sightreading.training is free, open source, needs no account and loads in a browser tab in about a second. It generates notes on the stave, takes MIDI input, and tells you instantly whether you played the right pitch. For drilling note recognition it is very good and it costs nothing, and any comparison that pretends otherwise is not worth reading. SightReader is a paid product built around real published repertoire graded to ABRSM levels, with your timing scored separately from your notes and your progress tracked across sessions. The choice is mostly about whether you want a drill or a curriculum.
Full disclosure: we make SightReader. sightreading.training is free and open source and we are neither, which is a real advantage on its side.
Want to know which grade to start at? The three-minute placement check is free too, and needs no account.
What it is good at
The virtue of sightreading.training is that it removes every obstacle between you and practising. No sign-up, no download, no subscription, no onboarding flow. You open it, plug in a keyboard, choose a range and a key, and you are drilling. It includes a staff tool with generated notes, ear-training exercises, flash cards for theory, and a built-in piano and metronome.
It is also open source, developed in the open at github.com/leafo/sightreading.training. You can read what it does, fork it, and keep running it if it ever goes away. No commercial product in this comparison offers that, and if you have watched enough music software get acquired and shut down, it is not a small consideration.
Its own About page describes it as far from complete and still being developed, which is a fair and unusually honest way to present a free tool.
Where the two diverge
Generated notes versus real music. sightreading.training’s staff tool produces random notes within the range and key you choose. That is exactly right for building the pitch-to-key reflex, and it is not the same as reading music. Real repertoire has phrases, sequences, idiomatic hand shapes and harmonic logic — the patterns your eye eventually learns to take in as single objects rather than note by note. Generated notes are statistically correct and musically arbitrary, so the chunking vocabulary you build from them is a slightly different vocabulary.
Both matter. Notes-on-the-stave drilling is the right first step, and we ship our own version of it in Notes & Chords on the free tier. Repertoire is the step after.
Rhythm. Its exercises are about identifying and playing the right notes; rhythm assessment is not among the features its pages describe. SightReader’s Pitch & Rhythm mode grades onsets against a metronome grid and tells you what percentage landed on time, how the rest split between early and late, and your average tendency in milliseconds.
Grading and progress. There is no exam-syllabus structure and no long-term progress record. SightReader organises everything by ABRSM level from Initial to Grade 8 and keeps your history.
Side by side
| SightReader | sightreading.training | |
|---|---|---|
| How it grades you | ||
| How it listens | MIDI, exact | MIDI, exact (Web MIDI) |
| Independent rhythm scoring | Yes — on-time %, early/late split, ms tendency | Not described |
| Progress tracked across sessions | ✓ | Minimal |
| Material | ||
| What you read | Real published repertoire | Generated notes on the stave |
| Exam-syllabus alignment | ABRSM Initial–8 (aligned, not affiliated) | ✗ |
| Library | 4,000+ pieces | Generated, unlimited |
| Ear training and theory drills | Note and chord drills; no ear training | Ear training and flash cards |
| Bring your own music | Any MusicXML file (Pro) | ✗ |
| Practical | ||
| Price | £5/mo or £48/yr; free tier of 54 pieces | Free |
| Account required | For progress tracking | ✗ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✓ |
| Platforms | Any browser, iOS, Android | Chromium browsers |
| Works on iPhone | Native app | ✗ |
| Offline practice | ✓ | ✗ |
Our note-recognition drills are free and uncapped too — try them here if that is the part you want.
When sightreading.training is the better choice
You want to start in ten seconds. No account, no card, no app. That is worth a lot and we cannot match the friction level.
You want a note-recognition drill, not a course. If your problem is that you still count up from middle C to find a ledger-line note, generated drilling is the fastest fix and it is free.
You value open source. You can read the code, contribute to it, and keep it alive. That is a category of advantage a commercial product cannot offer.
You want ear training and theory flash cards. It has both and we have neither.
Free is the deciding factor. Then it wins, and we would rather you practised on a free tool than not at all.
And if you want the opposite of that
If you have drilled enough notes that the stave has stopped being the problem, the next thing is real music at a level slightly below what you can play, and something that tells you whether your timing is where it slips.
FAQs
Is sightreading.training any good?
Yes, and it is free and open source, which makes it hard to beat as a starting point. It generates random notes on the stave, takes MIDI input, and gives instant feedback on whether you played the right pitch — no account, no install, no cost. Its limits are that the material is generated rather than real music, and that rhythm is not part of what it assesses. For pure note-recognition drilling on a browser tab it is excellent.
Does sightreading.training score rhythm?
Its exercises are built around identifying and playing the right notes on the stave rather than playing in time, and rhythm scoring is not among the features its own pages describe. SightReader’s Pitch & Rhythm mode measures every onset against a metronome grid and reports the percentage on time, the split between early and late, and your average tendency in milliseconds.
Why pay for SightReader when sightreading.training is free?
You would not, if random notes on a stave are what you need. What the paid product adds is real published repertoire rather than generated exercises, a library organised by ABRSM grade from Initial to Grade 8, timing scored as its own dimension, progress tracking across sessions, and native apps. SightReader also has a permanent free tier of 54 pieces, so the comparison is not free-versus-paid so much as two different free offerings.
Does sightreading.training work with a MIDI keyboard?
Yes, over the Web MIDI API in a Chromium-based browser, which is the same mechanism SightReader uses in the browser. Neither works in Safari or on an iPhone, because WebKit has never shipped Web MIDI. SightReader gets around that with a native iOS app that talks to CoreMIDI directly; sightreading.training is web-only.
Is sightreading.training open source?
Yes — it is developed in the open at github.com/leafo/sightreading.training and is free to use and to contribute to. Its own About page describes it as still in development. That openness is a genuine advantage over any commercial product here, ours included: you can read exactly what it does, and run it yourself if it ever disappears.
How we checked
Details come from sightreading.training’s own site and its public GitHub repository, read on 1 August 2026. Where we say a feature is not described, that means we looked for it in the project’s own documentation and did not find it — an open-source project in active development may well add it. SightReader figures are our own.
Elsewhere: SightReader vs Musicca, SightReader vs the ABRSM Sight-Reading Trainer, and the best sight-reading apps for piano.
