Is Simply Piano free?

Simply Piano is free to download and free for two courses, Piano Basics and Touch Intro. Everything else needs a Premium subscription. The only free trial is 7 days, on the yearly plan only. The app carries no ads.

Where the price is, and is not

Simply's help center has a section headed “How much does Simply Piano cost?” It says subscriptions vary “depending on your country, the platform you're using (App Store or Google Play), and which plan you chose”. It adds that “the price you see may differ from what others have paid.” For the figure itself it sends you into the app. The product page at hellosimply.com prints no price either.

Apple's ten prices

Apple shows up to ten items, with no billing periods and no claim to be complete. So “12 months Premium with trial” appears three times at two prices, $149.99 and $119.99, and nothing says which one a given reader is offered. That fits the help center's warning that prices vary. Derived, and labeled as derived: $95.99 is 20% off $119.99. Google Play's top figure, $314.99, is higher than anything on Apple's list, and Play does not say what it buys.

The trial is on one plan only

The Google Play description says “GET 7 DAYS OF SIMPLY PIANO PREMIUM FOR FREE”. The help center adds the conditions: the trial is “only available on the yearly plan”, and it is “limited to one per account or Apple ID”, even on a new account. A second article opens “Not all of our plans include a free trial”. It explains that trials “automatically turn into paid subscriptions unless canceled before the trial ends.” Simply asks for the cancellation at least 24 hours before the end, and says deleting the app does not cancel it.

Canceling depends on the checkout

Simply sells through three checkouts, and each has its own route out. The help center adds one that is easy to miss: an Apple Pay purchase goes through Stripe, not Apple, so it “won't appear in your iPhone's Apple Subscriptions list”. An iPhone owner who looks in Settings and finds nothing may still be subscribed.

Both store descriptions say subscriptions “cannot be canceled during the active subscription period”: you turn off renewal and keep access to the end. Simply's own Payment Policy is more generous to a direct subscriber. Section 4(c) lets you end the subscription “at any time” by writing to piano@hellosimply.com. It takes effect within three business days or at the end of the period, as you choose. Section 4(d) gives “a pro rata refund of any amounts paid for Services not yet utilized”. Section 5 adds a full refund within 30 days if you have not used the paid content, a condition the help center's version leaves out. The policy says store purchases follow the store's rules, so the two texts do not contradict each other. They describe different checkouts.

What the two stores say it collects

Both are self-declarations rather than audits. The recordings line matters in an app that listens to you play through the microphone: Google's page marks it optional and names no advertising purpose for it. An ad-free app can still use data for marketing, and here the two stores say so in different words.

What Simply Piano does better

• It listens to a real piano. Any acoustic or digital keyboard works, through the microphone or MIDI, with instant feedback. That is harder to build than an on-screen keyboard, and the free Touch Intro course covers anyone without one.
• No ads, in the free courses too. Play's description calls it “Kids safe”, and neither store carries a Contains ads label.
• Refund rules in writing, by checkout. A 30-day window for Google Play, card and PayPal, and a pro rata refund in the terms for a direct subscriber who leaves early. Compare Babbel, whose US web terms give no partial refund at all.
• One family price. Up to five profiles, and the Family Plan opens Simply Guitar and Simply's other apps as well.
• A catalog that keeps growing. Play's description counts more than 5,000 songs, with new courses every month.

For another learning app whose free tier is real and whose prices sit in the stores rather than on its own site, see is Duolingo free.

What we could not check

Nothing inside the app or behind a Simply login was read, so the in-app price screen, the offer a US reader actually sees and the cancel screen are all missing. The web checkout at join-piano.hellosimply.com opens with a quiz, and we stopped at its question about your age, so no web price was read. Google Play's items-and-offers section was read once, on 30 September 2026.