Are free-weight exercises really king?

in some circles people will claim that free weight compound exercises are King for building muscle machines just aren't as good is that really true well in their metanalysis Hogan and colleagues actually compared all studies that looked at Machine versus free movements and they found that across five studies they were equally effective for building muscle while that's not a ton of research only five studies it does seem like both are interchangeable that being said for strength specificity still applies so if you want to get better at freee lifts do freeweight lifts