Earpeggio vs Functional Ear Trainer
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Earpeggio
Enhance your musical abilities by training your ear to recognize intervals, chords, scales, and rhythms. This app offers various exercises and tests to help you improve your musical hearing and track your progress with detailed statistics.
- Interval identification exercises
- Chord identification exercises
- Chord progression exercises
- Melody dictation
- Rhythm dictation
- Progress tracking and statistics
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Become a better musician! Master the identification of intervals, chords, scales and rhythms solely by hearing them. Earpeggio is an ear training app which lets you improve your musical hearing. Earpeggio provides ten different exercises, including: - Interval identification - Chord identification - Chord progressions - Melody dictation - Rhythm dictation Once you are bored with exercising, try taking the tests and see what your limits are. The broad statistics give you meaningful insights on your progress and help you achieve your goals.
Functional Ear Trainer
Develop your musical ear by learning to recognize tones within the context of a specific musical key. This app helps you understand the function of each note, improving your ability to transcribe, improvise, and play music by ear. Suitable for all ages and skill levels, with just 10 minutes of daily practice.
- Recognize tones in musical key context
- Understand note function
- Improve transcription skills
- Enhance improvisation
- Develop perfect pitch
- Daily 10-minute practice
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Have you (or maybe one of your friends) ever wanted to learn to transcribe or play music by ear? It is so important for a musician to know what you are hearing. A good musical ear helps when you are composing, improvising, transcribing melodies, or playing with others. Most likely you have already tried different programs to learn to recognize intervals or even to acquire perfect pitch. However, although such programs develop your ear, but can you actually play any melody you hear as soon as you listen to it? Imagine you could understand music... It is like when somebody is talking to you, you not only hear pleasant sounds, but you recognize words and their meaning. One day I came across Alain Benbassat's program called "Functional Ear Trainer" and have been using it ever since. It is based on Alain's method to learn to recognize tones. The main difference between the Functional Ear Trainer and other methods is that it teaches you to distinguish between tones in the context of a particular musical key. You begin to recognize the role (or function) of each tone in this key, which is incredibly similar to its role in other keys of the same scale. And it is *guaranteed* anyone can gradually develop this skill. It does not matter: - who you are - an absolute beginner in music or a virtuoso professional musician; - how old you are - a 3 yo kid or a 90+ adult; - what musical instrument you play (you don't even have to play one). The only requirement is to practice for 10 minutes a day. I was so excited about this ear trainer that I have developed a mobile app based on the Alain Benbassat method. I hope you will find it useful.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Earpeggio at none against Functional Ear Trainer's 1. Earpeggio also leads on update cadence (every 2 months vs every 7 months). Functional Ear Trainer's advantage is review sentiment (96% vs 86%). On price, rating, ratings volume 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. Functional Ear Trainer sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Earpeggio asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Earpeggio against 4.9 for Functional Ear Trainer. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 9.7K and 3.7K respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 86% of Earpeggio's written reviews are positive against 96% of Functional Ear Trainer's.
Earpeggio ships an update every 2 months, Functional Ear Trainer every 7 months. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 22, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Earpeggio | Functional Ear Trainer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.9 (9.7K ratings) | 4.9 (3.7K ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 86.4% of reviews | 96.2% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 9.7K — better | 3.7K |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 7 months |
| 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 | 15.0 | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 37 MB | 41 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Balazs Kiss | Serhii Korchan |
Customer experience
Earpeggio
Functional Ear Trainer
User reviews
Earpeggio
From 9.7K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Great for ear training
- 🚀 Efficient and easy to use
- 💡 Customizable exercises
- 🤑 Completely free with no ads
- 🤓 Helpful for music theory and exams
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional bugs and crashes
- 🔇 Poor sound quality of instruments
- 🤔 Unclear instructions for beginners
- 🤯 Difficulty progressing to more advanced levels
Functional Ear Trainer
From 3.7K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Effective ear training
- 👍 Simple and intuitive interface
- 💡 Customizable exercises
- 🎉 Noticeable improvement with regular practice
- 🎨 Visually appealing design
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional audio glitches
- 💡 Lack of support for other instruments besides piano
- 💡 Desire for more advanced features (e.g. chord recognition)
Bugs and requests
Earpeggio
Reported bugs
4 issues- Notes getting stuck or not turning off
- Login and password reset functionality not working
- Melodic dictation exercises not displaying properly
- Inconsistent scoring and progress tracking
Requested features
5 requests- Option to change instrument sounds
- Ability to repeat completed goals
- More detailed feedback on mistakes
- Adaptive difficulty based on user performance
- Integration with other music learning platforms
Functional Ear Trainer
Reported bugs
2 issues- Keyboard display issues when selecting all chromatic notes
- Inconsistent note resolutions in some exercises
Requested features
5 requests- Add support for multiple notes/chords at once
- Implement a mode for training key recognition
- Provide more customization options for exercises
- Include voice input to play the notes
- Add support for German/Norwegian key names
In-app purchases
Earpeggio
No in-app purchases
Functional Ear Trainer
- Functional Ear Trainer Plus$19.99
Questions
Is Earpeggio free?
Is Functional Ear Trainer free?
Which has better reviews, Earpeggio or Functional Ear Trainer?
Do Earpeggio or Functional Ear Trainer have ads?
Which is updated more often, Earpeggio or Functional Ear Trainer?
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