A fun, effective way to
learn sight reading.
Build the confidence to read piano music on sight.
Notes and timing both scored. Just five minutes a day. From beginner to Grade 8.
Practise anywhere
Practise in your browser, or get the app for iPhone, iPad and Android.
Who is SightReader for?
Read on sight
Stop memorising every piece note by note. Learn to play new music straight from the page.
Start practising →
Practice they look forward to
Daily piano time as a 5-minute game. Grade-aligned progress you can read at a glance.
See it for parents →
See where students are stuck
Assign the right exercises. Cut your lesson prep.
See it for teachers →Not sure where to start? Find out in three minutes.
The placement check gives you a grade to start from. Pick a rough level, adjust it against a real piece until the difficulty looks right, then play it and see how you did.
- 1
Pick a rough level
Beginner, intermediate or advanced. It’s only an opening guess — the next step corrects it.
- 2
Adjust it against a real piece
Listen to a piece at that grade, then move up or down until it looks like something you could read.
- 3
Play it
We follow the score and mark every note as you go. You finish with a grade to start from.
About three minutes. No account and no card, and you can use the on-screen piano if you’re not at a keyboard.
How does SightReader work?
Plug in
Connect a MIDI keyboard or use the on-screen one. Works in your browser; nothing to install.
Play what you see
A note appears on the staff. Play it. SightReader listens in real time and tells you what you missed.
Choose your level
Pick pieces that match where you are and move up as you grow — from middle C through late-grade repertoire.
Are there free pieces I can practise?
Try a study. Schäfer Book 1 is fully available on the free tier.
We write our exercises to match what ABRSM asks for at each grade: the keys, time signatures, length and hand position.
Will this help me pass my ABRSM sight-reading exam?
From Initial to Grade 8. Exam-aligned exercises, sight reading first. Newly composed pieces follow the ABRSM syllabus grade by grade. Finish a grade and it’s marked complete.
Features
Built around short daily sessions, with feedback on every note and music worth coming back to.
Four centuries of piano.
Baroque (Bach, Scarlatti, Purcell, Pachelbel, Carolan), Classical (Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven), Romantic (Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms) and Modern (Debussy, Satie, Bartók, Rachmaninoff).
Levels for every stage
From first-time readers working on middle C through to late-grade repertoire. Pick your level, or work up through them one by one.
Instant feedback, every note
Notes you nail turn green; misses turn red — and with the metronome on, early notes shade blue and late ones yellow. No vague “good job”. You see what you played, and how you timed it.
Practice journal
Every session is logged. See which keys, clefs and intervals trip you up — down to the individual note.
Does it check my rhythm?
It does, as of July 2026. Turn on the metronome and the music moves at the beat while every note is judged on when it lands, not just whether it’s right.
At the end you get the breakdown: how much you played on time, early and late, and your average tendency in milliseconds. “94ms early” means you’re rushing; “94ms late” means you’re hesitating. No other sight-reading app we know of reports a number like that.
It’s new, and the strictness is still being tuned — the metronome switches it on, and switches it off again.
See how the two modes work →Why is sight reading worth practising?
Three things we know about sight reading, backed by published research.
Just over a fifth of UK children have taken a graded music exam. Structured progression keeps them learning longer.
Peer-reviewed meta-analysis: sight reading is a skill that improves with practice, not a fixed trait.
Across 92 studies, structured sight-reading interventions (aural training, controlled reading, solfège) measurably improved accuracy.
How do stars, levels and streaks work?
Earn XP, level up, build streaks — the same things that make games hard to put down, applied to learning music.
Every star you unlock earns XP. Watch your level climb.
Up to three stars per piece. Beating your best feels great.
Practise each day and your streak grows. A small nudge to come back tomorrow.
Finish a grade and we issue a certificate. Download it as a PDF or share the link with your teacher.
How many pieces are in the library?
Newly composed exercises, including ABRSM-aligned grade exercises, alongside excerpts from the classical canon, all set up for sight reading.
Composer portraits in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Will my child actually practise?
Practice without the nagging. SightReader turns daily piano time into a 5-minute game your child wants to come back to. Progress they can show you at a glance. A “Grade 3” certificate you’ll put on the fridge.
- ✓ Aligned to ABRSM Grades 1–8
- ✓ Daily streaks, stars, and levels keep them coming back
- ✓ See which notes, keys and intervals they’re working on
Every grade track follows the published ABRSM sight-reading parameters, Initial through Grade 8.
See how it works →
Can I track my pupils’ practice?
Create a class, invite your pupils by email, assign real graded repertoire. Free for verified educators.
I’m an adult learner picking piano up on the side. I wanted something to sharpen my sight reading, but nothing I tried went deep enough for real progress, or was fun enough to keep me coming back. So we built the thing I wished existed.
How much does SightReader cost?
- ✓ Notes & Chords — unlimited
- ✓ Scales — all types
- ✓ Grades — first 5 levels of Initial through Grade 5
- ✓ Library — 54 pieces (Schäfer & Schytte)
- ✓ Virtual piano (no MIDI keyboard needed)
- ✓ Placement check — find your starting grade
- ✓ Everything in the Free tier
- ✓ All grades — Initial to Grade 8
- ✓ Full Library — 4,000+ pieces
- ✓ Daily Practice — curated sessions
- ✓ Grade certificates — a downloadable PDF for each grade you finish
- ✓ Upload your own pieces
- ✓ Download pieces to practise offline
Frequently asked questions
| Tier | Levels | XP to enter |
|---|---|---|
| Novice | 1–5 | 0 |
| Apprentice | 6–15 | 507 |
| Player | 16–30 | 4,504 |
| Performer | 31–45 | 18,688 |
| Soloist | 46–60 | 43,303 |
| Maestro | 61–79 | 78,783 |
| Virtuoso | 80–99 | 139,816 |
| Legend | 100+ | 223,993 |