The best music theory apps

"Music theory app" covers three products that do quite different jobs, and picking the wrong type is why people end up disappointed.

Reference — look something up. Chord spellings, scale fingerings, key signatures. Drill — test what you know until recall is fast. Course — teach you something you do not yet understand.

Most apps do one of these well and gesture at the others. Work out which you need first.

Best for drilling: Tenuto

$4.99, paid once. 4.8 from around 650 ratings. See it on the App Store →

From musictheory.net, whose free web lessons have been the standard reference for two decades. Tenuto is the exercise side: intervals, chords, scales, key signatures, note identification, keyboard and fretboard drills, all finely configurable.

No subscription, no ads, no gamification. You set what you want to practise and it asks you questions.

Good for: students and teachers who want exact control over what is being tested. Less good for: motivation. It gives you nothing to keep coming back for.

Best all-rounder: Perfect Ear

Free with a paid tier. 4.7 from around 1,900 ratings. See it on the App Store →

Despite the name it is a full theory app: intervals, chords, scales, circle of fifths, rhythm training and short theory articles alongside the ear training.

Good for: one app covering theory, ear and rhythm without juggling three. Less good for: depth in any single area, which is the usual cost of breadth.

Best structured course: EarMaster

Free to download, paid content. 4.6 from around 420 ratings. See it on the App Store →

The most curriculum-shaped option here, built around graded courses rather than open practice, and used in formal music education.

Good for: systematic study, especially alongside a syllabus. Less good for: dipping in for five minutes.

Best for daily habit: Tomus

Free to download, optional subscription. 4.9 from 52 ratings. See it on the App Store →

Our app. Five areas — theory, sight-reading, ear training, rhythm and music history — as short game runs, with a Daily Jam that mixes exercises from across them each day and reports accuracy per game.

Good for: people who need the habit more than the depth. The daily set and short runs are the whole design. Less good for: fine-grained configuration. If you want to drill only diminished sevenths in second inversion, Tenuto is the better tool. Tomus also does not teach concepts from scratch — that is what the written Learn section here is for.

Fifty-two ratings is a small sample. We would rather flag that than let a 4.9 average carry weight it has not earned.

Best free reference: musictheory.net

Free, on the web. Visit musictheory.net →

Not an app, and included anyway because it remains the best free explanation of music theory available. Comprehensive lessons, interactive exercises and useful tools, with no account required.

Good for: looking things up and reading properly. Less good for: mobile use and daily habit, which is where the apps come in.

Also worth a look

Waay — a well-regarded structured theory course app, though it has not been updated since late 2025.

MyMusicTheory — graded theory aimed at UK exam syllabuses. Useful for that; last updated in late 2024.

Complete Ear Trainer — level-based, with a strong rhythm component.

Which to choose

• You need to look things up → musictheory.net, free.
• You know the concepts and want them fast → Tenuto.
• You want one app for theory and ear → Perfect Ear.
• You are following a syllabus → EarMaster or MyMusicTheory.
• You keep failing to practise at all → something with a daily hook. That is what Tomus is built for.

What none of them replace

An app tests recall. It does not explain a concept you have never met, and it does not connect theory to the music you actually play.

Read the explanation first, drill it second, then find it in a real piece. The Learn section here covers the first step, and how to learn music theory sets out the order to work through.