Slow Burn
Smouldering slow minor blues in C — take your time and let every note cry.
Jam this track with live chords →Yousician alternatives
Two very different people search for this. One wants the same thing cheaper or free. The other has outgrown the format — the lessons still work, but the playing has stopped improving. The right alternative is different for each, so this page splits them.
If you want the same thing, cheaper
Yousician's job is a guided curriculum with feedback. Three products do that job at different prices:
JustinGuitar
For anyone unwilling to pay anything, ever
The full beginner-to-intermediate course is free on the web, funded by donations, with paid apps, books and courses alongside it.
- The best free structured guitar curriculum on the internet, by a wide margin
- Genuinely good teaching, not a lead magnet for something else
- Website-and-video shaped: nothing listens to you, nothing tracks you, and you supply all the discipline
Fender Play
For first-time beginners who want song wins fast
Fender's own subscription pages list $19.99/month or $149.99/year (20 August 2026); annual subscribers also get 10% off Fender gear.
- Short, well-shot lessons built around riffs and songs, so week one sounds like music
- Clear beginner path by genre and instrument (guitar, bass, ukulele)
- Runs out of road for intermediates faster than the deeper libraries
- Pricing sits in subscription territory for content you will finish
Guitar Tricks
For people who want a real video school and will stay a while
Free: a Basic membership with 24 lessons. Paid: Full Access $29.95/month as listed on guitartricks.com/pricing on 20 August 2026; their annual membership is advertised as saving $60.
- Over 11,000 lessons and 1,000+ songs with tab and notation — the deepest library in this list
- Structured Core Learning System plus genre paths, taught by many different instructors
- The most expensive monthly ticket here by some distance
- Video-course shaped: you watch, then practise elsewhere
How this page was written. We make Jamistry, so treat our own entry as the pitch it is —
everything else here is checked, not guessed. Every price, plan name and free-tier limit on this
page came from the vendor's own pricing or help pages on 20 August 2026, in the currency that
vendor displayed. Subscription prices move, run promotions and vary by country and app store, so
check the vendor before you buy. There are no affiliate links on this page: we earn nothing if
you pick one of the others.
If you have outgrown graded lessons
Here is the tell: you can play chords, you can change between them, you can get through songs — but a graded lesson has stopped making you better, and being handed a backing track makes you freeze. That is not a curriculum problem. Being scored against a written part is the opposite of the skill you now need, which is choosing your own notes and phrasing them.
Jamistry — that's us
For the plateau: you can play, but you cannot improvise yet
Free: the whole app, no signup — 13 backing tracks, live chord charts, 3D fretboard, tuner, ear trainer, scale practice, and recording. Premium: one payment of $9.99, no subscription — or post a 30-second jam to the Jam Wall and everything unlocks free for 7 days, as often as you like.
- Chord chart follows the track in real time and the fretboard lights the notes that fit, so you can improvise from the first loop instead of after twenty lessons
- Key stepper moves any track ±5 semitones and the tempo dial slows it down — pitch stays put, chords and fretboard re-spell themselves
- Premium tracks come as stems: mute the lead guitar and take its chair, or solo the drums
- Records your take in the browser and lets you post it — the single fastest way to hear what you actually sound like
- No curriculum, no grading, no "you played that wrong" — it will not teach a complete beginner their first chords
- Our own library only (50 produced tracks); you can't drop in any song off the internet the way Chordify or a tab site lets you
Chordify
For playing along to a specific song, today
Free: 2 songs a day without an account, 4 a day signed in, with ads. Paid (prices as shown on chordify.net in euros, 20 August 2026): Basic €2/month billed €24/year for unlimited songs; Premium €3/month billed €36/year adds ad-free, key change, tempo change, looping, PDF chord sheets, MIDI download and setlists; Premium Plus (list €4/month, €48/year) adds their Toolkit — tuner, metronome, chord practice and chord detection.
- Feed it almost any song and it produces a synced chord sheet automatically — Chordify claims 36 million songs and holds a 4.7 average across 50,000+ reviews
- Guitar, piano, ukulele and mandolin diagrams; works on web, iOS and Android
- 14-day money-back guarantee, cancel any time
- The chords are machine-detected, so they are usually right but not always — on anything harmonically busy you will be correcting them
- It is a chord sheet over the original recording: you get the record, not a band that leaves space for you, and there is nothing to mix or mute
- Four songs a day is a hard ceiling on the free tier
Before you cancel
Cancel in your account on the Yousician website if you subscribed there, through Apple ID subscriptions if you bought in the iOS app, or through Google Play on Android. Yousician's FAQ states that cancelling after the trial period ends does not get you a refund, so do it before the renewal date rather than after it. Your access normally runs to the end of the period you have already paid for.
Beginner, want it free: JustinGuitar, and nothing else comes close.
Beginner, want the game loop: honestly, stay on Yousician — it does this better than its alternatives, and Premium+ Family is good value for a household.
Plateaued: stop paying for lessons and start playing with a band behind you. Record it, listen back, fix one thing. That loop is free here.
Hear what we're talking about
No score, no scripted note — a band and space to play over it. Press play, then open one in JamLab for the live chord chart and the fretboard.
Greasy Shuffle
Swaggering blues shuffle in E — open position, wide-open jam.
Jam this track with live chords →Open JamLab — jam free, no signup →
First: lesson apps and practice tools are different products
Most "best guitar app" arguments are really people comparing two categories that answer different questions.
Lesson apps — Yousician, Simply Guitar, Fender Play, Guitar Tricks, JustinGuitar — answer "what should I learn next?" They give you a curriculum, a teacher's ordering, and something to grade you. If you don't yet know what a barre chord is or which one to learn first, this is the category you need, and none of the practice tools will do the job.
Practice tools — Jamistry, Chordify, Moises, tab players — answer "how do I get better at the thing I'm already working on?" They give you material to play against and control over it: chords in real time, key and tempo you can move, stems you can mute, a recording of what you actually sounded like. They will never tell you what to practise.
The trap is buying the wrong category. A player who can already hold down chords and change between them, but freezes when someone says "take a solo", does not need another curriculum — they need reps against real music. And a true beginner handed a jam tool will just noodle.
Common questions
What is the best Yousician alternative?
It depends which part you are replacing. For the same guided-curriculum job: JustinGuitar (free), Fender Play or Guitar Tricks. For the "I have plateaued and want to actually play" job: a practice tool such as Jamistry or Chordify.
Is there a free alternative to Yousician?
JustinGuitar is the free equivalent of the curriculum, and it is excellent. Jamistry's free tier covers the practice-tool side with 13 backing tracks, live chord charts and recording, with no signup and no daily cap.
How do I cancel my Yousician subscription?
On the website: log in and cancel in your account. In-app purchases are cancelled through Apple ID subscriptions (iOS) or Google Play (Android). Yousician states there is no refund after the trial ends, so cancel before your renewal date.
Is Yousician or Simply Guitar better?
Yousician goes deeper and covers five instruments; Simply Guitar has the gentler on-ramp for someone who has never held a guitar. Both are annual-plan-first with card details up front, so diary your cancel date either way.
More detail on the app itself: our Yousician review and cost breakdown.