OpenEar vs Solfege Story
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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
Solfege Story
Learn to play music by ear with engaging story-driven games. Unlock new songs and play along to any audio source, from the radio to the internet. Suitable for all ages, it offers endless possibilities for musical exploration.
- Learn to play by ear
- Story mode with games
- Unlockable songbook
- Play along to any audio
- Tonal center training
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Kids and adults can learn to play by ear. STORY mode: play games to figure out songs based on a tonal center ("Do"), leveling up from easy songs to more difficult songs; SONGBOOK mode: easily access songs that you have unlocked. KEYBOARD mode: Play along to songs from anywhere: the radio, streaming, the Internet! Play from what you hear on TV! The possibilities are endless.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Solfege Story at 5.0 against OpenEar's 4.3. Solfege Story also leads on review sentiment (80% vs 63%) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 14.0). OpenEar's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and ratings volume (12 vs 4). On price, update cadence, 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. Solfege Story sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. OpenEar asks for nothing beyond the download.
Solfege Story holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 12 and 4 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 63% of OpenEar's written reviews are positive against 80% of Solfege Story's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly monthly. Both last shipped on November 3, 2026.
| Parameter | OpenEar | Solfege Story |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (12 ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 62.5% of reviews | 80.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 12 — better | 4 |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 106 MB | 147 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Shachar Har-Shuv | Jit Fong Oon |
Customer experience
OpenEar
Solfege Story
In-app purchases
OpenEar
No in-app purchases
Solfege Story
- Christmas Collection$0.99


