Traktor vs Serato 2024 – complete feature comparison
Table of Contents
- What are Traktor and Serato?
- User Interface
- Usability
- Compatibility
- For beginners
- Analyzing
- Edit the beat grid
- Sound quality
- Hot Cues / Song markers
- Performance compared
- System requirements
- Difference features Traktor and Serato
- Prices
- Do DJs use Traktor or Serato?
- Conclusion: which is better Traktor or Serato?
What are Traktor and Serato?
Both Serato and Traktor are DJ software you can use to mix songs together seamlessly.
Serato and Traktor are available on Mac and Windows.
You can use both Traktor and Serato as standalone software, without the need for a DJ controller.
However I would highly recommend a DJ controller to make your life easier.
For example: adjusting the tempo of a track is much easier and faster with a jog wheel.
Both software support all basic DJ techniques like beat matching and EQ mixing.
There are small some differences here and there.
But overall Traktor has more functions than Serato.
In this article I look at several features of Traktor and Serato and give a five star rating (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) for each category, so you can make an educated decision.
User Interface
The user interface you see above is the “essential view” in Traktor.
It is clean and uncluttered, which I really like.
Traktor has many “faces”.
This is the essential view, but there are more: extended, browser mixer, parallel and preparation.
Which all look very different.
Serato on the other hand is less customizable, although you can still switch views and add/remove panels.
Traktor looks more sleek and modern, Serato looks a little outdated and rudimentary.
Rating
Extra stars for Traktor for the sleek looking interface.
| Traktor | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Serato | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Usability
The buttons in both software are too small to my taste.
Personally, I am a fan of huge-ass Cue and Play buttons.
A club is an environment with sticky surfaces, which makes navigating with mouse or track pad more difficult.
When buttons are small, it makes it harder to navigate fast, and easy to mis-click.
The tons of views that are available in Traktor are annoying.
On top if that you can customize the view (by adding and remove panels).
Sounds nice, but in practice you sometimes select a setting by accident or hit a shortcut-button and your whole user interface changes, without you knowing which button you pressed
But still, overall Traktor is more user friendly when I disregard the 100,000 layout possibilities.
Serato can come across as a bit nerdy and technical.
But Serato has a feature that I really like, which Traktor doesn’t have: coloring keys in the playlist.
This makes it easy to spot compatibilities of songs.
Rating
| Traktor | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Serato | ⭐⭐⭐ |
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Compatibility
Serato supports much more DJ controllers than Traktor.
But Native Instruments (maker of Traktor) has its own (non-industry standard) controllers called Traktor Kontrol, which you can only use with Traktor.
On top of that Native Instruments also offers extensions for DJ controllers.
Rating
| Traktor | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Serato | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
For beginners
Both have tons of buttons which can be quite intimidating for a beginner.
I have a slight preference for Traktor, purely because of the interface.
You can customize your layout to be less intimidating.
| Traktor | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Serato | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Analyzing
Tracks are analyzed when you import them music into your DJ software.
This way the software knows the speed of track, the first beat of the bar etc, and is able to create a beat grid that you can use for DJing.
I noticed that Serato is extremely bad at analyzing tracks.
Every single track I imported is slightly shifted in time (too early).
Just by looking at the beatgrid you can see the timing is off.
But also the amount of tracks that were completely off-grid in Serato was mindblowing.
All software is off once in a while, but the amount of mishaps in Serato is staggering.
Of all the DJ software that I tested (DJay Pro, Serato, DJay Pro, Traktor, Rekordbox) only DJuced was worse than Serato!
Traktor seems to analyze the same tracks just fine.
Rating
Every software is off sometimes, hence 4 stars for Traktor, 0 for Serato.
| Traktor | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Serato |
Edit the beat grid
When the software didn’t analyze tracks correctly, how easy is it to correct the beatgrid?
Somehow editing beatgrids in DJ software is always clunky.
Traktor and Serato are no exception.
In Traktor you need a microscrope to find the buttons, they are extremely small.
But there is also a mega-huge-ass-giga-fat BPM edit box.
The headphone button is the metronome, but that doesn’t seem to work in my software.
Editing is Serato seems to be for normal people that don’t have a microscope.
The buttons have proper sizes.
But I can’t find the metronome, nor the lock to protect the beatgrid against accidental edits.
Rating
It’s still clunky in Serato, so 3 stars.
If Traktor would have spaced out the buttons better, it would be on par with Serato.
| Traktor | ⭐ |
| Serato | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Sound quality
Both software sounds equally good.
I don’t hear a big difference between playing tracks or sound effects.
Stems
There is a big difference when it comes to stems.
Stems are the separation of drum, vocal, melody so you can mix them in to your liking.
The automatic stem extraction in DJ software is always unusable, because it sounds really bad.
So don’t expect miracles.
But Serato’s stems in particular sound really bad.
Stems “bleed” through other stems (also sometimes in Traktor).
And individual stems sound like being played underwater.
Traktor’s automatic stem separation sounds a lot better.
But is it still not great.
But Traktor has something unique: stem files.
Traktor stacks multiple audio layers of a file on top of each other, which you can control individually.
Audio files need to contain multiple audio channels in order to support this.
You can buy stem files in digital music stores like Beatport.
This way you have 100% audio quality compared to auto generated stems, and never “bleed” into other stems.
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Hot Cues / Song markers
Song markers can mark certain sections in a song.
This can be a starting point (often referred to as Cue Point) or a jumping point (Hot Cue).
The song markers in Traktor (screenshot above) are more elaborate than Serato.
In Traktor you can have also Fade-In and Fade-out points for example.
In Serato you have just one type: a Cue Point (which is also a Hot Cue).
Serato (screenshot below) however detects song markers automatically, while Traktor does not.
This can be a huge time saver when you import a lot of tracks into your DJ software.
In Serato the Cue buttons are bigger than Traktor.
In Traktor they are rather wide, but not tall.
The Cue buttons you will use a lot with DJing.
I prefer Serato’s approach.
Rating
| Traktor | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Serato | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Performance compared
I’ve looked at the average CPU and memory usage of Traktor and Serato.
The tests were done on a freshly rebooted 10gen Intel Core i9 with 64MB of memory, a NVidia RTX 3080 on a Windows PC, and a PCIe-3 NVME SSD.
| software | RAM | RAM Analyze | CPU | CPU Analyze | GPU | Startup | Analyze 1000* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serato Pro | 5000 MB | 3000 MB | 3% | 96% | 19% | 17 sec | 6m 3s |
| Traktor Pro | 900 MB | 1000 MB | 1% | 26% | 1% | 5 sec | 22m 58s |
Overall Traktor is faster and responsive than Serato.
Serato is very resource intensive, while Traktor is not.
Although Traktor’s analysis of 1000 tracks is much slower, it also takes up less system resources.
Compared to other DJ software:
Traktor is one of the fastest, Serato is one of the slowest.
Rating:
| Traktor | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Serato | ⭐⭐ |
System requirements
| Traktor | Serato | |
| OS | Windows, Mac | Windows, Mac |
| CPU | Intel Core i5, i7, i9 Ryzen 7, 9 Apple M | Intel Core 5, 7, 9 (6th gen or more, 8th gen preferred) Ryzen 5 3000 or better Apple M1 or higher |
| Memory | 4GB RAM or more | 8GB RAM, 16GB preferred |
| Storage | 1GB Hard disk/ SSD (recommended) | 15GB Hard disk/ SSD (recommended) |
| GPU | 2GB (Open GL) | 2GB |
| Monitor | 1280×800 | 1280×720 |
| Misc | Internet connection | Internet connection |
Difference features Traktor and Serato
SRP = Serato Pro (without controller)
SRPC = Serato Pro with controller
SRS = Serato Suite
TRA = Traktor DJ (=free)
TRA$ = Traktor Pro
| SRP | SRPC | SRS | TRA | TRA$ | |
| Perform (not lib. man.) | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| EQ mixing (controller) | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| EQ mixing (screen) | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| BPM/Grid/Key detect | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Phrase detect | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | |
| Tempo Sync / time-stretch | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Key Sync | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Key lock / Master Tempo | |||||
| Active loop | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ | |
| Auto stem separation | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Play stem tracks | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Quantize | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Slip/flux mode | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Beat jump | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| DVS | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Video | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ | ❌ | |
| Lighting | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Album art | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Smart playlists | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Max player decks | 2* | 2* | 2* | 2 | 4 |
| Key notation ** | CO | CO | CO | O | |
| Record mix | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Sampler | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Hot Cues | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Cue Points | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Tag list | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Tidal | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Soundcloud | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Beatport | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Beatsource | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| iDJPool | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Deezer | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Dropbox | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| MS OneDrive | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Google Drive | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| .MP3 | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| .WAV | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| .AAC/MP4 (M4A) *** | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| .AIF/.AIFF | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| .ALAC (M4A) | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | |
| .FLAC | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| .OGG | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Audio CD | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
**Camelot or Open key notation (C = camelot, O = Open key, N = Normal/classic)
*** Non-DRM AAC
**** Mac only
Prices
Traktor
$150 for a perpetual license.
You definitely get more bang for your buck with Traktor.
Serato
Serato has 2 perpetual licenses: $250 and $500.
The $250 version is a bit limited, you might want to choose the $500 version.
There are also 2 subscription tiers: $10 and $15 per month.
Do DJs use Traktor or Serato?
Serato is more widely used than Traktor by DJs.
However, I don’t think that is totally undeserved.
Traktor is great software and I would definitely recommend it for the reasons I outlined in this article.
I did a poll amongst my fellow DJs, and this was the result:
Conclusion: which is better Traktor or Serato?
Traktor has more features than Serato, especially in the department of mixing, layering and stems.
Traktor also has it’s own dedicated DJ controllers with extra features for extra convenience.
It can be a complete package where the hardware is completely tuned on the software and vice versa.
For the beginner you are better off with Traktor in my opinion.
The price is a huge factor in my decision, also the speed and responsiveness of the software.
A detailed look at Traktor, you can find in my Traktor review.
A detailed look at Serato, you can find in my Serato review.
Or take a look at my DJ software buying guide:
