Musicca is free, browser-based, available in around twenty languages, and covers music theory, notation, rhythm, intervals, chords, scales and key signatures with a set of tools alongside. There is no subscription and no catch. What it does not do is listen to you play — the exercises are answered on screen. SightReader is a paid tool that reads a score, listens to your MIDI keyboard, and marks both your notes and your timing. The line between them is exactly the line between knowing what the symbols mean and being able to act on them at tempo.
Full disclosure: we make SightReader. Musicca is free, covers more theory than we do and speaks more languages than we do.
Want a reading level to work from? The three-minute placement check is free too.
What free gets you here
Quite a lot. Musicca’s exercise sets cover music notation, ear training, rhythms, intervals, chords, scales and key signatures, with a chord player, metronome, tuner, note finder, interval finder, scale finder and circle of fifths attached. It works on a phone or a laptop with nothing to install, and its language coverage is unusually broad.
For someone who needs to learn what a key signature does, or to stop counting up from middle C, that is a complete answer at no cost, and we would rather point you at it than sell you something you do not need.
Where it stops
It cannot hear you. That is the whole boundary.
Sight reading is a physical skill under time pressure: eyes ahead of hands, pulse maintained, mistakes left behind rather than corrected. Every part of that only exists while you are actually playing, and an on-screen exercise cannot observe any of it. Musicca can teach you that the third space up in the treble clef is a C. It cannot tell you that you found it 90ms late, or that you keep rushing after rests.
SightReader’s Pitch & Rhythm mode does exactly that, on every piece, on the free tier as well as Pro.
Side by side
| SightReader | Musicca | |
|---|---|---|
| How it grades you | ||
| How it listens | MIDI, exact | On-screen answers |
| Marks what you play on an instrument | ✓ | ✗ |
| Independent rhythm scoring | Yes — on-time %, early/late split, ms tendency | ✗ |
| What it covers | ||
| Reading whole pieces at tempo | ✓ | ✗ |
| Theory lessons and exercises | ✗ | ✓ |
| Ear training | ✗ | ✓ |
| Reference tools (tuner, circle of fifths) | Metronome only | ✓ |
| Exam-syllabus alignment | ABRSM Initial–8 (aligned, not affiliated) | ✗ |
| Library | 4,000+ real pieces, graded | n/a — exercises |
| Practical | ||
| Price | £5/mo or £48/yr; free tier of 54 pieces | Free |
| Account required | For progress tracking | ✗ |
| Languages | English, Spanish, French, Italian | ~20 |
| Platforms | Any browser, iOS, Android | Any browser |
| Teacher and class tools | ✓ | ✗ |
Our note and chord drills are free as well — try them alongside Musicca’s theory work.
When Musicca is the better choice
You need theory. More of it, better organised, for nothing.
You want ear training. We have none.
You do not have a keyboard to plug in. Musicca needs no instrument at all.
English is not your first language. Around twenty languages against our four. If you read music theory more comfortably in German, Portuguese or Japanese, that decides it.
Free is the constraint. Then use Musicca. It is a good resource and we would rather you learned something than nothing.
And if you want the opposite of that
If you can already read the symbols and the difficulty starts when you have to do it at speed with both hands, no amount of theory exercises will close that gap. Only playing does.
FAQs
Is Musicca completely free?
Yes. Musicca is free to use in a browser with no subscription, covering music-theory lessons and exercises on notation, rhythm, intervals, chords, scales and key signatures, plus tools like a metronome, tuner and circle of fifths, in around twenty languages. It is the price floor of this whole category and it is a well-made resource.
Can Musicca listen to me play?
No. Musicca’s exercises are answered on screen — clicking, selecting, identifying — rather than by playing an instrument into it, and MIDI input is not among the features its pages describe. SightReader listens to a MIDI keyboard and marks each note as you play, adding a timing score once the metronome is on.
Is Musicca good for sight reading?
It is good for the knowledge that supports sight reading — reading notation, understanding key signatures, recognising intervals — but not for sight reading itself, which means playing unfamiliar music at tempo while something marks the result. Musicca teaches you what the symbols mean; it does not put you under time pressure at a keyboard.
Why pay for SightReader when Musicca is free?
For the part Musicca does not do: playing. SightReader listens over MIDI, marks every note against real graded repertoire, scores your timing separately, and tracks your progress across sessions. If theory is what you need, Musicca is free and better at it. SightReader also has a permanent free tier of 54 pieces with the full scoring, so you can compare the two without paying.
How many languages does Musicca support?
Around twenty, including Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and more — considerably more than SightReader, which currently ships in English, Spanish, French and Italian.
How we checked
Musicca details come from its own lessons, exercises and tools pages, read on 1 August 2026. Where we say a feature is not described, we looked for it on the site and did not find it. SightReader figures are our own.
Elsewhere: SightReader vs sightreading.training, SightReader vs Tenuto, and the best sight-reading apps for piano.
