Software Alternatives & Reviews

MuseScore VS LilyPond

Compare MuseScore VS LilyPond and see what are their differences

MuseScore logo MuseScore

Our goal is to let musicians from all over the world create and share their works, as well as to make learning music exciting, easy and available for all.

LilyPond logo LilyPond

GNU LilyPond is a computer program for music engraving.
  • MuseScore Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-27
  • LilyPond Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-29

MuseScore

Categories
  • Music Tools
  • Music
  • Musician Tools
  • Audio & Music
Website musescore.com
Details $-

LilyPond

Categories
  • Music Tools
  • Music
  • Musician Tools
  • Audio & Music
Website lilypond.org
Details $

MuseScore videos

Why is EVERYONE using Musescore for music notation?

More videos:

  • Review - Musescore 4 - First Impressions (Spoiler Alert, IT'S AMAZING)
  • Review - Music Software & Interface Design: MuseScore

LilyPond videos

LilyPond Tutorial 1 - Introduction to LilyPond (Your First Score)

More videos:

  • Review - Lilypond Carry-On Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to MuseScore and LilyPond)
Music Tools
46 46%
54% 54
Music
62 62%
38% 38
Audio & Music
53 53%
47% 47
Musician Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using MuseScore and LilyPond. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, LilyPond should be more popular than MuseScore. It has been mentiond 43 times since March 2021. 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.

MuseScore mentions (5)

  • Unify dynamics between voices from old mscz file?
    I'm aiming to transcribe a piano composition for cello duet and in doing so am using a source file which was created in Musescore 2.3 or something, the file playback sounds fine on musescore.com but when I try to use the file (playback) on the musescore app (musescore 4), I cannot hear entire parts of the file (because the volume is somehow very low even though there is only one visible dynamic across both... Source: 4 months ago
  • musescore.com not loading scores on firefox (desktop)
    Is anyone else having this issue? musescore.com has been freezing for the past few days when trying to load scores. This is on firefox desktop, it works fine on every other browser, even on firefox mobile. Source: 4 months ago
  • Need to transpose guitar solo to trumpet solo
    I.e., what everyone is saying is pretty simple with any notation program or DAW. Musescore will do the job, and is free. Source: 5 months ago
  • Piano Sheet Music for Suteki da ne
    I was looking on musescore.com to listen to a really nice piano arrangement of Suteki da ne, but it seems to have been removed, and I did not save the sheet music to my computer! I was wondering if anyone has the sheet music saved somewhere. I really liked this one particular arrangement, and I was a fool not to save it. I don't remember who posted it on there originally. Source: 6 months ago
  • Musescore's free trial service is bad trick.
    I joined free trial service on musescore.com. Source: 8 months ago

LilyPond mentions (43)

  • MIDI Editor
    Why use this when you could just use Lilypond, which is free, open source, and has a legacy in TeX: https://lilypond.org. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Show HN: TuneType – a font that has (guitar) chords embedded as ligatures
    > since its width was set to 0 Is this totally necessary? It might be. I don't know much about font programming. If the values have to be hard-coded. If you can get me a contact info, I could send you the master list of chords.. Maybe you could use that. > I think a more “advanced” use case like the one you described can be addressed by something like https://lilypond.org Lilypond is a music engraving system. That... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Show HN: TuneType – a font that has (guitar) chords embedded as ligatures
    So I need to pack the font itself with both the A and the Am6 ligatures… I think a more “advanced” use case like the one you described can be addressed by something like https://lilypond.org. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Make measure width smaller?
    At lilypond.org I found some tips, but they all were for the complete score. I don't want my score to be compressed or have smaller notes as I'm rewriting the music because the original notes are to small for me. Source: 6 months ago
  • Caught by MuseScore's Dark Patterns
    As far as open-source software is concerned, you can use Lilypond [1]. Fully text-based transcription. You can edit, insert, splice, overwrite, etc. To your heart's content in your favorite text editor and get a high-quality engraving as output. [1] https://lilypond.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing MuseScore and LilyPond, you can also consider the following products

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.

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

Guitar Pro 7 - Create, play and share your tabs

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

Dorico - Dorico redefines the gold standard in scoring software.

Denemo - GNU Denemo is a music notation editor that lets you rapidly enter notation for typesetting via the...