HearmonyBest Ear Training Apps for iPhone: An Honest Comparison
The best ear training app depends on what you want from it. Earpeggio and Functional Ear Trainer carry the highest App Store ratings on this list (4.9 each, as of October 2026); Tone focuses on perfect pitch; free browser tools such as musictheory.net, teoria.com and ToneGym work without installing anything. Hearmony, a game-style ear training course, is a new option. Disclosure: Hearmony is our app, so read its section with that in mind.
How this comparison was made
This guide compares six well-known iPhone ear training apps, three web tools and Hearmony. Ratings and rating counts come from the US App Store as of October 9, 2026. Each app's focus is taken from its App Store name; the Hearmony team has not run independent tests of competitors' features, so this page doesn't describe features it can't verify.
Apps change their features and prices often. Before you subscribe to any of them, open its App Store listing and check what's included today.
Ear training apps compared
All ratings are US App Store averages and counts as of October 2026.
| App | Where | App Store rating | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earpeggio | iPhone app | 4.9 (about 9,700 ratings) | Ear training |
| Functional Ear Trainer | iPhone app | 4.9 (about 3,800 ratings) | Functional ear training: notes heard in a key |
| Chet – Ear Training | iPhone app | 4.8 (about 2,400 ratings) | Ear training |
| Perfect Ear | iPhone app | 4.7 (about 1,900 ratings) | Ear training |
| Trill: Ear Training Daily | iPhone app | 4.6 (about 1,600 ratings) | Daily ear training |
| Tone – Learn Perfect Pitch | iPhone app | 4.5 (about 10,300 ratings) | Perfect pitch |
| Hearmony (ours) | iPhone app, iOS 17+ | New, no ratings yet | Game-style course: intervals, chords, scale degrees, progressions, rhythm, fine pitch |
| musictheory.net, teoria.com, ToneGym | Web browser | Not rated (web) | Exercises in the browser |
What each ear training app is best for
Earpeggio
Earpeggio has the strongest combination of rating and volume here: a 4.9 average from about 9,700 ratings as of October 2026. If you want an established app that many users rate highly, it's a natural first look.
Functional Ear Trainer
Functional Ear Trainer also averages 4.9, from about 3,800 ratings. Its name describes its method: functional ear training, which means hearing each note by its role in a key (home, the note that pulls home, and so on) rather than by its distance from the previous note. That approach is close to how scale degrees are taught, and it suits anyone who wants to play melodies by ear.
Chet, Perfect Ear and Trill
Chet – Ear Training (4.8, about 2,400 ratings), Perfect Ear (4.7, about 1,900) and Trill: Ear Training Daily (4.6, about 1,600) are all well rated by their users. Trill's name puts the emphasis on a daily habit, which is the right instinct: short daily practice beats long occasional sessions.
Tone – Learn Perfect Pitch
Tone has the most ratings on this list, about 10,300, with a 4.5 average. As its name says, it's built around perfect pitch, naming notes without a reference. Before choosing an app for that goal, read whether perfect pitch can be learned so your expectations are realistic; most musical work relies on relative pitch instead.
Free web tools
musictheory.net, teoria.com and ToneGym run in a browser, so they're handy on a laptop, at a school computer, or alongside any phone app. If you want to try ear training before paying for anything, start there.
Hearmony: what it does and doesn't do
Hearmony is the iPhone ear training app the Hearmony team builds, laid out like a language-learning game: short lessons of 10 questions on a path of 12 adventures, with XP, streaks, daily goals and a fennec-fox mascot called Fen. It's new, so it has no ratings or reviews yet.
- What it trains: higher/lower and melody shape; intervals ascending, descending and harmonic up to the octave; chord quality (major, minor, diminished, augmented, sus2, sus4, dominant 7, major 7, minor 7) and inversions; scale degrees in solfège; progressions such as I–IV–V and ii–V–I; rhythm and meter; fine pitch in Tuning Lab, down to about 6 cents; note memory; and playing melodies back on an on-screen piano.
- Practice tools: Daily Ear Workout, a weak-spot drill, Mystery Tune, Speed Round and Song Studio with 67 public-domain songs.
- Sounds: sampled grand piano or clean electric guitar.
- Price (US, as of October 2026): the first adventure and the Note Reading and Chord Numbers side quests are free, limited by daily energy. Hearmony Pro costs $7.99 a week, or $49.99 a year with a 7-day free trial.
- Privacy: no account, no ads, progress stays on your iPhone.
Its limits, plainly: Hearmony is iPhone only (no iPad, Android or web version), its interface is in English, and it doesn't use the microphone, so there are no singing or pitch-detection exercises. It trains listening, not playing an instrument.
Current details are on Hearmony's App Store page.
Which ear training app should you choose?
Match the app to the way you like to practice:
- You want a guided path with game-style motivation: Hearmony.
- You want a long-established, highly rated drill app: Earpeggio or Functional Ear Trainer.
- You want to hear notes inside a key and play by ear: Functional Ear Trainer's method fits that goal.
- You're curious about naming notes without a reference: Tone, with realistic expectations.
- You don't want to pay or install anything: musictheory.net, teoria.com or ToneGym.
Is there a Duolingo for ear training?
Hearmony is built on that model: a path of short lessons, XP, streaks with streak freezes, daily quests and ranks from Wood to Diamond. If streaks keep you practicing in a language app, the same format may help with your ear.
Do ear training apps work?
Ear training apps work when they give you random questions, instant feedback and a reason to come back daily. Those three things are hard to arrange on your own with a piano, and they're exactly what turns guessing into reliable hearing.
Use this checklist to judge any app in its free tier or trial:
- Does it play intervals going down and played together, not only going up?
- Does it change the starting note, so you learn distances rather than memorizing notes?
- Does it move beyond intervals to chords, scale degrees and progressions?
- Does it use realistic instrument sounds?
- Does it bring back the questions you got wrong?
- Can you finish a session in about 10 minutes?
Test an app for one week before you pay: 10 minutes a day, and note your first-try score out of 10 on the same exercise each day. If the score climbs, the app is working for you.
An app can't replace listening to and playing real music, but it makes the daily repetition easy. To plan what to practice in any app, follow the order in ear training for beginners, and use our interval songs chart for references while you drill.