Ten ear-training tools cost nothing in 2026, and six of them are free the whole way through rather than free until the interesting part. Those six are our own trainer (full disclosure, we make it), EQ Academy, EQ Trainer, Neon Audio Ear Trainer, EarQuiz Frequencies and the foobar2000 ABX Comparator. Bedroom Producer, MixSense, Reverie Mix and SoundGym have free tiers, but each caps you somewhere.
Everything below was checked in August 2026.
Which ear-training tools are completely free?
Six, and they run on different platforms, so one will fit your setup. Here is the full list, free tiers included, judged the same way.
| Tool | Runs on | What it trains | What “free” means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monosounds Ear Training (ours, so weigh that) | Browser, phone or desktop | EQ, compression, stereo, phase, saturation, reverb, synthesis | Free all the way. No card, no paid tier |
| EQ Academy | macOS 13.3+ or Windows 10/11 app | Frequency, gain, Q width, mid/side | Free. All 100 levels |
| EQ Trainer | Browser | Boost identification on pink noise or music | Free |
| Neon Audio Ear Trainer | Browser | Frequency and feedback identification | Free. A few rounds with no signup, full access needs an email |
| EarQuiz Frequencies | Windows, macOS, Linux app | Golden-Ears-style technical ear training | Free and open source (GPL-3.0) |
| foobar2000 ABX Comparator | Windows, macOS, needs foobar2000 v1.6+ | Whether you can hear a difference at all | Free |
| Bedroom Producer | Browser | EQ, compression, volume, panning on real multitracks | Free tier: 2 lives a day, 4 with an account |
| MixSense | iOS, Android, web | EQ, compression, balance and panning, effects | Free tier. Paid prices are only shown inside the app |
| Reverie Mix | Browser | Attack and release, width, phase, high-pass matching, loudness | Free tier. Pro adds stem isolation |
| SoundGym | Browser | 18 named games, from EQ to compression to stereo | Free account gets the same 3 games in every workout |
Why most “free ear training” lists are years out of date
Because nobody rechecks the links. The clearest tell is iZotope’s free browser course, Pro Audio Essentials. It is dead, the domain no longer resolves, and it still sits near the top of lists published as current guides.
The second tell is earPlugins “Tune”. It is free, and it is a 32-bit Windows VST 2.4 plugin. No Mac, no VST3, no AU. Its manual version reads “v00” and coverage of it dates to 2011. On an Apple Silicon Mac or any modern 64-bit DAW it cannot load at all. A list recommending it in 2026 has not opened it in a decade.
A smaller tell: AlternativeTo, the site people reach for when comparing software, has no SoundGym page at all. It 404s. That is why every price and platform here carries a date.
The best free browser tools
Start in the browser if you want to practise today. Nothing to install, nothing to authorise. Four are worth your time.
EQ Trainer (eqtrainer.app) is the cleanest single-purpose drill. A boost is applied, you name the frequency, and a bypass A/B lets you flip between processed and clean. Difficulty tiers go up to a “God mode”, you can work on pink noise or a music track, and there are daily challenges. Free, no strings.
Neon Audio Ear Trainer does frequency identification and, unusually, feedback identification, which matters if you ever mix live. XP, streaks, daily challenges, and you can upload your own WAV or MP3. A few rounds run without signing up; full access needs an email.
Bedroom Producer uses real multitrack audio. Its Mix Trainer covers EQ, compression, volume and panning with adaptive difficulty, plus a vocal pitch drill and a metronome. The catch is lives: guests get 2 a day, a free account 4. Paid tiers start at $2.50/month, with a $7.99/month Early Adopter tier that locks that price.
Reverie Mix launched 5 May 2026 and is deliberately about mixing, not music: boost identification, compressor attack and release, stereo width, phase and comb filtering, high-pass cutoff matching, loudness matching. Free tier plus a Pro that adds stem isolation and harder difficulty. We could not load a page that publishes the Pro price, so treat it as unknown.
Ours sits in this group. Monosounds Ear Training runs in a browser on a phone or a desktop, 500 levels across 10 chapters, first 10 with no account. Free, and it stays free: no card, no subscription, no tier hiding the better exercises. It is a game, not a curriculum, and there is no video teaching in it. For phones specifically, we cover the whole landscape in what actually works on iOS and Android.
The best free desktop tools
Desktop is where the two most serious free tools live, and both are free without an account.
EQ Academy, from Mastering The Mix, is the strongest free EQ trainer available. 100 levels across 10 sections cover frequency, gain, Q width and mid/side, randomly generated so you cannot memorise them. Monthly leaderboards, a Challenge Builder from level 20, your own songs from level 30. Desktop app, macOS 13.3+ (native on Apple Silicon) and Windows 10/11, released 15 July 2025.
EarQuiz Frequencies is free and open source under GPL-3.0, and the one option here with a Linux build: Windows 10/11 x64, macOS on Apple Silicon 13+ or Intel 12+, and a .deb. Golden-Ears-style technical ear training, a pink noise generator, and it loads your own WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3 or OGG. The latest release is v0.1.8 with nothing after it. Read that as finished rather than broken.
foobar2000 ABX Comparator (foo_abx) is a different animal, and worth installing anyway. Version 2.2.3 arrived 19 September 2025, runs on Windows and macOS, needs foobar2000 v1.6 or later. It teaches nothing. It runs a proper double-blind A/B/X test with a statistical result, which answers the only question worth asking before you burn an hour on a decision: can you actually hear the difference?
How free is SoundGym’s free tier, really?
You get the same three games in every workout. That is SoundGym’s own wording on their help pages: Pro opens all the games and gives five per workout. For beat workouts, free gets 1 game and Pro gets 3.
Pricing is $24.95/month, $142/year (marketed as $11.80/month) or $495 lifetime. Sound On Sound’s July 2021 review quoted $24.95/month and $119/year, so the annual price rose $23 while the monthly stayed put.
The free Audio School is useful, but be clear about what it is. Five programs cover recording, electronic production, mix and mastering, synthesis and live sound, and SoundGym describes the material as “curated from the best free online content”. That is organised third-party video, not original teaching. A paying member said as much in the feedback thread on soundgym.co in 2023, expecting “a little more guidance and original content”. SoundGym’s team replied defending the gamified design. It just means the free tier is a playlist and three games.
They list 18 games by name while the shop says “all 21 sound games”, and they claim more than 500,000 members, which is their number. If you are weighing the paid version against everything else, we go through it in our SoundGym alternatives comparison.
What free ear training won’t give you
None of these will teach you mixing. They train discrimination, which is narrow: hearing that 3 kHz went up, that the attack is too fast, that the sides collapsed. Knowing what to do about it is a separate skill you get from mixing records.
The other gap is transfer. Sound On Sound’s 2021 SoundGym review made a point that applies to every tool here: random settings make difficulty uneven, since an EQ move is easier to hear on a busy synth than a sparse drum loop, and reverb results swing between headphones and speakers. A rising score is real, but it is partly a score about the material.
The fix is cheap: train on material you actually work with. EarQuiz, Neon and EQ Academy all take your own files, and ours uses audio from our sample packs, including real stems and full mixes. If you need fresh sources to bounce and drill against, our free Serum 2 preset pack costs nothing either.
A free routine that actually holds up
Fifteen minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday, and rotating the tools above covers the whole spread for nothing.
- Frequency recognition, daily. EQ Trainer or EQ Academy, ten minutes. Fastest returns of anything here.
- Dynamics and space, twice a week. Reverie Mix or our trainer for compression, attack and release, reverb type and predelay. These take longer to click than EQ.
- Reality check, once a week. foobar2000 ABX on something you were sure about. It stops you chasing differences that are not there.
- Your own mixes, always. Import your bounces wherever the tool allows it.
Which drills actually change a mix decision is a longer conversation, and we go through it in ear training aimed at mixing. Once the drills start landing, apply them to full arrangements: a Serum 2 preset bundle gives you enough varied material to keep the ear honest. And all 500 levels of our trainer run alongside any of this for nothing.
FAQ
Is there a completely free ear training tool for mixing?
Yes, several. EQ Academy is a free desktop app with 100 EQ levels, EQ Trainer and Neon Audio Ear Trainer are free browser tools for frequency identification, EarQuiz Frequencies is free and open source, and Monosounds Ear Training is a free browser trainer with 500 levels covering EQ, compression, stereo, saturation and reverb. None of them have a paid tier that unlocks better exercises.
Is SoundGym free?
SoundGym has a free account, but it gives you the same three games in every workout. Pro opens all the games and gives you five per workout, and it costs $24.95/month, $142/year or $495 lifetime as of August 2026. SoundGym’s free Audio School courses are open to everyone and are described by SoundGym as content curated from free online sources.
Do free ear training tools work as well as paid ones?
For frequency identification, yes. EQ Academy is free and drills frequency, gain, Q and mid/side across 100 randomly generated levels, which is as thorough as anything paid. Paid tools mostly buy breadth, bigger leaderboards, or training on your own stems, rather than better fundamental drills.
Why do older lists of free ear training tools not work?
Because the tools moved and the lists did not. iZotope’s free Pro Audio Essentials course is gone and its domain no longer resolves, yet lists still link it. earPlugins “Tune” is still recommended too, despite being a 32-bit Windows VST 2.4 plugin with no Mac, VST3 or AU version and no update since around 2011.
Can I train my ears for free on a phone?
Yes, but the options are narrower than on desktop. Browser tools run in a mobile browser, and MixSense has free native iOS and Android apps. The strongest free desktop tools, EQ Academy and EarQuiz Frequencies among them, have no mobile version at all.
I run Monosounds.studio and make the packs myself. Ten-plus years of producing, 97+ releases, 16,000+ downloads. Every Serum 2 preset we ship passes a CPU check on a mid-range laptop and gets used in a real track before release. If it does not survive a mix, it does not go in the pack.
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