This is a list of music notation programs (excluding discontinued products) which have articles on Wikipedia.
For programs specifically for writing guitar tablature, see the list of guitar tablature software. For discontinued products, see list of discontinued scorewriters.
LilyPond is a computer program and file format for music engraving. One of LilyPond's major goals is to produce scores that are engraved with traditional layout rules, reflecting the era when scores were engraved by hand.
Sibelius is a scorewriter program developed and released by Sibelius Software Limited. Beyond creating, editing and printing music scores, it can also play the music back using sampled or synthesised sounds. It produces printed scores, and can also publish them via the Internet for others to access. Less advanced versions of Sibelius at lower prices have been released, as have various add-ons for the software.
Finale is a proprietary music notation software developed and released by MakeMusic for Microsoft Windows and macOS from 1988 until 2024, when it was discontinued.
Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH is a German musical software and hardware company based in Hamburg. It develops software for writing, recording, arranging and editing music, most notably Cubase, Nuendo, and Dorico. It also designs audio and MIDI hardware interfaces, controllers, and iOS/Android music apps including Cubasis. Steinberg created several industry standard music technologies including the Virtual Studio Technology (VST) format for plug-ins and the ASIO protocol. Steinberg has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha since 2005.
A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and produce high-quality printed results.
Rosegarden is a free software digital audio workstation program developed for Linux with ALSA, JACK and Qt4. It acts as an audio and MIDI sequencer, scorewriter, and musical composition and editing tool. It is intended to be a free alternative to such applications as Cubase.
Encore is a music notation (scorewriter) program for Microsoft Windows and macOS.
Emagic was a music software and hardware company based in Rellingen, Germany and a satellite office in Grass Valley, California. On July 1, 2002 Emagic was bought by Apple Computer. Emagic's Windows-based product offerings were discontinued on September 30, 2002.
MusicXML is an XML-based file format for representing Western musical notation. The format is open, fully documented, and can be freely used under the W3C Community Final Specification Agreement.
Logic Pro is a proprietary digital audio workstation (DAW) and MIDI sequencer software application for the macOS platform developed by Apple Inc. It was originally created in the early 1990s as Notator Logic, or Logic, by German software developer C-Lab which later went by Emagic. Apple acquired Emagic in 2002 and renamed Logic to Logic Pro. It was the second most popular DAW – after Ableton Live – according to a survey conducted in 2015.
Guitar Pro is a proprietary multitrack editor of guitar and bass tablature and musical scores, possessing a built-in MIDI-editor, a plotter of chords, a player, a metronome and other tools for musicians. It has versions for Windows and macOS and is written by the French company Arobas Music.
Mosaic was a Macintosh scorewriter application for producing music notation, developed by Mark of the Unicorn.
Power Tab Editor is a freeware tablature authoring tool created by Brad Larsen for Windows. It is used to create guitar, bass and ukulele tablature scores, among many others. The current version uses the *.ptb file format.
Mozart the music processor is a proprietary WYSIWYG scorewriter program for Microsoft Windows. It is used to create and edit Western musical notation to create and print sheet music, and to play it via MIDI.
Overture is a music notation (scorewriter) program for Windows and Macintosh platforms, published and developed by Sonic Scores. While Overture is primarily a scorewriter program, it also allows editing the score's MIDI audio playback data in the manner of sequencer and digital audio workstation (DAW) software.
This is a comparison of music notation programs.
Dorico is a scorewriter software; along with Finale and Sibelius, it is one of the three leading professional-level music notation programs.