Its quite a lot for me. Totting it all up around £5k in all over the years. Kontakt libraries like Spitfire dont come cheap and then Gforce and IK multimedia stuff. Then drums. Ironically my daw is so cheap in comparison(Ableton).
My hardware gear is much less.
How much have i made back. Nothing. But i do it as a hobby so im not bothered about that. Onwards and upwards.
Loose estimate at $2k for all music SW I ever bought but I could have gotten away with perhaps <$1k. I don’t install all plugins I own due to clutter so the basics are covered and only novelty attracts me. It was all bought for fun but paid itself back when I found a random podcast audio cleanup gig for a bit. Izotope RX7 and Bitwig were the cash cows paying for the rest.
Not sure of total but I tend to buy most in the sales or some with education discount so I’ve definitely saved money.
Biggest waste of money was buying software for visuals, vjing etc which I never got into.
Also ios apps I wasted a lot of money on because they are so cheap but they all add up.
Shame it’s difficult to sell on a lot of software as I’d gladly shift loads at a big discount. Probably something I should look into
Maybe 50 - 100 euros maximum in total, this century anyway. Buying software is largely a waste of money for me, so I just get things when they’re steeply discounted or given away. Also freeware, because Linux.
Much less than on hardware 
And most was spent on sales/discounts.
I’m not a pro, but this is not a hobby too. I have stats in Reaper around 10k hours of usage on all machines, so some things are a must. Reaper, Ozone, Bitwig.
Plugins - it’s strange, to be honest. They are so ephemeral as a purchase, if you will, and I use them not frequently. Even the price fluctuating 50-90%, it’s just sort of ethereal something, not a real thing or any sense of ownership. I used more apps on IPad than in DAW, tbh, they look a bit more „real” on a tablet, psychologically
Far less than on HW, dont own that long list, i get by with Abelton Stock and some Fabfilter which i still prefer over stock. (Its multiband is cleaner, compared to Abelton Stock still.) Maybe in other DAW the stock stuff is better, but i like the creative aspect of Live.
I bought Omnisphere in 2011, i should have learned it better - instead of buying more stuff afterwards. (NI Komplete was a waste for me.)
Learning stuff is much better than buying stuff.
Over the past 15 years, it’s about 10K total.
This includes :
I’ve cut down about 60% of my engineering income for the past 2 years, but I’d say I made back twice the amount spent, at the very least.
I keep track of what I spend.
And for the past 5 years, I’ve started to cut down that budget.
I don’t update/upgrade anymore. I don’t subscribe anymore (except for Tracklib and ARCADE).
I don’t GAS software anymore and only purchase if it serves a particular need.
One thing that helped me realize how much I needed to cut off buying stuff was the audio interfaces with bundled softwares.
Since I teach a lot, played in many projects and sessions, I always purchased audio interfaces and MIDI controllers for specific needs.
And once I didn’t needed them anymore, I’d resell them in near mint condition but without the bundled softwares.
I ended up with way more plugins than I would ever need. And it actually ended up clogging my workflow in ways that were not efficient. That, the fact that most developers now have a plugin center of sorts with loads of helpers and addons that install themselves everywhere…it became a mess.
So when Apple made the move to the M series, I went for an early-adopt method and went native, knowing it was gonna be the end of many plugins.
The move was brutal, but it served the purpose well.
My plugin addiction was ended overnite and a year later, I got back the plugins I missed the most and never looked back!
i don’t want to think about it 
The move was brutal, but it served the purpose well.
Yes, sort of my idea, use as much as possible of stock or free tools and use as less variety as possible, but learn it better (but I’m not there yet).
$60 for REAPER.
I can’t come up with an actual number because by the time I finish typing this sentence, there’ll be another update to pay for… 
$0 because third world country and pirate software
I don’t think I’ve ever paid for software. It’s not something I’m proud about. I’ve always been put off by planned obsolescence. I run a legacy computer for all my recordings. It handles my focusrite pro 40 and my photoshop 8. It is never connected to the internet and runs flawlessly after many years. I only track and mix ITB. Everything else is done with hardware. Once again, not a source of pride, but possibly a badge of ignorance or fear of opening yet another can of worms.
Zero.
Edit: I got launch key mini in 2017 for 99 now that I remember.
you’re like unplugged from the matrix to run diet matrix off of a generator
Pretty much.
I bought FL Studio and a program called Internet Audio Mix back in like 2001 and pretty much nothing else until Black Friday this year. The biggest ticket things were a couple UAD bundles and IK Multimedia’s MODO drum and bass, which are all pretty great.
All told, I think it comes out to like 600 dollars.
iOS: something around $/€ 1k, probably a bit more, since 2022 Q4.
desktop: something like $/€ 1–1.2k since 2018.
i only buy either software that offers native Linux versions, or software that is available on iOS.
there are three exceptions: Numerology, Logic Pro, Arturia Acid V.
Altogether probably around $2000 including FL studio and Ableton. Honestly most of the VSTs I’ve paid for has been a complete waste of money with a very small handful of exceptions (I use Valhalla verbs/delay and dblue glitch religiously). I haven’t bought that many but I do regret approximately half the music software purchases I’ve made.
$5K CAD or less. I bought a decent amount of plugins but really only reach for a handful of them. I’d say VST synths have born the least amount of fruit. Since exploring hardware/euro rack around 2018, I don’t really use VST synths. I have some go-tos but not used often.
Only other software purchase I can see myself making in 2025 is possibly Bitwig. I love Ableton but Bitwig looks intriguing.