5 Guitar Tricks Alternatives (free and paid options)

Without a doubt, Guitar Tricks is one of the most widely known and used online guitar learning platforms in existence. But what are some of the Guitar Tricks alternatives that you can use if you decide that platform just isn't for you? As it turns out, there are several great alternatives, both free and paid, all of which we'll cover on this page.

Read more: Guitar Tricks review

We'll go through five options and tell you what they're ideal for and where their strengths are.

If you just want a quick look at the Guitar Tricks alternatives, we've listed all five in the table below, which allows you to compare them, side-by-side.

Leave questions - if you have them - in the comments section below. 

Top Four Guitar Tricks Alternatives

Watch the Article

Short on time? This article has been condensed into a video with easy-to-read bullet points and highlights. 

Best Paid Alternatives

There are primarily three paid Guitar Tricks alternatives that we recommend. While there are other options out there, these are the three that we've tested the most often and find to be the best, if you're going to move away from Guitar Tricks.

They're competitors of Guitar Tricks, but also tend to offer a more advanced curriculum with more specified areas of study.

All three programs are offered entirely online.

Read more: Best online guitar lessons

1. TrueFire

In terms of popularity and volume of content, TrueFire is Guitar Trick's single biggest competitor. In fact, TrueFire is actually a larger site that draws in more traffic than Guitar Tricks.

They have a ton of courses that cover almost every guitar topic you can imagine, which includes other instruments like bass and ukulele. 

It's best used for specified study, perhaps for intermediate and more advanced players. You can either pay for specific courses, or buy a monthly/yearly membership for access to the entire site.

For those wanting to focus on a specific area of study, TrueFire is a great option.

• Full TrueFire review
• TrueFire cost

2. JamPlay

Though somewhat smaller than both Guitar Tricks and TrueFire, JamPlay has long competed as one of the top three guitar lesson websites in existence. It's closer to TrueFire's style in terms of specialized courses, though also offers learning paths like Guitar Tricks.

Typically we recommend it for intermediate guitar players, but it has enough content to be relevant to any skill level.

• Full JamPlay review
• JamPlay cost

3. Active Melody

We like Active Melody because there is both a free and paid section. The free content is all available on YouTube, while the paid content is behind a premium Vimeo account and available for only $10 per month.

This paid content expounds and builds on the free YouTube videos. So you can stick with the free content if you want or pay and go deeper in your study.

The site focuses almost exclusively on blues, jazz, and improvisation techniques, making it a good candidate if you're interested specifically in any of those areas.

• Full Active Melody review

Best Free Alternatives

If you're looking for a free Guitar Tricks alternative, your options are a bit limited, but there are still a couple considerations. Assuming the "free" tag is your top priority, consider checking out our list of free guitar lesson resources, which we've linked to below:

Read more: Best free guitar lessons

Otherwise, we'll focus on the two primary sources of free guitar lessons, which would be Justinguitar (his website and YouTube channel), as well as YouTube at large. 

Let's start with Justinguitar which is probably your single best free alternative to Guitar Tricks.

4. Justinguitar (Justin Sandercoe)

Justinguitar is the biggest free guitar lesson website in the world, with over 1200 free video guitar lessons, over 560,000 users and decades of social proof to lean on. Justin Sandercoe, the site's creator and primary teacher is an excellent musician and is good at communicating and teaching the guitar conceptually.

While the site leans more heavily in a beginner direction, there's plenty of material for just about anybody, regardless of skill level.

For those that don't want to pay for their lessons, this should be their first stop.

Even then, consider throwing a donation or two Justin's way. He has worked incredibly hard on this resource and it's worth supporting.

• Full Justinguitar review

5. YouTube Guitar Lesson Channels

Never in the history of mankind have we had more access to information than we have now, and YouTube is a huge part of that.

And in terms of learning guitar, it's a completely viable option if you want to learn guitar for free. At the same time, it has strengths and weaknesses that should be considered.

First, the strengths:

YouTube tends to excel when it comes to answering specific questions. 

This is because YouTube is basically a search engine, where the burden is on you to figure out want you want to search for. Thus, if you have a specific question like, "How do I play a C chord?" it can be a very helpful and easy way to study that particular topic.

Where YouTube is less helpful is when you need an organized learning path. For the most part, YouTube is just not setup in a linear manner.

It's also distracting and can turn you aside from studying something quite easily.

However, when used correctly, it can definitely serve as a helpful supplement, perhaps to a more linear and structured learning path, like JamPlay or TrueFire.

Read more: Best YouTube guitar lessons

Are these programs better than Guitar Tricks?

A lot of you might be wondering: Are these programs better than Guitar Tricks?

It's not really a question of being better as much as it's a question of what type of program you're looking for. Guitar Tricks is extremely good when it comes to organization, structured courses, and serving beginners.

JamPlay and TrueFire are better with specified study and more advanced concepts.

Free options are often unfairly characterized as being "worse" than the paid programs, but that's not always true. If you don't need the order and linear course development offered by the paid programs, then you can get a lot of mileage out of free content, perhaps before getting into more specialized study.

And that's not to say they're better or worse than Guitar Tricks, but rather an alternative that needs to be considered based on your situation.

Is Guitar Tricks worth the membership price?

At the end of the day, is Guitar Tricks worth the price of admission? In a lot of cases we would say yes, especially if you're looking for beginner material and you want to learn with organized courses.

Guitar Tricks also has one of the best song lesson video sections on the market, with over 1000 songs covered, all in their entirety with tabs and licensing.

So if you're interested in the following:

• Beginner content
• Learning songs
• Learning from courses and an organized plan

We'd say these focuses are all strong points of Guitar Tricks.

Otherwise, you can easily checkout one of the Guitar Tricks alternatives we've listed on this page.

Conclusion

Note that all paid programs, including Guitar Tricks and the alternatives on this list, offer a free trial period, which can range from seven to 30 days depending on which site you sign up with.

Refer to our table at the top of this article to checkout some of the free trial options.

If you want to give Guitar Tricks a try, you can checkout their 14 day free trial offer here.

For questions or thoughts about the programs we've listed, or about Guitar Tricks, feel free to get in touch via the comments section below, and we'll help out as much as possible.

See you there.

Related Resources