Guess the Notes vs OpenEar
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Guess the Notes
Train your ear to identify musical notes played on a guitar. The app offers three difficulty levels, providing increasing numbers of choices as you progress. Track your performance with visible correct and incorrect answer counts.
- Guitar note recognition
- Three difficulty levels
- Multiple choice answers
- Performance tracking
- Beginner, Intermediate, Expert modes
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Use "Guess the Notes" to train your ears to recognize the notes played on a guitar You'll be able to choose between 3 difficulty levels. In the Beginner level, for every note played, you'll be presented with 2 choices of note names and you'll have to choose between those. For Intermediate level, you get 4 choices and for Expert 6 notes. You will also be able to see the total correct and incorrect answers on top of the screen! Have fun!
OpenEar
This app offers a variety of exercises designed to improve musicians' aural skills, focusing on tonal music. It helps users master recognizing musical patterns through exercises like scale degree and chord identification, and progression analysis.
- Scale Degree Identification
- Chord Function Identification
- Common Progressions
- Chord Types
- Scale Degrees with Chords
- Triad Inversions
- Intervals
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OpenEar is the open source ear training app for musicians. It's goal is to provide a flexible variety of exercises with emphasis on tonal music so musicians will be able to master recognizing any musical pattern that might help them become better musicians. Currently includes the following exercises: 1. Scale Degree Identification 2. Chord Function Identification (identify chords in roman numeral analysis) - the only app in the world that allow this! 3. Common Progressions 4. Chord Types - including settings for root degrees per type so you can practice only common types in a tonal context 5. Scale Degrees with Chords - absolutely revolutionary exercise that help develop both scale degree and chord identification in tonal context. 6. Triad inversions - identify a position of a closed voiced triad 7. Intervals - the classic atonal intervals exercise. Not recommended for beginners as research shows that apart from advance usecases, intervals are not effective in developing good aural skills in tonal music. Check out our GitHub page for contribution and feedback: https://github.com/ShacharHarshuv/open-ear
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Guess the Notes at every 6 days against OpenEar's monthly. Guess the Notes also leads on iOS requirement (8.0 vs 14.0). OpenEar's advantage is review sentiment (63% vs 50%) and ratings volume (10 vs 3). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.7 for Guess the Notes against 4.6 for OpenEar. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 10 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 50% of Guess the Notes's written reviews are positive against 63% of OpenEar's.
Guess the Notes ships an update every 6 days, OpenEar monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 2, 2026 and October 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Guess the Notes | OpenEar |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (3 ratings) — better | 4.6 (10 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | 62.5% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 3 | 10 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 days — better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 8.0 — better | 14.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 145 MB | 106 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Pixolity AB (Apps) | Shachar Har-Shuv |
Customer experience
Guess the Notes
OpenEar
In-app purchases
Guess the Notes
No in-app purchases
OpenEar
No in-app purchases


