Pricing

Last updated: 30 October 2026

Every plan gives you the whole application — the ABC editor, sheet music display and printing, playback with the standard instrument sounds, metronome, backing tracks, tuner, learning mode, tablature and PDF export. What you pay for is where your music is stored, what that makes possible, and instruments recorded for real.

Local Free — free

Your music is stored in this browser, on this device. No account fees, and it works offline.

• The full application, with no time limit and no feature trial
• Manual backup and restore, to a file you keep
• Import and export at any time: printing, PDF and MusicXML out; MusicXML, MuseScore, TablEdit and Guitar Pro files in, as many as you like
• One tune from the Composer for the life of the account (see Composer below)
• Three recordings turned into scores, for the life of the account
• Ten printed pages (a sheet-music PDF or a photo of a page) read into ABC, for the life of the account

Understand the trade-off before choosing it: your work exists only in the browser you created it in. Clearing browsing data, private browsing, a browser reclaiming disk space, switching device or reinstalling all delete it — usually without warning — and we hold no copy, so we cannot recover it. It suits a single device and regular exports. See the Terms of Service for the full detail.

AbcMusicStudio Cloud

Everything in Local Free, plus:

• Permanent server-side storage — your music is kept on our servers and included in our regular backups, not left to your browser
• Any device, any browser — the same repository wherever you sign in
• Complete version history — restore any past version of a tune with Time Machine, name and annotate versions to follow your practice over time
• Bands & Courses — shared spaces with a common repertoire for your band or your students, who open it with one shared name and password: no account of their own, nothing to pay
• Public musician page — publish a page at your own address (abcmusicstudio.org/myweb/…) showing your bio, your instruments and the bands and courses you choose to make public. Nothing appears there until you publish it
• Composer — 5 new tunes a month (see Composer below)
• Recording to score — turn as many recordings into scores as you like, with no limit
• Reading printed music — read as many PDF pages and photos into ABC as you like, with no limit
• Studio instrument sounds — instruments we record on real instruments, played in place of the standard General MIDI sounds, added as they are recorded. Available today: the mandolin. A band or course plays them when its leader’s account is on Cloud
• Drawn instruments — when you edit a tablature, the mandolin, fiddle, tenor and five-string banjos and guitar are drawn like the real instrument, with a choice of fiddle position marks, and more instruments as they are added. Local Free edits on the same instrument, shown as a plain diagram
• Offline pinning — keep chosen tunes readable with no connection
• Faster browsing, through an automatic local cache

Supporter

Everything in Cloud, for people who want to fund the project’s development:

• Priority consideration for feature requests
• Early access to upcoming features, and a vote on future priorities
• A direct feedback channel with the developer

Supporter is limited to a fixed number of places, so it is sometimes full. The amount above the Cloud price is a voluntary contribution — see the Refund Policy for how it is treated.

Composer

The Composer writes a new tune in the tradition and form you choose.

Beyond what your plan includes, you can buy a bag of 50 compositions as a one-time purchase, on any plan. Its price, and any applicable tax, is shown at checkout before you pay. Bag credit is used only once your included tunes for the period are spent.

Billing

Payment is handled by Paddle.com Market Ltd, acting as merchant of record. Prices are shown in your local currency where supported, and Paddle calculates and displays any applicable VAT or sales tax at checkout, before you pay. We never see or store your card details.

Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled. Cancelling stops the next renewal and never cuts the current period short — you keep Cloud access until the period you have paid for ends, and the account then returns to Local Free with your music intact.

You can move between Cloud and Supporter at any time from the Configuration page; a change takes effect at the next renewal. Refunds, including the 14-day right of withdrawal, are covered by the Refund Policy.

If we ever change a price, we will tell you by email before it affects you, and you can cancel before it takes effect.