DrumToolz vs Drumr Notate
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
DrumToolz
Compose and practice drum cadences and beats on your mobile device. This app allows manual input of exercises, generation of new ideas, and practice of rudiments. Share your creations and learn from a community of drummers.
- Compose drum cadences and beats
- Manual exercise input
- Generate new rhythmic ideas
- Editable music score
- Practice snare rudiments
- Library of dynamic exercises
- Social profile and sharing
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Compose cadences on the go! Choose from snares, tenors, bass drums, cymbals, and even drumset if you want. In a league of its own, DrumToolz also lets you manually input exercises for drum set, marching snare, tenors, and bass drums while generating new creative ideas using what you input, all shown on an editable music score. You can also upload your beats to your social profile, play what other users are playing, save rhythms, practice snare drum rudiments, and learn from a full library of dynamic exercises for both snare drum and drumset! It's perfect for all skill levels, from beginner to extremely advanced, drum wizards. Works great for sharing drum cadences with your drumline. Isolate individual snare, tenors, etc. parts. Practice the simplest to the most complex of beats and rhythms. If you can think of it, you can input it and practice it! Anything from beginner rock beats, to the most complex of jazz beats and fills. Lastly, top off the notes with ornaments: stickings, accents, flams, diddles, and cheese. Input up to 50 measures. When practicing drum set beats, choose from a ride cymbal, hihat, hihat foot, kick drum, snare drum, and three toms. Input everything from whole notes to thirtysecond notes and tuplets. Also, for tenors, choose from four tenors and a spock. Bass drums - five bass drums. Marching snare - a realistic marching snare and a ping sound. Generate new ideas (modifications) using beats that you input into the score. Choose from several modification methods: Add, Shuffle, Substitute, Permutate, Repeat, and Random. Modify individual parts of the beat (ex: kick drum only) or the entire beat if desired. Custom snare exercises. Choose the time sig, subdivisons, tuplets, stickings, accents, flams, diddles, cheese, drags. Save the beat in the score for later practice, keeping the modifications if desired. If the modifications are kept, this turns the beat into an endless, dynamic exercise! Each time you generate an exercise, it uses the modifications to give you an entirely new beat. String together saved rhythms and practice them as one exercise, perfect for practicing beats followed by a drum fill. Upload your beats to your profile. Find and follow other drummers in the social network. Learn from them as you see and practice what they have uploaded to their profile. Share your beats through PDF links and files. Also, share your entire score with a link that pre-populates the score into the app. Learn from a full library of dynamic drum set and snare drum exercises, essential and hybrid rudiments included. For highlighted rhythms, shuffle around groups of notes, stickings, accents, flams, diddles, and cheese.
Drumr Notate
Create and share drum music compositions quickly. This app offers a comprehensive set of notation tools for various drum instruments, allowing you to hear your music and export it as a PDF or MusicXML file. It integrates with a practice tool for enhanced learning.
- Compose drum music with detailed notation
- Multiple instrument palettes (Drum Kit, Marching Snare, Tenors, Bassline)
- Playback with built-in drum sounds
- Export scores as PDF and MusicXML
- Integrates with Drumr for interactive practice
- Keyboard shortcuts and intuitive interface
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Notation software made exclusively for drums. Write kit and drumline parts quickly and easily, hear them played back, and hand your players a clean PDF. Got a part from your instructor? Open, play, and share or print it free. Writing and editing need a Notate subscription — try it free for 7 days. No account required. Write it. Hear it. Share it. Everything you need to compose. - Note values from whole notes to 32nd notes - Tuplets — triplets, quintuplets, sextuplets, septuplets, and ninelets - Dynamics from ppp to fff, crescendo and decrescendo hairpins, and score-wide Accent/Tap dynamics - Accents, marcatos, tenutos, staccatos, flams, drags, ruffs, diddles, ghost notes, and open hi-hat markings - Add sticking and text to explain how the part should be played, or show sticking with Berger notation on Marching Snare - Per-measure tempo marks from 30 to 300 bpm and time signatures from 2/4 to 13/8 - Beams group themselves from the meter, compound meters included, with manual override - Rests consolidate automatically - Duplicate measures, repeat notes, and copy and paste to build patterns fast Built for the whole drumline. Four complete instrument palettes, with more than 100 sound and technique combinations. - Drum Kit — snare, bass drum, hi-hats, toms, and cymbals, plus cowbell, tambourine, clave, and gock block - Marching Snare — rimshots, cross-sticks, buzz and press rolls, backsticks, stick shots, stick clicks, ping shots, gock blocks, cowbell, and ribbon crasher - Marching Tenors — all six drums, with rim clicks, rimshots, buzz and press rolls, crossovers, stick shots, stick clicks, and skank - Marching Bassline — all five drums, with rim clicks, rimshots, buzz rolls, stick clicks, and unison hits Hear it back Play your score with built-in authentic drum sounds — playback follows the tempo marks you write, from 30 to 300 bpm, and a metronome clicks the beat while you listen. PDF and MusicXML Share or print a PDF of your scores. Scores live in the Files app and iCloud Drive, and every score is a standard MusicXML file you can use in Sibelius, Dorico, or any notation app that reads it. Send a score to anyone with Notate and they can open and play it free. Scores made with Drumr's retired Sibelius templates convert to Notate files at drumr.app/imports. Made for speed Tap, drag, or use full hardware keyboard shortcuts. Drag a note and Notate previews the valid placements before you drop it. Appearance Choose Light, Dark, or System, with preset or custom theme colors. Wrote it? Now practice it. Tap Open in Drumr on iPhone, iPad, or a Mac with Apple silicon to turn your score into an interactive practice tool — follow along note-for-note, slow the tempo or use speed training to build stick control, loop the hard parts, get practice feedback, and see your progress. Requires a Drumr Premium subscription with a free 7-day trial. — Help/feedback: https://support.drumr.app Privacy: https://privacy.drumr.app Terms: https://terms.drumr.app Apple EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Drumr Notate at 4.8 against DrumToolz's 4.2. Drumr Notate also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 58%) and update cadence (every 2 days vs monthly). DrumToolz's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2) and ratings volume (270 vs 4). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Drumr Notate sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. DrumToolz asks for nothing beyond the download.
Drumr Notate holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: DrumToolz has 270 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 58% of DrumToolz's written reviews are positive against 100% of Drumr Notate's.
DrumToolz ships an update monthly, Drumr Notate every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 12, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | DrumToolz | Drumr Notate |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.2 (270 ratings) | 4.8 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 58.1% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 270 — better | 4 |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 93 MB | 44 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jared Simon | Drumr Inc. |
Customer experience
DrumToolz
Drumr Notate
Bugs and requests
DrumToolz
Reported bugs
13 issues- App crashes and deletes progress
- App won't open
- Repeat function doesn't stop
- Repeat save fails
- Accents, diddles, flams added automatically
Show 8 moreShow fewer
- Buzz roll cannot be removed
- Font camouflages in dark mode
- App crashes when opening after saving
- App crashes when opening
- App crashes when adding notes
- App crashes after saving
- App crashes when trying to reopen
- App crashes a lot
Requested features
15 requests- Turn off metronome
- Add rum shot for snare
- Add rim shots for other drums
- Add triplets, fivelets, sixlets
- Add dynamics (forte, piano)
Show 10 moreShow fewer
- Cymbals sizzle option
- Add buzz roll for snares
- Add diddle feature
- More measures
- Add bass drum notes
- Add open hi-hat sound
- Improve UI for tuplet measurement
- Improve UI for measure change
- Ability to hear multiple instruments simultaneously
- Fix replace button for bass drums
Drumr Notate
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
DrumToolz
No in-app purchases
Drumr Notate
- Monthly7 Days trial$6.991 Month
- Annual7 Days trial$39.991 Year









