Tunable vs Cleartune

Pick Cleartune if you want a simple, reliable way to check a pitch and put the phone down: one screen, a note wheel many players prefer, and calibration in 0.1 Hz steps. Pick Tunable if you practice with the tuner rather than only tune with it, because it draws the whole note as a pitch history line and adds a metronome, a tone and chord generator, recording, Practice Score and ear training in the same app.

Both do the core job well. The table below is the short version; the sections after it say plainly where each app wins.

Side by side

Scroll the table sideways to see the Cleartune column.

Cleartune figures come from its App Store listing, checked on September 12, 2026.

Where Cleartune is the better choice

The note wheel is a real preference, not a compromise. Seeing every pitch class arranged in a ring, with the nearest note lighting up, is faster to read at a glance than a linear meter for a lot of guitarists, bass players and piano technicians. Cleartune pairs it with a 25 cent fine tuning meter and an optional needle damping setting for shaky readings.

It is also simple and light. One screen, no modes to leave, no session to start. Its calibration is finer grained than most: A4 moves in 0.1 Hz steps, which matters if you tune to a specific historical or ensemble pitch rather than a round number. Add user-defined temperaments and notations, transposing instrument support, and a pitch pipe with selectable waveforms, and it covers more than its price suggests.

And it has the longer track record. Cleartune has been recommended by band directors and studio players for well over a decade, which is why it keeps showing up on school supply lists. That kind of trust is earned.

Where Tunable is the better choice

The difference that matters most is the pitch history line. A wheel or a needle answers "am I in tune right now?" Tunable also answers "what did my pitch do across the whole note?" A flat line is a well-supported note, a slope is a note dying as the breath runs out, and a wave is vibrato whose width and speed you can see. For a wind player, a singer or a bowed string player, that is the difference between tuning and practicing.

Around that, Tunable is a practice app rather than only a tuner. The in-tune zone widens or narrows by skill level, so a beginner is rewarded for getting close and an advanced player is held to a few cents. Practice Score turns how long you stayed inside that zone into a number that moves week to week. Recording keeps unlimited sessions with a pitch graph, plays them back from 0 to 3x speed, adds reverb, and shares them with a teacher.

The metronome is in the same app, with subdivisions, accents, more than 30 sounds, and Ableton Link on iOS so a whole section's phones click together. The tone and chord generator sustains a single note or a full chord in any of the app's temperaments, which is how you tune a section to a drone or check a chord in just intonation. Ear training is there too.

It also runs in more places: iPhone, iPad, Mac on macOS 11 or later, Apple Vision and Android, with one App Store purchase covering the Apple devices. It is rated 4.8 out of 5 from more than 9,500 ratings across both stores.

For band directors and teachers

If you want one simple app the whole class can install and use in the first week, Cleartune is easy to defend. There is nothing to explain, and a student who can read a wheel can tune.

If the tuner is part of how you teach intonation, Tunable gives you things to point at. Put it on a classroom iPad and mirror it to a screen with AirPlay, and the section watches the same pitch history line sag at the end of a long tone. Set the in-tune zone to beginner for sixth grade and narrow it as they improve. Have students send you a recording with its pitch graph instead of describing what went wrong. Use the tone generator to give the band an A at 440, 441 or 442, and the metronome with Ableton Link when you want every stand clicking together. Fifteen notation systems and transposition presets by instrument mean the note name on screen matches the part in front of each player.

The honest tradeoff is scope. Cleartune is a tuner. Tunable is a practice kit with a tuner in it, and whether the extra tools earn their place depends on whether the phone leaves the case after tuning.

Try Tunable's tuner free first

You do not have to guess whether the pitch history line is useful to you. The free online tuner is that display running in a browser tab, with no download and no account, and the free online metronome is the app's click. Both are deliberately narrow: equal temperament only, no saved history, no recording, and they need a browser and a connection to load. Play a long tone into the web tuner and watch the line. If that view tells you something a needle does not, the app is the same idea with everything else attached, and it works offline.

Frequently asked questions