Song guessing games: 25 free ways to name that tune after Heardle

The best-known song guessing games today are Songless, which plays you a tenth of a second of a track, Bandle, which adds one instrument at a time, and the Heardle decades sites that kept Heardle's format alive. All 25 below are free in a browser, and several, Songless Unlimited among them, have no daily limit.

Heardle was the first hit. Spotify bought it in July 2022 and shut it down on 5 May 2023, saying it wanted to focus on other music discovery features. The format did not go with it. Dozens of daily song games now share the idea, and they split along one question: how little of a song can you hear and still name it?

The 25 at a glance

Which games are like Heardle?

The Heardle decades sites are the closest: a short intro, more revealed with every miss, and one song a day per decade. Heardle 1980's draws on number one hits, Heardle 1990's, Heardle 2000's and Heardle 2010's cover their own years, and the same family runs 1950's, 1960's, 1970's and 2020's editions, plus Disney and K-pop.

ReHeardle keeps the short clips and sorts them into categories such as the 80s, the 90s, video games and film. Heardle Daily plays the song in fragments, and Heardle Game keeps the original six attempts across any song, artist or genre, without the daily limit.

Can you guess a song in 0.1 seconds?

That is the whole idea of Songless: it starts you on a tenth of a second of the track and plays a little more after each wrong guess. Several sites run the format.

• Songless on songless.pro adds unlimited and artist-only modes next to the daily song.
• BLIP also starts at 0.1 seconds, with daily, solo, gauntlet, versus and playlist modes.
• Blipsong grows the clip after each miss, with a shared daily challenge and optional unlimited play.
• FlipList Daily gives you a single second.
• Radical Radio Recall gives you one second of a classic 80s or 90s song and five guesses.

Is there a Songless unlimited?

Yes. Songless Unlimited runs five-song challenges from very short clips, as many as you like. Songspot asks you to name the track from a very short clip as fast as you can, also with no daily limit, and Songless Practice offers unlimited rounds with All, Rock and Hip Hop filters. With Heardle Game, that makes four. The unlimited games page lists every other game in the catalogue without a daily cap.

Bandle, one instrument at a time

Bandle builds the song up instead of cutting it short. The band comes in one instrument at a time, and you get six attempts to name the track. Name the Track from its Instruments works the same way, inspired by Bandle by its own account, and adds unlimited play with filters for the kind of track you want.

Song games that change the clue

These do not play you the opening. Each one hides the song somewhere else.

• Warbl plays the song backwards.
• Crosstune is a crossword whose clues include song audio.
• Strumdle scrolls a Guitar Hero-style note chart past you.
• MusicVidle shows frames pulled from the music video.
• Sampledle plays the original sample a famous hit was built on.
• vocalstim plays three familiar intros, fades out, and asks you to stop the clock when the vocals should come in.
• Music Timeliner has you place eight songs on a timeline by release year, and SongSwipe asks of ten songs whether each came out before or after the year shown.
• TuneGuessr plays a clip and asks which country the music comes from.

For Eurovision fans, Douzle picks one entry a day from more than 1,800 performances since 1956, with clues on country, year, language and placement, and Douze gives six tries at the same kind of mystery entry.

Guessing the artist instead

Some players would rather name who sings than what. Spotle hides one artist among a thousand and gives you ten tries, each wrong guess narrowing the field. It sits with the rest of the music games, and the song guessing category holds 51 games at the time of writing. For a morning routine beyond music, the games like Wordle and the games like Connections are the other two halves.