BPM Counter
BPM counter with two ways to get an answer: analyze an audio file, or tap the beat out yourself. File detection always lands between 90 and 180 BPM.
Runs entirely in your browser — your files and text never leave your device.
Drag & drop your file here, or
Analysis runs entirely on your device — nothing is uploaded. Works best on a clip with a steady beat (10–30 seconds is plenty).
Tap the button in time with the beat (the spacebar works too once it is focused). The estimate sharpens with every tap.
How to use
- Load a track under Audio file with the mode left on From file, then press Detect BPM. The button stays greyed out until a file is actually in there.
- Counting by ear instead? Hit Tap tempo along the top and tap the big pad on the strong beats. The spacebar works once the pad has focus.
- Reset wipes the run and drops Taps back to zero. Two taps is the minimum before any figure shows up at all, since the pad measures the gaps rather than the taps.
About this tool
Two ways to read a tempo live behind the same BPM counter, and they are good at opposite things. Load a track under Audio file, press Detect BPM, and the analyzer works it out for you. Switch the mode to Tap tempo and you get a big pad instead, with a running Tempo figure and a Taps count that firms up the longer you keep going.
The file side has one quirk worth knowing before you trust a number. It runs the audio through a 240 Hz low-pass first, so it is really following the kick and the bass rather than the whole mix, and it then folds every candidate tempo into a 90 to 180 BPM window by doubling or halving. A 75 BPM ballad comes back as 150. A 200 BPM hardcore track comes back as 100. The tap pad has no such window and will happily report 62 or 196.
I reach for it most when I am lining two tracks up for a playlist and want to know whether they are anywhere near each other. Other people use it to set a metronome, to pick a running cadence, to sanity-check a track before a remix, or to cut a video on the beat. Any of those only needs a number.
Reading the tempo is where it stops. To actually stretch a track to a different speed, the Audio Speed Changer is the tool you want, and the Tone Generator will give you a steady pulse to tap against.
Before you trust the number
- Automatic detection cannot report anything below 90 or above 180 BPM. Everything outside that window gets doubled or halved until it fits.
- The 240 Hz low-pass means a sparse arrangement with no kick and no bass line gives it very little to grab. You get a 'couldn't detect a steady tempo' message rather than a wrong answer, which is at least honest.
- A song that speeds up or slows down comes back as one averaged figure. There is no map of where the tempo moved.
- The tap pad averages every gap in the run, so a single late tap drags the whole number down. Reset and start again beats trying to tap your way back.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the detected BPM exactly half or double what I am hearing?
Because the analyzer is set to a 90 to 180 BPM window and octave-folds anything outside it. A slow 70 BPM ballad has its tempo doubled to 140 before you ever see it, and a 190 BPM track gets halved to 95. Both are the same tempo musically, so pick whichever multiple matches the way you count the track.
How many taps before the tap reading settles?
Two gets you a figure, because the pad needs one gap to measure. It averages every gap after that, so a couple of bars of steady tapping is usually where the number stops jumping around. Tap the downbeats rather than every eighth note or you will read double.
Will it open an M4A off my phone, or do I need to convert it first?
The picker takes anything the browser reports as audio, and decoding is handed straight to the browser's own audio decoder, so M4A, MP3 and WAV go in as they are. FLAC works in Chrome. A file that refuses to decode gives you an error rather than a wrong reading, and converting it to WAV clears that up.
The tap pad and the file detection disagree. Which do I believe?
Check whether they are octaves apart first, because 74 against 148 is one tempo counted two ways and neither is wrong. If they genuinely differ, go with the pad. You are hearing the beat that the low-pass and the peak-picking are struggling with, and for swung or live material that gap is real.
Should I trim the track before running detection?
It reads whatever you give it end to end, so a seven-minute file takes longer than a chorus does. The hint under the picker suggests 10 to 30 seconds and that really is enough. Cutting a quiet intro or an ambient outro also stops those stretches pulling the estimate around. Audio Cutter will do the trim.
Why is the Detect BPM button greyed out?
It is disabled until there is a file in the Audio file box, and it disables itself again while a detection is running, with the label switching to Detecting, so you cannot start two at once. If a drag and drop leaves it grey, the drop did not land; click the field and pick the file instead.
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