Whether you’re practicing, recording, performing, or setting up to jam with friends, it’s crucial that your guitar is in tune.

Tuning your guitar ensures that each string is at the proper pitch, allowing you to play chords, riffs, scales, or melodies that sound like they should. Tuning also allows you to play along with other musicians. Nothing sounds worse than a live band with a guitarist that is out of tune from the rest of the band.

Without proper tuning, your guitar is borderline unplayable.

The good thing is that there is a myriad of helpful online guitar tuners – that are free! – to keep your instrument sounding its best at all times, leaving absolutely no room for excuses. Instead of having to sift through guitar forums and search pages to find the best online tuning tools, we’ve compiled a list of our favorites.

Let’s hop in and explore the 5 best free ways to tune your guitar online, shall we?

Jamplay Chromatic Tuner

Jamplay, one of the premier online guitar lesson sites, has a simple yet effective chromatic tuner that can get your guitar in tune for free in a pinch.

Because it’s a chromatic tuner, it automatically detects and displays the notes you’re playing. This means you can tune to standard tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E) or use any alternate tuning you can come up with!

When you reach the right pitch of a note, the light in the center of the tuner will turn green. If there are red lights on either side of the center, you know you’re either sharp or flat.

Unfortunately, there are not any built-in tones to let you tune by ear, though if you need a tuner that’s easy to set up and even easier to use, the Jamplay Chromatic Tuner is it!

Guitar Tuner

Guitar Tuner is one of the newer online tuning tools with a sleek aesthetic and an easy-to-navigate interface. It supports six-string electric and acoustic, four-string bass, and ukulele, with standard tuning for each instrument.

You can either tune in auto mode, which allows you to play through your microphone so the site can hear each note, or ‘by ear,’ wherein you can listen to each note and tune accordingly.

When you tune in auto mode, the tuner listens to the string that you’re playing and plays back a tone that signals you’re in tune when you reach the correct pitch.

While this tuner lacks support for alternative tunings, it makes up for it with a clean interface and accurate software. And like the rest of the tools on this page, it’s free.

ProGuitar Online Guitar Tuner

If you want just about every tuning capability possible in one online app, ProGuitar Online Guitar Tuner is a great free choice. You can tune using three separate tools, including the needle display, the digital light display, or the tonewheel.

Everyone has different methods that allow them to tune better, and ProGuitar Online Guitar Tuner caters to everyone. You can even click each of the strings on the interface to tune manually. Beyond guitar, you’ll find support for a wide range of instruments, including bass, banjo, ukulele, violin, and more!

Guitar Tuna

If you need a simple tuning tool for your six-string guitar, Guitar Tuna is an excellent choice. This site automatically detects each string that you play, indicating whether you need to turn up or down to find the right pitch.

Like Guitar Tuner, it plays a nice little tone to let you know you’ve reached the correct pitch. Overall, it’s a very simple guitar tuner with both microphone and tune-by-ear support that’s great for guitarists.

Online Guitar Tuner

If you tune best with a needle display, then you’ll love Online Guitar Tuner. This free tuning tool might be the simplest tool of all, with support for microphone tuning and tune-by-ear. The large display gives you a visual cue as to how far off your guitar is from the correct pitch, while the needle gives you accurate readings for chromatic pitches.

While Online Guitar Tuner certainly won’t win any design awards, you can rest assured that it’ll make you sound like a better player!

What’s Your Favorite Free Guitar Tuner?

Hope this list has helped you find a tuner that works for your needs. Make sure to let us know if there’s a better online guitar tuning tool that we missed!