Ok, just bought a new computer.
Trying to only port across plugins I actually use… BUT
What are your favourite free VSTs right now? anything new and cool I may have missed?
Esepcially interested in exciting new metering/tuning stuff that might be about, but anything really, share the love!
Da Best.
And there are two others:
Youlean Loudness Meter is free:
Not new but IMHO the combo of Voxengo SPAN and Melda MLoudnessAnalyzer works great.
All Tokyo Dawn’s free plugins are very good (I especially like Nova).
LoudMax is a great sounding free limiter with true peak detection.
And of course +1 for Valhalla Super Massive.
Novation V-Station, an oldie but goldie that’s free since a few years 
A must have to widen your stereo field without issues
WitchcrafT!
Kawai K1 emulation
The Freequel Bundle is fun for edgier stuff. 2 synths and an effect (distortion).
for metering/analyzing:
Valhalla Freq Echo and Super Massive like @LyingDalai said. Especially like the Freq Echo. Simple to the point. Sounds great.
Sound Toys Effects Rack. Use it on every track.
TAL Chorus LX
Unfiltered Audio SpecOps and Byome for the crzy modular stuff.
Here is my up-to-date (june 2023) but ugly PDF with free plugins installed on MacOS(!) but most are also on Windows. Quality varies from good to excellent (which may be subjective nonetheless).Plugin administration.pdf (39.0 KB)
Didn’t know this existed, thanks!
The excellent old Audio Damage plugins are free, but not guaranteed to work on newer systems:
Computer music magazine typically do a big overview of free things. And have them on their cover / download area
+1. Looks bad. Sounds good. Map to a controller if you can for maximum enjoyment and turn the interface off. The saturator and pitch shifting tools are great little freebies.
If the look is a turnoff, Kilohearts stuff looks very nice with a similar free bundle
+1 for Valhalla
+1 for Labs
Other free stuff worth having:
Baby Audio modules (free components from full plugins)
A nice delay (for me this is really nice, can do reverse modes and stuff. Bit of a sleeper hit)
Saturation & Compression
https://klanghelm.com/contents/main.html
Izotope Vinyl
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/vinyl.html
Komplete Start (there’s some pretty nice bits in here)
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-start/
Uhe
PaulStretch
Blue Lab closed down, but their excellent plugins live on:
I still use synth1 majority of the time. Versatile and tonnes of free presets online
You can always consider stealing one of the abominations at https://freakshowindustries.com/
…pretty interesting stuff. 