Software Alternatives & Reviews

Finale VS Reaper

Compare Finale VS Reaper and see what are their differences

Finale logo Finale

Finale, the world standard for music notation software, lets you compose, arrange, notate, and print engraver-quality sheet music.

Reaper logo Reaper

Reaper is a focused digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Cockos. In the creation of the software, the digital audio technology company intended to make audio editing accessible to the masses.
  • Finale Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-29
  • Reaper Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-06

Finale videos

Finale 26: Review & What's New

More videos:

  • Review - Insecure Season Finale Review | The Joe Budden Podcast
  • Review - Quick Vid: Bojack Horseman Series Finale (Review)
  • Review - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot7AbNBD_tQ

Reaper videos

Reaper DAW review - best free daw software for music production?

More videos:

  • Review - Why Reaper? | pros and cons
  • Review - Why I love Reaper with Glenn Fricker - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Finale and Reaper)
Music Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Audio & Music
17 17%
83% 83
Audio
6 6%
94% 94
Music
47 47%
53% 53

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Finale and Reaper

Finale Reviews

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Reaper Reviews

Top 18 Free Music Making Software for Beginners [2023]
Launched by Cockos in 2006, Reaper has grown into a robust, feature-rich DAW, offering full audio and MIDI recording, sound editing, mixing, and mastering functionalities.
5 PRO TOOLS ALTERNATIVES FOR RECORDING AND MIXING AUDIO
Reaper is a low-cost digital audio workstation with many features. It is available for Windows and Mac and can record, mix, and master audio. It has many features, including multichannel recording, surround sound support and a powerful effects engine. Reaper is a good option for home recording and mixing, and has many features that make it an alternative to Pro Tools.
9 Adobe Audition Alternatives That Do More Than Cleaning
Not as recognized as rivals like Ableton, Pro Tools, and FL Studio. If your employer or client requires you to have access to these tools and you’re only using Reaper, that could be a problem.
Best FL Studio Alternatives In 2022
Reaper puts its stamp in the conversation as it offers users an incredibly active community as well as everything you need in a DAW. Speed is one of the selling points with Reaper as it loads up extremely fast compared to certain DAWs. This is mainly due to its lightweight size, with its downloader being less than 20MB. In making Reaper, the software devs also did a...
Top 12 Audacity Alternatives You Could Use
Lastly, you can also check out Reaper, which features multi-track audio editing, processing, and more. Plus, it supports a wide range of hardware and plugins, and also comes baked with some pretty neat features such as the ability to record and edit musical notations with support for key signatures, multiple clefs, and more. What’s more, Reaper also supports scripting, so...
Source: beebom.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Reaper seems to be a lot more popular than Finale. While we know about 79 links to Reaper, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Finale. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Finale mentions (3)

  • About free (not pirate) software to start composing
    When you're ready to upgrade, Finale full version has fully sampled sound for hundreds of instruments. Retail $299. finalemusic.com. Source: 5 months ago
  • ‘Jean Sibelius’ Review: An Early Finale
    Since Sibelius and Finale are two industry-leading (and very much competing) music notation software systems, this headline made me do a quadruple-take! https://www.avid.com/sibelius https://finalemusic.com For those interested in (extremely entertaining) breakdowns of the Sibelius software and other offerings in this space from a UI/UX design perspective, I highly recommend Tantacrul's videos, which propelled him... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • An odd request: what is the music/ theme song that is used during Blue Jays Central on SportsNet?
    I too would want the sheet music so I can transcribe it on music notation software like Finale. Source: over 2 years ago

Reaper mentions (79)

  • Ask HN: Is There a Blender for Music?
    Almost free. https://reaper.fm It's cheap enough for almost anyone to buy and you can play around with the free version. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Best DAW for putting E-drum tracks on PC
    I'm a big fan of Reaper (reaper.fm). It's technically not free, but $60 is totally worth it, plus you can trial it full featured, indefinitely. Source: 6 months ago
  • What Is the Future of the DAW?
    If you use the Linux port, you may want to use Yabridge to load Windows VSTs in a transparent way. http://reaper.fm/ https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Where do I start designing my own audio for my games?
    My recommendation would be Reaper from reaper.fm Reaper is used in the video game industry due to it's customization, routing, batch processing and scripting capabilities. It's very customizable and has small CPU footprint. Source: 10 months ago
  • I use Vegas Pro 14 mostly for audio editing, should I upgrade to Vegas Edit or Vegas Pro?
    Audio only? Don't torture yourself. Reaper's based on the early Vegas platform, easy to learn and use, and one of the most powerful audio editing tools out there: http://reaper.fm/. Source: 10 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Finale and Reaper, you can also consider the following products

Sibelius - Sibelius is a virtual score creation tool which allows composers to easily create new piano scores, developed by Avid.

Audacity - Audacity is a free and open-source audio production software suite that includes a surprising array of editing tools and recording systems.

MuseScore.org - Create, play back and print beautiful sheet music with free and easy to use music notation software MuseScore. For Windows, Mac and Linux.

FL Studio - Image-Line's FL Studio, now on it's 12th version, is a well-known music production suite and the most popular beat processor on the market, due no doubt to its longevity. Read more about FL Studio.

Guitar Pro 7 - Create, play and share your tabs

LMMS - Make music with a free, cross-platform tool