Tunebook vs Tunepal
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Tunebook
This app is a viewer for music written in the ABC format, a text-based notation popular for folk music. It allows users to import tunes from the web, organize them into collections, search by title, key, or time signature, and view them in musical notation. Users can also play the tunes with various voices.
- ABC music format viewer
- Import tunes from websites
- Search tunes by title, key, time signature
- Display musical notation
- Play tunes with various voices
- Organize tunes into tunebooks
Read full descriptionHide full description
Tunebook is now identical to the Tunebook for iPad application - don't buy both! I keep both on the App Store because it's not possible to provide an upgrade path to a single app without forcing some users to pay twice. Tunebook is a viewer for music expressed in the ABC format. ABC is a simple text-based notation for music and many thousands of tunes are freely available in this format on the Web. ABC is also supported by many music applications. See http://abc.sourceforge.net/ for more details on the ABC format. The format is primarily geared towards traditional folk music where tunes fit on a single page. Tunebook allows you to import files in the ABC format from websites into its database. You can then list the tunes, search for tunes by words in the title, by key and by time signature. Selecting a tune will display it in musical notation and allow you to play it in a variety of voices. You can also create tunebooks to organize your tune collection. Tunebook is based on the well-known abc2ps and abc2midi applications, and licensed under the GPL. The source code is available from http://www.jhlabs.com/tunebook.
Tunepal
Identify traditional Irish, Scots, Welsh, and Breton tunes by playing them into your device. Search a vast database, download and view notation, edit staves, and share your findings. Enjoy high-quality playback of identified melodies.
- Identify tunes by playing them
- Searchable database of 22,000+ tunes
- Download and view musical notation
- Edit tune staves
- High-quality playback engine
- Share tunes via email and Facebook
Read full descriptionHide full description
Listed in the top 500 apps of all times by the Sunday Times (6 February 2012) Listed in the top twenty cultural apps for iPhone by the Sunday Times (28 March 2010). Winner of the best overall invention 2010 in the Dublin Institute of Technology. Tunepal was in the top 25 grossing apps on the app store (17-18 July 2010). The essential tool for all musicians playing traditional Irish, Scots, Welsh and Breton music! Ever sat in a trad session and wondered what was the name of that great tune someone just played? Well now you can search a database of over 22,000 tunes from your iPhone/iPod BY PLAYING! Hold your device up to a melody instrument such as the tin-whistle, flute, concertina, uilleann pipes, accordion or banjo, hit record and the melody will be extracted and submitted to the tunepal.org search engine for matching. Matching tunes are downloaded to your device, where you can view and edit the notation or the stave, email the tune, post it to facebook or play it back using the high quality playback engine based on ABC2MIDI and FMOD.
Screenshots
Verdict
Tunebook and Tunepal both sit at 3.0 stars, but that hides the real split: 75% of Tunebook's written reviews are positive against 56% of Tunepal's. Tunepal's advantage is ratings volume (45 vs 6). On price, rating, update cadence and ads 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 — 3.0 for Tunebook against 3.0 for Tunepal. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Tunepal has 45 ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 75% of Tunebook's written reviews are positive against 56% of Tunepal's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 months. Both last shipped on October 15, 2026.
| Parameter | Tunebook | Tunepal |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.0 (6 ratings) — better | 3.0 (45 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 75.0% of reviews — better | 56.1% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 6 | 45 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 10.3 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 32 MB | 53 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | JH Labs | Bryan Duggan |
Customer experience
Tunebook
Tunepal
In-app purchases
Tunebook
No in-app purchases
Tunepal
No in-app purchases









