Tempo Finder
Find any song's tempo in beats per minute. Free, instant, and nothing leaves your browser.
Got the tempo? Melodious turns the whole track into a music video — See how
Drop an audio file to find its BPM
MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC or OGG
Your file never leaves your browser — the analysis runs on your device and nothing is uploaded.
Tempo and BPM are the same thing
To find a song's tempo, drop the audio file onto the tool above and it returns the speed in beats per minute — the number a metronome or a DAW needs. Nothing is uploaded; the analysis runs in your browser. Tempo and BPM describe the same thing at different levels of precision: BPM is the exact count, while a tempo marking like Andante or Allegro names a range. 120 BPM is Allegro; a slow ballad at 66 BPM is Adagio. Musicians reading a score meet tempo as a word, producers and DJs meet it as a number, and the table below converts between them.
Tempo markings and their BPM ranges
Written music gives tempo as an Italian word rather than a number. These are the ranges in common use — treat them as conventions rather than definitions, because a marking is an instruction to a performer, not a measurement, and the same word has meant different speeds in different centuries.
| Marking | BPM | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Largo | 40–60 | Broad and very slow |
| Adagio | 66–76 | Slow, at ease |
| Andante | 76–108 | Walking pace |
| Moderato | 108–120 | Moderate |
| Allegro | 120–156 | Fast, bright |
| Vivace | 156–176 | Lively |
| Presto | 168–200 | Very fast |
Typical tempo by genre
Useful for sanity-checking a reading, and for picking a starting tempo when you are writing rather than measuring. These are ranges on purpose: no genre has a single tempo, and the ones that look like they do — house at 128, drum and bass at 174 — are conventions, not rules.
| Genre | BPM | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Hip-hop | 80–100 | Often felt in half-time against a doubled hi-hat |
| Trap | 130–160 | Usually counted at half that — 70–80 — as it feels |
| House | 120–130 | 128 is the near-universal club default |
| Techno | 125–150 | Faster and straighter than house |
| Drum and bass | 165–180 | 174 is the genre's centre of gravity |
| Pop | 100–130 | The widest range of any category here |
| Rock | 110–140 | Live recordings drift; a fixed grid is the exception |
| Ballads | 60–80 | Where half-time detection errors show up most |
| Reggaeton | 90–100 | The dembow pattern, not the pulse, defines the feel |
| Afrobeats | 100–115 | Polyrhythmic — detectors can lock to the wrong layer |
Notice how many of these involve a half-time relationship. Trap written at 140 is counted at 70 by most people who dance to it, and both numbers are correct — which is exactly why an automatic reading can disagree with your ear without either being wrong.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between tempo and BPM?
They describe the same property with different precision. BPM — beats per minute — is the exact count of pulses in a minute, which is what a DAW, a metronome or a DJ deck needs. Tempo is the broader idea of speed, and in written music it is usually given as a word: Andante, Allegro, Presto. Each of those words covers a range of BPM rather than a single value. So every song has a BPM, and that BPM falls inside a named tempo.
How do I find the tempo of a song?
Drop the audio file onto the tool on this page and it measures the tempo in your browser, returning a BPM figure and how confident it is. If you have no file — you are working from a live performance, or a video — you can tap along in time on any tap-tempo tool, or count the beats in fifteen seconds and multiply by four, which gets you within a beat or two.
Is it free? Does my file get uploaded?
Free, with no account and no limit, and nothing is uploaded. Your browser decodes and analyses the file on your own device, which is why the tool still works if you disconnect from the internet after the page loads.
What tempo is Allegro?
Allegro conventionally means 120 to 156 BPM — fast and bright. The boundaries are not strict: markings are interpretive instructions from a composer to a performer rather than measurements, and the same marking has meant somewhat different speeds in different centuries. The table on this page gives the ranges in common use today.
The tempo it found is half what I expected. Why?
This is the most common result in tempo detection and it is not really an error. A pulse every half second is 120 BPM, and counting every second pulse is 60 BPM — both describe the same music correctly. The tool doubles readings below 80 BPM because recorded music overwhelmingly sits between 80 and 180, but a genuinely slow piece, or a track with a strong half-time feel, can still land on the other reading. If your number is out by exactly a factor of two, this is why.
Which songs are hardest to measure?
Anything without a steady grid: live-played drums that drift, rubato performances that deliberately push and pull, ambient or orchestral music with no percussive attack to lock onto, and songs whose tempo changes partway through. In those cases there is often no single true tempo, and a tool that returns a confident number is claiming more than it knows. This one labels each reading high, medium or estimated confidence instead.
You have the tempo. Want the video?
Attach a track and describe what you want in one message. An AI director storyboards it scene by scene, with the same character in every shot. Your first project's keyframes are free, so you see the whole storyboard before deciding to render.
Start your videoLooking for something else? BPM finder · Song key finder · AI music video generator