iWriteMusic Pro SE vs Notation Scanner
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
iWriteMusic Pro SE
Create beautiful, professional-quality sheet music with an intuitive interface. This app offers efficient input systems, comprehensive notation tools, and useful playback options for musicians of all levels.
- Intuitive user interface
- Efficient input systems (One-Flick & Traditional)
- Professional quality sheet music
- Comprehensive notation elements
- Useful playback options
- Export to PDF, JPG, and MIDI
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Music Writing is easy and fun when you use iWriteMusic! Experience the perfect harmony of ease and versatility in sheet music creation with iWriteMusic! Say goodbye to complicated notation apps and hello to intuitive design. Enjoy quick and beautiful sheet music creation with a comprehensive suite of essential tools for concerts, lessons, and music classes. Best fit for professional musicians, music teachers and students. For songwriters, composers and arrangers. For both singers and instrumentalists (piano, violin, cello, guitar, flute, saxophone, trumpet, drums, etc.). Great for writing down ideas, creating lesson materials, creating lead sheets, or creating scores and parts for chorus groups, choirs, chamber orchestras, jazz bands, Latin bands, orchestras, and more. For daily practice, rehearsals, concerts, iWriteMusic will help you enrich your musical life! Check out 8 reasons to choose iWriteMusic SE (Special Edition) 1. You can understand this app almost instantly! Because of Truly Intuitive and Extremely Simple user interface, you barely need to read pages of manuals nor watching numbers of instruction videos. Unlike Finale, Sibelius and other similar apps, you just have a few things to learn to be able to use this app pretty well. 2.Double your productivity with our Highly Efficient Input System. If you’re already familiar with notation apps and looking for faster & more efficient entry system, try our innovative One-Flick Entry System along with Traditional Entry System to get your job done in no time! What is Traditional Entry System? - The choices will appear with ToolBox. - Select a value and the location separately. - Recommended to those who are not yet familiar with any music notation apps. What is OneFlick Entry System? - The choices will appear when you touch the screen. - Select a location and the value at once. - The selection will change as you slide your finger to left/right. - Recommended to those who are familiar with music notation apps and looking for faster and more efficient entry system. 3. Creates beautiful sheet music / music score - absolutely professional quality! - rich options for page layout adjustment - easy parts creation - easy score/parts management - direct print-out via AirPrint 4. Supports most of major notation elements - multi-track writing - multi-voice writing - percussion/drums notation - chord symbols and lyrics - multi-bar rest - time change - key change - clef change - tempo change - grace note - articulations and dynamics marks - easy song transpose - partial transpose and many more! 5. Useful playback options for practice - mixer with solo, mute and voice select - loop and swing options 6. Data & sheet music sharing - exports/Imports iWriteMusic data file - exports PDF or JPG - exports Standard MIDI file which can be imported by other apps such as GarageBand 7. Extremely Compact Size (15 MB) You can save your device storage space for photos and other apps. 8. Best of all, it's Free! Yes, it's Free and Over 1.4 Million people all over the world has created music with this app family. Let's get started now! Note: This is for iPhone (iPad version sold separately) ATTENTION: Latency during playback and drawing may occur by device capacity or number of tracks and background applications. Limitations on SE (Special Edition): 1. Water mark appears on page views and printouts. 2. Can’t save more than 5 songs. 3. Can't play more than 30 seconds at a time. 4. Can't import iWriteMusic data file. (export only) 5. Can't export Standard MIDI file.
Notation Scanner
This app allows users to scan and recognize sheet music using their device's camera or existing images. It functions as a sheet music reader and player, supporting over 100 instruments and offering playback controls. Users can also export their recognized scores in various formats.
- Scan sheet music via camera or image library
- Recognize and playback music scores
- Support for over 100 instruments
- Adjust tempo and voice parts
- Export as MusicXML, MIDI, PNG, PDF
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A powerful scanner for sheet music lovers to recognize sheet music. A handy music OCR tool for you to scan and playback sheet music. Just try to take a photo on the printed sheet music and enjoy it. It dose the recognition process on server side, so it can recognize many more music stuffs than other apps. You could use it as a simple sheet music reader or player as you want. It supports more than 100 different types of instrument along with a very nice sound effect. ----------------------- Features: -Scan the whole sheet at once using the built-in camera or a picture from your image library. -Tap a bar to play the song from. -Support multi-page and reorder them as you wish. -Support up to 8 systems. -Support for changing tempo speed. -Turn up/down the voice of each part. -Export MusicXML, MIDI, PNG and PDF files.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: iWriteMusic Pro SE at Free against Notation Scanner's $2.99. iWriteMusic Pro SE also leads on rating (4.5 vs 4.1). Notation Scanner's advantage is update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 5 weeks) and device support (3 vs 1). On review sentiment, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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
iWriteMusic Pro SE is free to download; Notation Scanner costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
iWriteMusic Pro SE holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 4.1. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 207 and 736 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 53% of iWriteMusic Pro SE's written reviews are positive against 50% of Notation Scanner's.
iWriteMusic Pro SE ships an update every 5 weeks, Notation Scanner every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 19, 2026 and October 22, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | iWriteMusic Pro SE | Notation Scanner |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $2.99 |
| Rating | 4.5 (207 ratings) — better | 4.1 (736 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 53.2% of reviews — better | 49.6% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 207 | 736 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 9.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 19 MB | 168 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | iWriteMusicProject | 嵩 张 |
Customer experience
iWriteMusic Pro SE
Notation Scanner
User reviews
iWriteMusic Pro SE
From 207 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Easy to use
- 💡 Helpful for music writing
- 👍 Useful for music teachers
- 🚀 Functional free version
- 👍 Good for small-scale composition
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashes frequently
- 🔧 Unintuitive interface
- 🔧 Difficult to navigate
- 🐛 Playback issues
- 🔧 Fiddly note placement
Notation Scanner
From 736 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Helpful for learning and practicing music
- 🚀 Works well when the sheet music is clear
- 💡 Useful for choir and band members
Room to improve
- 🐛 Struggles to recognize complex or low-quality sheet music
- 🔒 Forces users to leave 5-star reviews to unlock features
- 🔋 Slow scanning and processing times
Bugs and requests
iWriteMusic Pro SE
Reported bugs
5 issues- Incorrect transposition of notes
- Inability to save compositions
- Overlapping/unreadable menu text
- Freezing when trying to copy/paste
- Inconsistent behavior when adding new measures
Requested features
5 requests- Add more music notation options (e.g. glissando, ghost notes)
- Improve playback to follow dynamics and expressions
- Allow multiple key signatures in the same piece
- Provide an undo/redo function
- Implement a chord entry mode for guitarists
Notation Scanner
Reported bugs
3 issues- Cannot recognize any photos or scans of sheet music
- Playback skips notes and has timing issues
- App crashes frequently when trying to scan music
Requested features
3 requests- Allow users to manually correct scanned music
- Improve recognition accuracy for different sheet music styles
- Add more instrument options beyond just piano
In-app purchases
iWriteMusic Pro SE
No in-app purchases
Notation Scanner
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is iWriteMusic Pro SE free?
Is Notation Scanner free?
Which has better reviews, iWriteMusic Pro SE or Notation Scanner?
Do iWriteMusic Pro SE or Notation Scanner have ads?
Which is updated more often, iWriteMusic Pro SE or Notation Scanner?
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