FL Studio VS. Ableton Live (WIP)

When I first started making music in 2017, I was using GarageBand. That was a short "era", as I moved to FL Studio sometime later that year, occasionally making music on my phone with an app called Auxy. Sometime in 2018, I tried switching to Ableton, but never fully figured it out and switched back. I was using FL Studio 12, 20, then 21, right up until this year (2024) when I decided to fully switch to Ableton Live 12. I was obsessed with FL for the longest time so I was very surprised when I actually realized I like Ableton... so much better?!

Some people have asked me about the differences between the two, and I realized I have quite a lot to say about it, so I decided to make it into a page on my website to hopefully serve as a helpful resource to anyone choosing a DAW for the first time, or anyone looking to switch.

Please take this all with a grain of salt - this article has a lot of bias, because really in the end which one works better for YOU is going to boil down to your preferences and your workflow. This list also isn't exhaustive, and I'm sure there are many other things I'm leaving out. Regardless, here are the key differences I've noticed between FL Studio and Ableton.

• FL may look more visually interesting than Ableton with its fancy graphics, but it freezes and crashes FAR more frequently than Ableton, in my experience (Since I started using ableton I haven't had a crash at all), which often results in losing a decent amount of work, even if you have backups turned on...
• FL has this cluttered layout where all of the different things you need access to are in different draggable windows, and everything gets lost under other windows very quickly, especially when you start making more technical projects and use a lot of samples/VSTs. With Ableton, everything is pretty neatly organized and always in its proper place - No weird draggable windows, except for external VSTs which are automatically hidden when you click away from the channel it's in.
• If you plan on using a lot of samples, the way FL Studio handles samples and sample manipulation is Weird (Bad). I'm unsure how to explain this properly, but for example, if you have 2 instances of a sample in your project and you change the pitch of one of them, in Ableton it only affects the one you have selected, but in FL, it affects *every* instance of it and you have to do the "make unique" action every time you want to have the sample you're editing be any different from the other instances of that sample.
• Ableton's time stretching algorithms are WAY better sounding than FL's.
• FL's piano roll is better than Ableton's, in my opinion, and has some very cool features like "riff machine", but Ableton has the chord generator "Stacks" feature, which I have yet to explore as of writing this. Both FL and Ableton have a chop tool for the piano roll, but I like Ableton's better because you don't have to go into a menu to do it (I never really used FL's chop tool - I would just do it by hand).
• Ableton's mixing is more straightforward because each channel has a dedicated track by default - This also helps with organization.
• FL has better automation editing. However, in Ableton, automation channels are combined with the instrument channels, basically sitting on top of it, which takes up less space in projects.
• FL is very oriented towards people who have desktop computers with a mouse. So, if you're like me and don't have a desk and are stuck with a laptop trackpad, Ableton is a bit more friendly to use.
• For some reason, Ableton seems to require higher specs than FL, so if you have an older or lower-end computer you might not be able to run it.