Simply Piano is good at the thing most beginners need, which is a reason to sit down at the keyboard again tomorrow. People rarely leave because the teaching is bad. They leave because they hit a wall, and for most of them it is the same wall: the catalog does not have the song they want, and no amount of practice changes that.
If that is your wall, another catalog only moves it further away. Anything Piano removes it, because it has no catalog at all and builds the piano part from any recording you hand it. That is our recommendation for most people leaving.
Two other walls point elsewhere, and there are three cases where a different app is the better answer. That includes the big one: if you want to learn by reading sheet music, none of what we make is right for you yet. All of it is below, sorted by the reason you went looking rather than ranked.
Worth saying up front: we make Songscription, and our team also makes Anything Piano. Weigh the recommendation accordingly, and note that every claim here is checkable in a free trial.
Why People Leave Simply Piano
Three complaints account for most of the churn, and they point at three different replacements.
The catalog ceiling
Simply Piano teaches from songs its team has arranged and licensed. That is a real library, and it is finite. Sooner or later you want to play a particular track, you search for it, and it is not there, which is a strange experience in a decade when every song ever recorded is two taps away in a streaming app. Nothing about practicing more fixes this one, and it is the wall that sends the most people looking.
The drills stop feeling like music
The course is deliberately granular, which is exactly right in month one and starts to grate later. If you are already playing a bit, the sequencing can feel like it is holding you at a level you have passed, and an app that hands you a real arrangement immediately will suit you better.
The subscription renews and you are not sure what you gained
This is less about price than about visible progress. Course apps measure progress by lessons completed, which is not the same as pieces you could sit down and play for someone. If your renewal notice arrives and you cannot name a song you can play start to finish, that feeling is the signal, and switching to something song-shaped usually fixes it.
The Alternatives at a Glance
| Alternative | Fixes | How it hears you | What you read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anything Piano | The catalog ceiling, permanently | Mic, Bluetooth MIDI, USB MIDI | Piano roll, notation in development |
| flowkey | Slow pacing, plus Android support | Mic or MIDI | Notation and falling notes |
| Skoove | Wanting a course, faster | Mic or MIDI | Notation |
| Yousician | One subscription, many instruments | Mic or MIDI | Notation and falling notes |
| Synthesia | Recurring subscriptions | MIDI only | Falling notes |
| Pianote | Wanting a human, not a game | Nothing, it does not listen | Notation and video |
The Alternatives
Anything Piano, the one that removes the ceiling instead of raising it
Anything Piano is the structural answer to the catalog problem rather than a bigger catalog, and it is our pick for most people leaving Simply Piano. It has no library at all. You hand it a song, as an audio file, a YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram link, or a live recording of someone playing in the room, and a transcription model writes the piano part from the audio and lays it out as a piano tutorial you play along to. Trim to the section you care about first if you only want the chorus.
It also asks something no catalog app can: whether you want the piano exactly as played, or a piano version of the whole track. A solo piano recording comes back note for note. A full band recording comes back as a piano arrangement carrying the vocal line and the parts under it, so you are playing the song rather than an empty accompaniment.
The practice tools go past what Simply Piano gives you. A speed control from a quarter of real time up to double. A wait mode that holds each group of notes until you play it. A loop you set by tapping the first and last note of the passage that keeps collapsing, which combined with the speed control is the single most effective drill in piano practice. Hand toggles for one hand at a time. On input it takes microphone, Bluetooth MIDI, and USB MIDI, so it covers the acoustic in the living room and the weighted keyboard upstairs, and it calibrates to your keyboard's key count so the on-screen keys match the ones under your hands.
Two things it does not do. It is iPhone and iPad today, with a waitlist for Android and web. And it shows a piano roll: sheet music is in development, so if the part of Simply Piano you valued was learning to read, pair it with Songscription, which turns the same recording into a printable score. It also will not drill your scales, which is the honest reason some people keep a course app running alongside.
flowkey, if you are on Android
flowkey is the best of the catalog apps and the most common landing spot for people leaving Simply Piano. Its library runs past 1,500 songs, each arranged at several difficulty levels, so a piece can meet you where you are rather than arriving at full difficulty. Every song comes with video of a pianist's hands, which is the best fingering guidance in any app here and something a generated piano roll cannot give you. It listens by microphone or MIDI, its wait mode holds the piece until you play the chord, and it runs on Android. Just be clear about what it fixes: better arrangements of a fixed set of songs, not access to a song outside it.
Skoove, if you still want a course
Skoove is the closest like-for-like replacement. It is structured, teaches notation early, drills the scales and technique a song app skips entirely, and reaches recognizable songs sooner than Simply Piano does. Microphone or MIDI both work, and it is cross-platform. If your complaint was pacing rather than the idea of a curriculum, this is the switch that changes least about your routine while fixing the part that annoyed you. It also pairs well rather than competing: the course for fundamentals, Anything Piano for the songs that made you want to play.
Yousician, if more than one person is learning
Yousician covers piano, guitar, bass, ukulele, and voice on one subscription, which is the reason to pick it. In a household with a guitarist and a new pianist, it is the cheapest way to cover both. It is more gamified than Simply Piano, and its piano track is not as deep as Skoove or flowkey, so choose it for the breadth rather than for the piano teaching.
Synthesia, if you are done with subscriptions
Synthesia is the one app here you can buy once on desktop rather than rent, which is a real advantage if subscriptions are the thing you are escaping. It is also a good practice tool: falling notes, hands separate, slow-down, wait mode. Two conditions apply. It reads your playing over MIDI only, so an acoustic piano gets a visual guide and no feedback, and beyond its roughly 150 built-in songs every title depends on finding a MIDI file of the right arrangement, which is straightforward for mainstream repertoire and harder for anything else. If you own a MIDI keyboard and mostly play standards, it is excellent value. Our roundup of Synthesia alternatives covers what to do when that file does not exist.
Pianote, or an actual teacher, if you want a person
Pianote is a video lesson library with real instructors and no note detection, which suits the learner who is tired of being scored. And it is worth saying plainly that a monthly lesson with a human remains the best value in piano learning for one reason no app has solved, ours included: a teacher can see your hands. Wrist tension, collapsing knuckles, and pedal habits are invisible to every microphone and every MIDI cable, and they are expensive to unlearn later. This is the one gap on the list that software is not close to filling.
If You Left Over One Specific Song
This case deserves its own section because switching catalogs almost never solves it. If Simply Piano did not have your song, flowkey probably does not either. Every catalog is missing the same things: B-sides, video game and film cues, regional releases, live versions, recent uploads, and anything a friend recorded. Trading one library for another is a coin flip, not a fix.
The fix is to stop starting from a library. Two tools work from the recording instead. Anything Piano turns the recording into a playable piano roll on iOS, which is what you want if your goal is to sit down and play it. Songscription turns the same recording into sheet music, MIDI, and MusicXML you can print, edit, transpose, or open in MuseScore, which is what you want if you read notation or need a file.
Between them they cover both halves: play it, or read it. Start with audio to sheet music or YouTube to sheet music, and our guide to learning a song that is not in your piano app walks the whole path.
Switching Without Losing Momentum
The risk in switching apps is not picking the wrong one. It is the gap. A week of comparing options is a week of not playing, and the habit is the fragile part. Run the new app's trial while the old subscription is still live, keep practicing in whichever one you open first, and cancel only once the new one has survived a bad day.
It is also fine to end up with two. A course app and a song app do not overlap much, and a common setup is fundamentals in one and the song you actually care about in the other. Our comparison of the best piano learning apps lays out the whole field if you want to see how the pieces fit together, and learning a song section by section covers the practice method that works regardless of which app you land on.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good alternative to Simply Piano?
Anything Piano, for most people. It has no catalog at all: it builds the piano part from any recording you give it, so the wall that sends most people looking for a Simply Piano alternative is not there. Choose otherwise if you want to learn by reading sheet music (Skoove or flowkey), if you are on Android (flowkey or Skoove), if you want graded scales (Skoove), or if you want a human teacher (Pianote).
Is flowkey better than Simply Piano?
For songs, yes. flowkey has a larger, better-arranged library with multiple difficulty levels and video of a pianist's hands, which is the best fingering guidance of any app here. Simply Piano is the stronger beginner course. Both are still fixed catalogs though, so if you left because your song was missing, flowkey is a larger version of the same limit. Choose it for the arrangements and the difficulty levels, or because you are on Android.
Can I learn piano without a monthly subscription?
Yes, though it takes more self-direction. Synthesia sells a one-time desktop license, free MIDI files and public-domain sheet music cover a lot of repertoire, and YouTube tutorials are free. What you give up is graded sequencing and the feedback loop that tells you whether you played the right notes, which is most of what a subscription actually buys.
How do I learn a song Simply Piano does not have?
Work from the recording instead of from a catalog. Anything Piano turns an audio file or a YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram link into an interactive piano roll you can slow down, loop, and practice one hand at a time, on an acoustic piano or a MIDI keyboard. No catalog entry is needed, so any song that exists is playable. For notation, Songscription converts the same recording into sheet music.
Final Thoughts
There is a version of this decision that is really about self-blame. People assume the app stopped working because they were not disciplined enough, so they go looking for a stricter one, which is usually the opposite of what they need. Most of the time the app did its job and then ran out of the thing you came for. The honest response is to name what is missing rather than buy a harsher version of what you had.
Name it precisely and the choice makes itself. Missing scales and technique points at Skoove. Wanting to read the staff points at a notation-first app. Being on Android points at flowkey. Wanting someone to watch your hands points at a teacher, and that one no software has solved. But if what is missing is a particular song, the one that got you interested in piano in the first place, then no catalog is the answer, because no catalog will ever hold the whole of what you might want to play. That case used to be the hardest to solve and is now the easiest, which is the real change in learning piano in 2026.
