What Is the Difference Between iZotope RX, Ozone, Neutron, and Nectar?

iZotope's four main product lines split by job in the production chain: RX repairs and cleans problem audio, Ozone handles mastering, Neutron handles mixing, and Nectar handles vocals. If you're deciding what to buy, match the tool to the stage where your work actually gets stuck — cleaning bad recordings, balancing a mix, polishing a finished track, or treating a lead vocal.

The four product lines at a glance

RX: repair first, mix later

RX is the line iZotope positions around restoration — the site leads with "Award-winning audio restoration with RX 12" and "Deliver flawless audio for every scene, song, and story." Its published case studies point the same direction: the sound teams behind Spider-Noir and The Bear Season 5 used RX to handle rain rigs, overlapping dialogue, and intense quiet passages. That tells you the intended job: rescuing material you can't re-record.

Choose RX if your problem is the source recording itself — hiss, hum, room noise, clipped takes, dialogue buried under ambience. It is not a mixing or mastering tool, so it won't help you balance a kick against a bass.

Ozone: the mastering stage

Ozone 12 is described as "an all-in-one suite of 20 pro modules" for going "beyond the limits of mastering." It sits at the end of the chain, after your mix is balanced. If your mixes sound fine but quiet, dull, or inconsistent next to commercial releases, that's the Ozone problem to solve.

Neutron: the mixing stage

Neutron 5 is the mixing counterpart — track and bus processing for getting a multitrack session to sit together. Reach for it when individual elements fight each other or a mix feels unbalanced, before any mastering happens.

Nectar: vocals only

Nectar 4 Advanced narrows the focus to vocal processing. If your bottleneck is a lead vocal that needs consistent tone, level, and character, this is the targeted option rather than a full mixing suite.

How to choose by workflow

• You edit dialogue, podcasts, or video sound → RX. Start with RX 12 Elements ($99) or Standard ($399); Advanced ($1,399) is aimed at heavy professional restoration work.
• You finish your own music → Ozone. Ozone 12 Elements is $55, Standard $219, Advanced $499.
• You mix other people's or your own multitracks → Neutron 5 at $299.
• Vocals are your main craft → Nectar 4 Advanced at $299.
• You want several stages covered → the bundles: Elements Suite 12 ($149), Music Production Suite 9 ($799, described as 100 pro plugins for mixing, mastering, and audio repair), or the Everything Bundle ($2,999).

A practical rule: buy for the stage where you currently lose the most time. Repair problems can't be fixed downstream, so if your recordings are noisy, RX comes before any mixing or mastering purchase.

What to know before buying

• These are separate products, not tiers of one tool. Owning Ozone does not give you RX's repair capability, and vice versa.
• Elements, Standard, and Advanced are tiers within a line, with different module counts and depth — check the feature list for the specific line rather than assuming the tier means the same thing across products.
• Subscriptions exist. iZotope publishes subscription terms, so confirm whether a given purchase is perpetual or subscription-based before checkout.
• Ownership is changing. iZotope states it is joining BorisFX. That's worth noting for long-term licensing and support planning, though no specifics on how it affects existing licenses appear in the available material.

If you're still unsure, name the single task that most often blocks you from finishing work — cleaning, balancing, mastering, or vocals — and buy the line that owns that task.