RDM Playalongs vs DrumDummy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
RDM Playalongs
This app offers three practice tools for drummers, including a metronome with advanced features, a sight-reading generator, and a library of exercises. It helps improve hand speed, accuracy, and reading skills with customizable tempos and rhythms. Track your practice time and engage with a community for support.
- 500+ practice exercises
- Customizable metronome with unique subdivisions
- Generates unique sight-reading exercises
- Tempo control with range and climbing options
- Practice time tracking and streaks
- Community support from developer
Read full descriptionHide full description
Three practice tools for rudimental drummers, built to get your hands clean and fast. PLAYALONGS 500+ exercises. Press play and it loops until you stop it. Set the tempo to bounce around inside a range so you can't settle in, or have it climb every few reps until you find where you break. Twelve ready-made playlists too, or build your own. METRONOME Any time signature. Any subdivision, including the ones normal metronome apps don't have: 7-lets, 9-lets, ratio rhythms. Accent, diddle, buzz or mute any beat, any partial. Chain different rhythms into a sequence and save it. SIGHT-READING LAB Hit generate, get a page you've never seen. Set the tempo, the rests, the stickings, the syncopation, the time signature. Set the difficulty to your level. Notation on screen while it plays, so you're reading and hearing at the same time. Practice time tracked. Streaks. Leaderboard. Stuck on something? Post it in the community and I'll answer it myself. Built by Anthony Steller, a gigging drummer and snare instructor, for marching snare drummers and drumlines. Start free. You get all three tools with limits, no card needed. RDM Playalongs Monthly is an auto-renewing subscription, $12.99 per month. It unlocks all 500+ exercises and every control in all three tools. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. It renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the period. Manage or cancel in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://rudimentaldrummingmastery.com/privacy-policy.html
DrumDummy
Read full descriptionHide full description
DrumDummy is the drummer who shows you how. A 3D drummer sits at a translucent kit and plays patterns for you to shadow. Watch from the front, from the side, from above — or through the drummer's own eyes. Slow it down, loop it, mirror it, and play along until it sits. WATCH Every limb is animated: sticking, crossovers, hi-hat work, pedals. Left and right hands are color-coded, and a Mirror mode flips the view so you can shadow movement for movement. LEARN 90 built-in patterns across rock, funk, blues, jazz, latin, reggae and electronic styles — plus all 40 PAS rudiments, shown as real drum notation with sticking and accents, ordered exactly like the official chart. PRACTISE Metronome with count-in and subdivisions, tap tempo from 20 to 200 bpm, tempo remembered per pattern. Loop any bars. Gap trainer drops the sound for a bar to test your inner clock; tempo trainer nudges the speed up as you loop. FOR TEACHERS DrumDummy doubles as a demonstration tool for lessons: show a pattern from the front, from the side, from above or through the player's own eyes — and mirror the view so your student can shadow the movement hand for hand. Slow it to talking speed, loop the tricky bar, let the count-in do the counting. Write an exercise in the editor and hand it to your student as a simple share link: it opens on their phone, no account, nothing to install. CREATE Build your own patterns in the step editor: any time signature, up to 32 bars, swing, flams, drags, ghost notes, rimclicks and more. Share any pattern as a link — no account needed, the pattern travels inside the link itself. SOUND A real sampled drum kit and a clean synthesized kit, with a per-drum mixer, pan and room reverb. Or build a kit from your own samples. FREE AND PRO DrumDummy is free to practise with: a starter set of patterns in every style, eight essential rudiments, the full 3D drummer, the sampled kit and the metronome. One single purchase unlocks everything for good — the full pattern library, all 40 rudiments, saving your own patterns, custom kits, MIDI/MusicXML import and export, and the practice trainers. No subscription. No account. No ads. No tracking. Works completely offline. The Salamander drum samples by Alexander Holm are used under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is iOS requirement: RDM Playalongs at 15.0 against DrumDummy's 17.0. On price, ads, in-app purchases 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. RDM Playalongs sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $12.99 per month and DrumDummy sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
| Parameter | RDM Playalongs | DrumDummy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (10 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 10 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 17 MB | 20 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Anthony Steller | Andrej Marffy |
In-app purchases
RDM Playalongs
- RDM Playalongs$12.991 Month
DrumDummy
- DrumDummy Pro$14.99









