Updated October 2026
Rate Your Music alternatives: every app compared
Rate Your Music is the best music database on the internet and one of the worst websites to use on a phone. It has no app, it has ads, and the design is from 2000. Here is everything that replaces it in 2026, including the app I make, with what each one gives up.
By Ben, the creator of Rate.fm. I’ve tried to keep this fair; the first section is about what RYM does better than all of us.
TL;DR
- RYM as an iPhone app: Rate.fm. Ratings, reviews, lists, friends, critic scores, Apple Music and Spotify.
- Critic and user scores together: Album of the Year on the web, Rate.fm in an app.
- Obscure releases: Record Club, on MusicBrainz, free everywhere.
- The genre tree and 20 years of charts: stay on RYM. Nobody has this.
- Moving your ratings: export the CSV from your RYM profile first, whatever you pick.
The comparison
| App | iPhone app | Android app | Website | Rating scale | Written reviews | Lists | Follow friends | Critic scores | Rate from the Lock Screen | Play what you’re reading | Imports Musicboard | Listening stats | AI you can talk to | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rate.fm | ✓ | – | ✓ | 0 to 10 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Free, no ads; optional badge |
| Rate Your Music | – | – | ✓ | 0.5 to 5 stars | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | – | – | – | – | – | – | Free with ads |
| Album of the Year | – | – | ✓ | 0 to 100 | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | Free with ads |
| Musicboard | ✓ | – | ✓ | 0.5 to 5 stars | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | – | Free; $1.99 to $4.99 a month |
| Record Club | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Stars | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | – | Free |
| Echo | ✓ | ✓ | – | Rankings | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | – | Free |
| Kora | ✓ | – | – | Stars | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – | – | ~ | – | Free |
| Peak Music Reviews | ✓ | – | ✓ | 0 to 10.0 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | – | Free |
| Wave | ✓ | – | ✓ | 0 to 10 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | – | Free |
| Last.fm | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | None | – | – | ✓ | – | – | – | – | ✓ | – | Free; Pro tier |
✓ yes · – no · ~ partly. Checked against each app’s store listing and website in October 2026. RYM and AOTY let you follow people but have no real feed of what they’re playing.
The full field of 17 apps, including the Spotify-only ones and the private library apps, is at rate.fm/letterboxd-for-music.
Each one, honestly
What RYM does that nothing else does
Start here, because the honest answer is that part of RYM is irreplaceable. The database is the biggest in music, 20 years of ratings make the all-time charts meaningful, and the genre tree, with its hundreds of sub-genres and descriptors, has no equivalent anywhere. If you use RYM to find out what the best 1970s zeuhl record is, nothing below will help you. What people actually leave over is everything else: no app, a site that fights your phone, ads, and a community that is better at arguing than at being friends.
Rate.fm
The one I make. A native iPhone app and a website. Ratings out of 10, written reviews, lists and tier lists, a feed of what friends are playing and rating. It connects to Apple Music and Spotify, so you rate the song while it plays, from the Lock Screen. 313,000 albums and 1.1 million songs, and 80,000 critic reviews from 18 publications on the album pages, which RYM has never had. It can show the RYM community’s reviews on each album too, if you turn that on. Every profile gets a listening stats page. Free, no ads; a badge subscription is optional. Falls short on: no Android app yet, a far smaller community than RYM, and no genre tree.
Album of the Year
The closest site to RYM in spirit, with critic scores aggregated next to user scores out of 100 and a loud comment section on every new release. Web only, ads. If what you liked about RYM was the arguing, AOTY has more of it per album.
Musicboard
Was the obvious RYM-with-an-app answer until 2026. Long outages since then, the Android app was pulled, and the iPhone app’s last update was May 2025. Pro is $4.99 a month. If you are already there, export your data at rate.fm/musicboard before deciding anything.
Record Club
The best catalog of the newer apps because it runs on MusicBrainz, so obscure releases are findable and addable, and you can scan a barcode. Free on iPhone, Android and the web. No streaming connection, no critic scores, and the community is still thin.
Echo
Rankings instead of ratings: you compare an album against ones you have ranked to find its place. Free on iPhone and Android, 4.9 on the App Store. No website, and the interface gets complaints.
Kora
A solo-developer iPhone app: ratings, reviews, lists, release alerts for artists you follow, and connections to Apple Music, Spotify, Last.fm, Tidal and Deezer. Free. iPhone only and still small.
Peak Music Reviews
Web and iPhone, free, ratings out of 10.0 with a decimal, reviews, lists and release-night chat rooms. Pitches itself as the Musicboard replacement more than the RYM one.
Wave
iPhone and web, free, 0 to 10, and it rates concerts on the same scale as albums. MusicBrainz catalog. No streaming connection.
Last.fm
Gets suggested in every thread, but it is a scrobbler, not a rating site: it logs what you play and makes stats, with no ratings and no reviews. Fine alongside any of the above if you want stats on every platform; Rate.fm builds the stats in.
Questions people ask
Is there a Rate Your Music app?
No. Rate Your Music has never shipped an iPhone or Android app, and the site is not built for phones. Rate.fm is the closest thing to an RYM app: ratings out of 10, reviews, lists, charts, and it can show the RYM community’s reviews on each album if you turn that on in settings.
What is the best Rate Your Music alternative?
It depends what you used RYM for. For a personal diary with friends on your phone: Rate.fm. For critic and user scores side by side: Album of the Year, or Rate.fm in an app. For the deepest catalog of obscure releases: Record Club, which runs on MusicBrainz. Nothing matches RYM’s genre tree or its 20 years of charts; if that is what you need, stay.
Can I export my Rate Your Music ratings?
Yes. RYM offers a CSV export of your ratings from your profile, so you keep a copy whatever you do next. Rate.fm does not import that file yet; its one-tap import is for Musicboard.
Which alternative has critic scores?
Album of the Year aggregates critic scores on the web. Rate.fm shows 80,000 critic reviews from 18 publications, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NME, AllMusic and the rest, on the album page next to the community score, in an app.
Which alternatives are free?
Rate.fm, Record Club, Echo, Kora, Peak and Wave are free to use. Album of the Year is free with ads, like RYM. Musicboard and Last.fm sell a paid tier.
RYM, as an app, with critic scores.
Get Rate.fm for iPhoneFree, no ads. Also on the web at Rate.fm.