Kontakt 6 and 7 are beautiful, but they are heavy. They come with huge libraries, HiDPI interfaces, and a lot of "bloat" for the average user. Kontakt 5, however, runs like a dream. It loads faster, uses significantly less RAM, and barely touches your CPU. If you are running an older laptop or like to run 20+ instances of Kontakt in a session, version 5 is noticeably snappier.
You cannot run the very latest libraries (like Session Guitarist or Analog Dreams) on Kontakt 5. If you need those, you need version 7. Also, native Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) support doesn't exist for v5—you must run your DAW via Rosetta 2. kontakt 5 vst
If you still have your old Kontakt 5 .exe or .pkg file, install it alongside your newer Kontakt. You can run both on the same computer. Use Kontakt 5 for your "workhorse" duties and Kontakt 7 for the fancy new toys. Kontakt 6 and 7 are beautiful, but they are heavy
Here is why Kontakt 5 is still a rock-solid workhorse in 2024/2025. It loads faster, uses significantly less RAM, and