beat, random beats or subdivided beats, beat wiggle, stagger and repeated keyframes. Flexile has a Wiggle tool and a Move on Timeline tool that staggers layer start times, but both use values you set (a frequency, or an offset in frames or seconds), not the detected beats. BeatEdit also fits if you work in a version of After Effects older than 2025, since Flexile supports After Effects 2025 or newer.
• Flexile if you want keyframes per band with hits, markers and BPM, you work in After Effects 2025 or newer, and you want to pay nothing during the beta.
• Sound Keys if you already have a Red Giant or Maxon One subscription.
• BeatMarker AE if beat markers are all you need and you run After Effects 2026 on Windows.
• Convert Audio to Keyframes if an amplitude curve of the whole mix is enough and you do not want to install anything.

How to make beat keyframes in Flexile

Select the layer with the sound, or use the whole comp mix, and open the Beat tab on the Audio page. Pick a band or drag your own range, check the preview of the values, the approximate BPM and the hit count, and click Create keyframes. Then pick-whip a property to the slider or paste the expression the panel gives you.

For recipes such as a layer that pumps on each kick, see Flexile beat sync.

Try Flexile

Flexile supports After Effects 2025 or newer on macOS and Windows, and beat keyframes work wherever Flexile runs. It is free for everybody with an account during the beta: no card, no trial, and paid plans will be announced in advance on the pricing page and by email. Each account works on two computers, but only one person may use the account.

Looking for transitions and presets instead? Read our comparison of Animation Composer alternatives.