Sheet music scanners · eight apps · prices read 11 November 2026
Sheet music scanner: eight apps, what each one costs, and which to start with.
A sheet music scanner is optical music recognition: you give it a PDF, a scan or a photo of a printed page, and it gives you back notes as MIDI or MusicXML. This page does not do that and has no scanner of its own — it exists to tell you which of the eight tools below will, what each one charges, how much you get free, and which export format you actually need.
The short answer
Most people should start with Soundslice Plus: $5 a month, or $50 a year. It is the cheapest paid plan on this list that exports both MusicXML and MIDI, it runs in the browser with nothing to install, and the plan's page allowance is 100 scanned pages a month — the figure on the “Import PDFs/photos (pages per month)” row of soundslice.com/plans, where Free is 2, Plus is 100 and Teacher is 200. The free tier exists but is a test, not a tool: two scans a month, one page and 32 bars each.
If you will scan one score and never again, a one-time purchase beats a subscription: SmartScore 64 NE Music-to-XML is $99 and writes MusicXML; the MIDI Edition is $49 and writes MIDI only.
If the answer has to be free, Audiveris is open source, unlimited, and writes MusicXML — no MIDI, and no account, no page limit, no watermark.
The comparison
Eight scanners, priced, with the free allowance written as a number
Prices are the vendor's own figures, read from the App Store or Google Play product page or from the vendor's pricing page on 11 November 2026. The free column is the exact allowance those pages state — a count of scans, pages, measures, days or exports, not the word “limited”.
| App | Price | MIDI export | MusicXML export | Free allowance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soundslice | Plus $5/mo $50/yr Teacher $20/mo $200/yr |
Yes | Yes | 2 scans a month, each 1 page and 32 bars. Export needs a paid plan. |
| PlayScore 2 | $6.99/mo $59.99/yr (Professional) |
Yes | Professional only | 1 page at a time — each new photo replaces the last. No MusicXML export. |
| Scan2Notes (Klangio) |
$14.99/mo $6.25/mo billed yearly |
Yes | Yes | 12 measures. PDF download only. |
| ScanScore 3 | Melody $9 Ensemble $39 Professional $79 per year |
Yes | Yes | 14 days, full program. Export is locked until you buy. |
| SmartScore 64 NE | MIDI $49 Piano $79 Guitar $99 Songbook $199 Pro $399 one-time |
Yes | Yes | Demo: 2 MusicXML conversions. Nothing else it recognises can be saved. |
| SmartScore NoteReader |
Free app Premier is an in-app upgrade |
Premier only | Premier only | Unlimited page capture and playback. |
| PDFtoMusic (Myriad) |
$65 one-time | Yes | Pro edition only | 1 page per export, no time limit. Reads PDFs from notation software, not scans. |
| Audiveris | $0 open source |
No | Yes | Unlimited. No page cap, no account, no watermark. |
Two well-known apps are deliberately missing: Sheet Music Scanner and PhotoScore & NotateMe Ultimate. Both are real products with real prices, but neither vendor publishes a number for what you get free, and a comparison that writes “free version available” in that cell is not a comparison.
The free column, read closely
What the free tiers actually give you, in numbers
Free tiers on this page range from “two pages a month” to “unlimited, forever”, and the difference decides whether you can finish a job without paying.
- Unlimited and genuinely usable: Audiveris. It runs on your own machine, has no page cap and no account. The catch is the output format — MusicXML only — and a desktop interface that expects you to correct recognition errors by hand.
- Unlimited scanning, paid export: SmartScore NoteReader. You can capture and play back as many pages as you like on a phone; the moment you want a MIDI or XML file, it is the Premier upgrade.
- A measurable test: Soundslice gives 2 scans a month at 1 page and 32 bars; Scan2Notes gives 12 measures; PDFtoMusic gives 1 page per export; PlayScore 2 gives 1 page at a time. Each of those is enough to judge the recognition on your own score, and none of them is enough to digitise a book.
- Time-boxed rather than count-boxed: ScanScore 3 gives 14 days of the full program with export switched off. If you only need to compare recognition quality on three scores, that is the most generous trial here.
Notice what is missing from every free tier: the file. Free plans let you look, play and judge; the export is what you pay for. That is true of all eight.
Before you pay
MIDI or MusicXML: the choice that decides which app you can use
The two formats are not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one turns a working scan into a dead end.
MusicXML carries notation: staves, clefs, key and time signatures, slurs, articulations, lyrics, rehearsal marks. It is what Sibelius, Dorico, Finale and MuseScore expect. If you want to edit the score, print it, or hand it to another musician, this is the file you need.
MIDI carries performance: note number, start, duration and velocity, plus a handful of optional meta events. Every DAW reads it, which is why it is the right format for a mock-up or a piano-roll edit — and why it drops everything notation-specific on the floor.
That is why Audiveris, which is free and unlimited, is still not the answer for everyone: no MIDI exporter means no DAW. And it is why the $49 SmartScore MIDI Edition is not the cheap way into MusicXML — it outputs MIDI only. Read the export column before the price column.
The part scanning does not solve
Whatever you scan with, check the file's meter before you use it
Recognition gets the notes; it does not guarantee the bar lines. A time signature in a MIDI file is a meta event with the type byte 0xFF 0x58, and it is optional. A writer that only cares about note numbers can skip it and still produce a file every program opens — the program just assumes 4/4, because that is the default in the format.
This is measurable, and we measured it on a single eight-bar waltz in 3/4. Without a meter event the file is 242 bytes and engraves as six bars, with the next bar's downbeat pulled into the last one. With fifteen bytes inserted — one 0xFF 0x58 meta event — the same file is 257 bytes and engraves as eight bars, three notes in each. Same notes, same durations, different music on the page.
So the workflow after any scan is: open the MIDI or MusicXML, look at where the bar lines fall, and fix the meter before you fix anything else. The full byte-level walkthrough — the hex, the three places people get it wrong, and why the track length has to rise by exactly 15 — is on sheet music to MIDI. If you would rather start from a MIDI file you already have and see the bar lines, the engraver here reads the header and shows you the PPQ, the track count and whether a meter event exists at all.
What this site does and does not do
There is no scanner here
To be unambiguous: this site does not read printed music. There is no optical music recognition on it, no upload box for a photo or a PDF of a score, and no model that turns a page of notation into notes. Every scanner on this page is somebody else's product, priced by them, and the links go to their sites.
What this site does is the other side of the job: turning audio into MIDI, and turning MIDI back into notation you can read. If your source is a recording rather than a page, the browser converter handles that. If your source is a printed page, use one of the eight above and then come back for the meter fix.
FAQ
Questions about picking a sheet music scanner.
Which sheet music scanner is cheapest if I only need one score?
SmartScore 64 NE Music-to-XML at $99 one-time if you need MusicXML, or the MIDI Edition at $49 if MIDI is enough. A one-month subscription to Soundslice Plus costs $5 and would also do the job, so the one-time purchase only wins if you expect to rescan things later without paying again.
Is there a free sheet music scanner with no page limit?
Audiveris, which is open source and unlimited, but it writes MusicXML only and runs as a desktop application. SmartScore NoteReader is also free and unlimited for capture and playback, though getting a MIDI or XML file out of it requires the paid Premier upgrade.
Do these apps read handwritten music?
Mostly no, and you should check the vendor's own limitation list before paying. ScanScore states plainly that handwritten scores, drum notation and guitar tablature are not read. PhotoScore & NotateMe is the exception that advertises handwriting, but it is not in the table above because its free allowance is not published as a number.
Why does the exported file have the wrong number of bars?
Because the recognition wrote notes without a time signature. MIDI files treat the meter as an optional meta event, so notation software falls back to 4/4 and the bar lines move. Adding the meter event fixes the bar lines without touching a single note. The measured example on this site: 242 bytes gives six bars, 257 bytes gives eight.
Can I scan a photo of sheet music on my phone?
Yes, with PlayScore 2 or Scan2Notes, both of which accept photos as well as PDFs. The limit is the photograph, not the app: page curvature, uneven light and low resolution are what break recognition. Flat, evenly lit, 300 dpi is the target.
Are these prices still current?
They were read on 11 November 2026 from the App Store and Google Play product pages and from each vendor's own pricing page. Mobile prices are set per store and per region, so the figure on your own device may differ. Always confirm in the store before paying.
Sources
Where each number came from
Only two kinds of page were used: the App Store or Google Play product page, and the vendor's own pricing page. No review site, no affiliate roundup, no price aggregator.
- Soundslice — soundslice.com/plans (plan prices; the pages-per-month row that reads Free 2, Plus 100, Teacher 200; the PDF/MusicXML/MIDI export rows) and soundslice.com/sheet-music-scanner (2 trial scans a month, 1 page and 32 bars per scan).
- PlayScore 2 — App Store product page, US (Professional $6.99/month, $59.99/year) and the vendor FAQ at playscore.co/faq (single-page free use, MusicXML needs Professional).
- Scan2Notes — klang.io/scan2notes (Pro $14.99/month or $6.25/month billed annually, 50 scans/month, 12-measure demo).
- ScanScore 3 — scan-score.com (Melody $9, Ensemble $39, Professional $79, one-year licences) and scan-score.com/en/faq (14-day trial, export disabled).
- SmartScore 64 NE — musitek.com (edition prices) and musitek.com/demos.html (2 MusicXML conversions, otherwise no saving).
- SmartScore NoteReader — musitek.com, free mobile app section.
- PDFtoMusic — myriad-online.com/en/products/pdftomusic.htm ($65, trial limited to one page per export, PDFs from notation software only).
- Audiveris — github.com/Audiveris/audiveris (open source, MusicXML 4.0 exporter, no MIDI exporter).
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