Log inSign upIn August 2024, MakeMusic announced that Finale — the notation software many musicians and educators had used for decades — was being discontinued, with no further development and users advised to migrate their work elsewhere. That left a lot of composers, arrangers, and band and choir directors with a library of scores and no clear next step. If you're one of them, StaffWeaver is a browser-based notation editor built around the things displaced users have said they need most: visual drag-and-drop entry, MusicXML that works in both directions and is free on every plan, scan-to-edit with a real repair workflow for the paper library, an AI chat that can write a score from nothing, parts that paginate properly when you print them, and no installer standing between you and your next score.
We're not trying to be Finale, and this page isn't affiliated with or endorsed by MakeMusic — it's here because switching software mid-career is disruptive, and we'd rather make the honest case for where StaffWeaver fits than leave you guessing.
Built and live: drag a note value from the palette onto the staff and it snaps to the nearest pitch and beat, keeping the measure musically valid as you go. No text-entry shortcuts to memorize before you can write a single bar.
StaffWeaver runs entirely in the browser — iPad, Android tablet, Chromebook, laptop, or desktop — with a touch-first editor built for fingers as well as a mouse. No installer, no license file tied to one machine, no plugin to keep updated. Editing needs a tablet-sized screen or larger, which is the smallest screen a full system of music fits on legibly.
Upload a .xml, .musicxml, or .mxl file straight from your dashboard, up to 5 MB a file. It is free on every plan and permanently, runs entirely in your browser (nothing is sent to a server just to parse the file), and it honestly flags anything it had to simplify along the way — no silently dropped key or time changes. Export works the same way: the editor's Export button writes MusicXML 4.0 back out as .musicxml or .mxl, free and client-side, with an up-front note if anything in that score cannot travel in a MusicXML file.
Scan-to-edit is live: upload a PDF or a photo of printed sheet music — up to 15 MB and 10 pages — and StaffWeaver's ingestion pipeline recognizes the notes and rhythms and hands you back an editable score, so the music that only ever existed on paper doesn't get left behind. Expect a first draft rather than a transcription, and take that from our own measurements: recognition scores a mean F1 of 0.34 on real published lead sheets, 0.825 on clean synthetic test pages. The finishing happens in Review Mode, where the original page sits beside the score, doubtful measures are flagged, one-click fixes like Make triplet are a button, and you can ask the AI to propose a correction for a single measure and apply or dismiss it. Faster than retyping decades of paper; not the same as a machine reading it for you.
Every score is saved to your account in the cloud, not to a folder on your hard drive — open the same library from any browser you sign into, on any computer.
StaffWeaver's built-in AI chat can create the score itself, not only edit one you have already started: ask for a new piece and it makes it with your title, clef and time signature, opens it, and begins writing — 'Start a melody for me' is one of the prompts the empty chat offers. More than twenty score-editing tools sit behind it, so the same conversation carries on with 'add a bass line under this,' 'write me a scale,' dynamics, lyrics, chord symbols, or a key change mid-piece, and Add measure or +4 extends the score as it grows. Every edit is one Undo away if the result isn't right. Charged per message in credits.
A Lyrics mode lets you type syllables straight onto notes — hyphens land automatically between split words, and holding a syllable across notes draws the melisma extender line choral scores expect. Already have lyrics in a MusicXML file? They come in with the rest of the import.
A Chords mode lets you click a measure and type a chord — Cmaj7, G7/B, F#m7b5 — rendered above the staff with proper sharp and flat symbols. Already have chords in a MusicXML file? They come in with the rest of the import, and the AI chat can add or edit them too.
Dynamics (pp through ff, sf) and crescendo/diminuendo hairpins set from the note panel change how loud playback actually sounds, not just how the page looks. 1st/2nd endings and D.C./D.S. al Fine/al Coda jumps render as brackets and signs above the staff, and pressing Play follows them exactly the way a performer would — taking the right ending on each pass, jumping back to the segno, stopping at Fine.
Assign a real instrument — B♭ trumpet, alto sax, horn in F, and 17 others (20 in the catalog total) — to any part, or start the score from the instrument picker and get all of them configured at once. Each part renders and prints in the WRITTEN pitch the player reads, with the correctly transposed key signature. A `Concert pitch` toggle switches the whole score to sounding pitch for the conductor, and playback always sounds concert pitch regardless of which view is on screen.
Switch the editor from the full score to any single part and the canvas shows only that player's music — re-wrapped to its own line breaks, in written pitch, with the navigation marks a player still needs — then print it with the part name above the title and composer. Group brackets and grand-staff braces from an imported MusicXML file render at the left edge of every system, and the pagination is done properly: page one starts with music instead of a blank sheet, no system is chopped in half by a page break, and a tie or slur that carries across a break is engraved as two half-curves rather than clipped at the paper edge. Printing is how a single part leaves StaffWeaver — MusicXML export writes the whole score, not one part — and page layout is automatic: there are no per-part page breaks or layout overrides yet.
A free tier to start, then a flat $49 per seat per year for Premium, with pay-as-you-go credit tiers for scanning starting at $4.99 a month. The full price list is on our pricing page — no quote request, no sales call required.
We'd rather tell you where StaffWeaver falls short than have you find out the hard way.
Finale, Dorico, and Sibelius have decades of engraving refinement — cross-staff notation, complex tuplet nesting, publisher-grade spacing rules. StaffWeaver handles everyday notation well; it is not trying to replace a professional engraver's toolkit yet.
StaffWeaver reads and writes MusicXML, not Finale's native file formats. See the FAQ below for the export path while your Finale license still runs.
Finale exports MIDI, audio, and PDF alongside MusicXML. StaffWeaver exports MusicXML only — .musicxml and compressed .mxl — and prints from the browser. There is no MIDI file, no audio render, and no PDF export of our own.
Export MusicXML from Finale while it still runs, upload it here, and pick up where you left off. Your scores can leave again the same way, any time — free to start, no credit card required.
Finale is a product of MakeMusic, Inc. StaffWeaver is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by MakeMusic.