ABRSM publishes its own sight-reading app, and if you are working towards Grades 1 to 5 it is worth £4.99 of anyone’s money: 155 pieces written to the syllabus by the board that sets it, wrapped in preparation games that drill the 30-second scan the exam actually tests. What it will not do is listen to you play. There is no MIDI input and no assessment, so it hands you the material and the preparation habit but never tells you how the attempt went. SightReader covers Initial Grade to Grade 8 with 4,000-plus pieces, listens to your MIDI keyboard, and marks pitch and timing as you go.
Full disclosure: we make SightReader. The ABRSM app has something we cannot have — it is published by the exam board itself — and that is covered below.
Not sure which grade you are reading at? The three-minute placement check will place you.
What the exam board’s app does well
The preparation games are the interesting part and they are more thoughtful than the price suggests. Each piece is preceded by exercises that make you look at the music the way an examiner expects you to in your half-minute: Rhythm Match plays a rhythm from the piece and asks you to pick the matching notation, Pitch Patterns quizzes you on a small section’s pitches, patterns, fingering and keyboard geography, and Quick Fire Five and What’s the Difference ask about the piece as a whole.
That is a real pedagogical idea. The 30-second preparation window is where most sight-reading marks are won and lost, and almost nothing else in the category trains it deliberately. We do not.
The material is also as authoritative as material gets. Newly composed for the app, to the syllabus, by the organisation that writes the syllabus. When we say SightReader is aligned to ABRSM, we mean we follow the published parameters. ABRSM’s own app does not have to say “aligned”.
Where it stops
Two limits, and they are both significant.
It does not hear you. No MIDI, no microphone, no marking. The app shows you the music and you play it on your instrument. Whether you played it correctly is a matter between you and your ears. For an exam component that is scored objectively, that is a strange place for the practice tool to stop.
Grades 1 to 5 only. 155 pieces across five levels. If you are taking Grade 6, 7 or 8, or you are at Initial Grade, it does not cover you. And 155 pieces is not many for a skill trained by volume — the whole point of sight reading is reading music you have not seen, and a finite set stops being unseen quite quickly.
There is a wider observation to make here and it is worth making carefully. Sight reading is 21 of 150 marks in an ABRSM practical piano exam — 14%, the same weight as scales, compulsory at every grade, and the component candidates most reliably drop marks on. The board’s digital provision for it is a £4.99 app covering the bottom five grades that cannot hear you play. That is a factual description, not a complaint, and it is a large part of why this category exists at all.
Side by side
| SightReader | ABRSM Piano Sight-Reading Trainer | |
|---|---|---|
| How it grades you | ||
| How it listens | MIDI, exact | It does not listen |
| Marks the attempt | Accuracy, per-note, every run | ✗ |
| Independent rhythm scoring | Yes — on-time %, early/late split, ms tendency | ✗ |
| Preparation-scan drills | ✗ | Rhythm Match, Pitch Patterns and more |
| Material | ||
| Published by ABRSM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Grades covered | Initial to Grade 8 | Grades 1 to 5 |
| Pieces | 4,000+, plus generated graded exercises | 155 |
| Bring your own music | Any MusicXML file (Pro) | ✗ |
| Practical | ||
| Free tier | 54 pieces, both modes | Paid download |
| Price | £5/mo or £48/yr | £4.99 one-off |
| Platforms | Any browser, iOS, Android | iOS, Android |
| Offline practice | ✓ | ✓ |
| Teacher and class tools | ✓ | ✗ |
| Languages | English, Spanish, French, Italian | English |
If it is grades 6 to 8 you need, that is where the ABRSM app stops and ours carries on.
When the ABRSM app is the better choice
You want official material and nothing else. Nobody else can offer pieces written by the exam board. If that authority is what you are paying for, this is the only place to get it.
You want to train the 30-second scan. Its preparation games are the best implementation of that idea in the category and we have no equivalent.
You do not have a MIDI keyboard. Since it does not listen at all, it does not care what you play on. Our core loop needs a MIDI keyboard, so if you have an acoustic piano and no plans to change that, we are not much use to you. Sight Reading Factory listens through a microphone if you want a verdict without a keyboard.
£4.99 is your budget. That is a completely reasonable position and we are not going to argue you out of it.
And if you want the opposite of that
If you have played through the 155 pieces, or you are past Grade 5, or you have realised that practising sight reading without anything checking your work is mostly practising your own habits, the next step is volume plus a verdict.
One thing to be exact about, since this page is about the exam board: SightReader is aligned to ABRSM, not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and our grade pieces are not real exam material. Actual tests use unseen, single-use music on the day. Ours are written to the same published parameters.
FAQs
Is the ABRSM Sight-Reading Trainer worth it?
For £4.99 and Grades 1 to 5, yes — with one significant caveat. It is published by ABRSM itself, its 155 pieces are written to the syllabus by the people who write the syllabus, and its preparation games train the 30-second scan that the exam actually tests. What it does not do is listen to you play. There is no MIDI input and no assessment of your attempt, so you get the material and the preparation drill but no verdict.
Does the ABRSM app work with a MIDI keyboard?
No. The Piano Sight-Reading Trainer shows you the music and runs preparation games around it, but it does not take MIDI input and does not mark your playing. SightReader listens to a MIDI keyboard and colours each note as you play — green for correct, red for wrong, and blue or yellow for early and late once the metronome is on.
What grades does the ABRSM Sight-Reading Trainer cover?
Grades 1 to 5, with 155 specially composed pieces across those five levels. It does not go above Grade 5. SightReader covers Initial Grade through Grade 8 with a 4,000-piece library plus graded exercises at every level, so it keeps working after the ABRSM app runs out.
Is SightReader affiliated with ABRSM?
No. SightReader is aligned to the published ABRSM parameters for each grade — keys, time signatures, hand position, length, articulation — but it is not affiliated with or endorsed by ABRSM, and its grade pieces are not exam material. Real tests use unseen, single-use music on the day. The ABRSM Sight-Reading Trainer, by contrast, is published by the board itself.
Should I use both?
They do different halves of the job, so plenty of people would. The ABRSM app gives you official material and drills the 30-second preparation scan; SightReader gives you volume, all nine levels and a marked verdict on each attempt. At £4.99 the ABRSM app is cheap enough that using it alongside something that listens is a reasonable plan rather than an extravagance.
How we checked
Details of the ABRSM Piano Sight-Reading Trainer come from ABRSM’s own product page and the app’s App Store and Google Play listings, read on 1 August 2026. The exam-weighting figure (21 of 150 marks) is from ABRSM’s published piano syllabus. Where we say a feature is absent, we looked for it on the vendor’s own pages and did not find it. SightReader figures are our own.
Elsewhere: SightReader vs Sight Reading Factory, SightReader vs Piano Marvel, and the best sight-reading apps for piano.
