Best ear training apps

One distinction determines whether an app will actually help you, and most reviews miss it entirely.

Isolated intervals versus functional listening

Isolated interval training plays two notes and asks you to name the gap. It is the most common format and it produces a specific failure: learners get good at the app and find the skill does not transfer to real music, because real music presents notes inside a key, not floating in space.

Functional ear training establishes a key first, then plays a note and asks which scale degree it is. That is what you actually do when transcribing or improvising, and it transfers far better. See solfege for the underlying idea.

Use an app that does the second, or at least does both. If you only ever drill isolated intervals, expect the plateau.

The recommendations

Functional Ear Trainer

Free, focused, and built entirely around scale-degree recognition in a key. It does one thing and does it correctly. If you install only one app, install this one. The interface is plain and the progression through levels is well judged.

Tenuto (musictheory.net)

From the people behind musictheory.net. Broad coverage: intervals, chords, scales, key signatures, note identification, and keyboard and fretboard exercises. Highly configurable, so you can construct exactly the drill you need. Paid, one-off, and inexpensive.

EarMaster

The most comprehensive option, and the closest to a structured course rather than a drill tool. Includes sight singing with pitch detection through the microphone, which almost nothing else does well. Desktop and mobile. It is a serious purchase and appropriate if you are working toward an exam.

Teoria and Toned Ear (web, free)

Browser-based, no install, no account. Teoria is particularly strong on functional exercises and on harmonic dictation. Useful when you are at a computer and do not want another app.

Perfect Ear

Android-first, very broad, with rhythm training included. The rhythm exercises are better than most competitors, which matters because rhythmic dictation is widely neglected.

How to use them so they work

1. Fifteen minutes daily beats two hours weekly. Perceptual learning consolidates with frequency, not duration.
2. Sing your answer before you tap it. Recognition and production are different skills, and singing trains the one that transfers.
3. Stay at a level until it is boring. Advancing while still at seventy percent accuracy builds a shaky foundation you will have to rebuild.
4. Use a real key context. Turn on the drone or the cadence if the app offers it.
5. Transcribe real music weekly. No app substitutes for taking down a melody from a recording. This is the actual skill; the app is the drill.

Or use ours

Our ear trainer runs in the browser, needs no account, and includes both interval and scale-degree modes with a proper key-establishing cadence. It is free and it always will be.

We do not accept payment for placement and we do not rank by commission rate. Where a link is an affiliate link it is marked, and the recommendation would be the same without it.