Ultimate Guitar Reviews 1,948

Company charged me and would not refund. In my experience most companies will refund you fully if you have mistakenly allowed a recurring subscription payment to be taken. However, they have flatly refused and tried to offer me “extras” instead. Not good enough and would not recommend in any way.

I received a notification that I had renewed my subscription. I had not set it to auto-renew and never received an email that it was going to auto renew. I contacted UG instantly, even before the pending charge had cleared. They refused to cancel the subscription and refund the charge. I was given an option that they would keep 1 month fee and refund $40 out of the original $64.99.
I had back and forth emails with Aydar who was insulting, dismissive and definitely made me realize I will never do business with them again.
I will also go out of my way now to make people realize that UG has a deliberate policy of auto-charging people and not refunding their money. They also make it next to impossible to cancel a subscription. Just take a look online at the issues everyone is facing.
I'm now on my way to my bank to dispute the charge and get my refund. I will be disputing it due to fraud, and have plenty of evidence to back this up. One only needs to do a quick google search to see that this is a systemic problem with UG. Hopefully they will get enough complaints that it will stop payment processors from doing business with them.

I would give zero if I could. I paid for a subscription after being given an offer, when the payment came out it was double the amount quoted. I got in touch with customer services asking if I could have the difference refunded so that I paid the right amount. What followed were 2+ weeks of rude, ignorant replies with huge gaps between responses.
I asked for this to be escalated multiple times, and when I finally was it was pretty much the same.

It started off fine with an apology, but it then went to 6 days with no response, finally an apology for no response, and then another 4 days and counting without response.

The app is great, works well and all is good, but fraudulent transactions, customer service teams who make the situation worse and managers who don’t care make ultimate guitar impossible to deal with.

There are plenty of other companies out there who don’t treat customers like this.

****edit as reply***

My username is caolanmoore0 and I have contacted your customer service team, I have spoken to anton, sergey and others.

BE VERY CAREFUL!!! I got a subscription with confidence knowing I was able to cancel within 7 days and be charged nothing if they didnt have the material I was looking to find. Once I bought it I saw they had very limited library of what I needed and decided to cancel and find it elsewhere. Apparently although they advertise "free" trial, They put something about a charge in their small print in their "terms of service". I cancelled after ONE HOUR after realizing they didn't have the content I needed. 7 days later I was still charged 59.99 even though I received a confirmation email of my cancellation. They said I cancelled only a portion of the subscription. Shame on Ultimate Guitar for their severe lack of transparency and advertising a no risk "free" trial subscription but then putting a loophole to the supposed "free" subscription in their terms of service. I am super disappointed and feel taken advantage of for not reading their "terms of service". Just plan on a $59.99 charge even if you cancel the same day. Make sure you read ALL the small print so as not to be deceived like me. Sad businesses like this will forever make me leary of businees offering a true free trial. I will never fall for that again . I forwarded ultimate guitar my confirmation email that my subscription was cancelled and asked them to refund my money. They responded by saying that was only a "partial" cancellation per their small print in their terms of service. They are unwilling to give me a refund.

update
*They responded below by asking to contact their support team. I had already contacted their support team at the time of this review. They are still unwilling to refund the full amount siting their terms of service once again.

I would not even give this company one star, if given the choice to leave that blank. The autorenewal is shady,especially since they make it difficult to cancel. I was trying to follow cancel instructions, which they have articles on. Articles? Just have "cancel subscription"! That's it! Simple! But I go to my subscriptions and I am not subscribed to any of the courses/programs, so I cannot cancel, but I still get charged $59.99. If not this year, I want it cancelled for next year. I do not want to deal with such shady practices.

Signing up for the service can be tricky. I inadvertently signed up for both Pro and Courses+Songbooks. When I found charges for both on my credit card statement, UG refused to refund the Courses subscription because it was past 14 days. They showed no flexibility or concern with my situation. I also find that their music (lyrics and chords) are very clunky. Chords do no align with changes in the song. Print versions cannot be reformatted to fit to one or two pages. Haven't gone into Courses and Songbooks because I didn't want that in the first place

Subscribed to CHECK OUT the service, you have to enter your credit card details. Even though I've cancelled WITHIN the trial period I still got 100 euro deducted from my bank. After many emails back and forth they still refuse to refund because "I" did not cancel the extra service (songbook or whatever) THEY added to my account without my knowledge. Absolute garbage service, worthless.

Very poor customer service:
I joined in 2020 and in the beginning it was an easy place to get tabs, chords etc. for songs you want to learn to play. In 2025 they raised their subscription by almost $30.00 for the Pro. I cancelled my auto renewal and the result was I was "paused" I could still access my tabs and I assumed that was through to my end date then it would cancel my membership. Nope. Come August 3, 2025 it charged my account on the auto-renewal. When I tried to contact I provided my name, email an cell as requested, no one called me back. They did send an email and told me I had 3 options all of which cost me $$. They claimed I never cancelled but instead "I" chose pause. Why would I do that, of course I cancelled the auto-renew, the option it then provides you is to pause. No other explanation. I emailed back and forth stating my discontent and basically they said "I did not cancel" and that was that. You can't talk to a person at all, period.

You can get almost any lesson on youtube for free. Lyrics are a google away. Why pay $59.95 to get a PDF?

Great Tabs and chord charts, I enjoy my weekly downloads immensely. Keep it up guys.

Ultimate Guitar!!! Thank you, Team, for aiding in my request to stop my subscription when you realized I had joined by mistake. You didn't quibble, just heard me out and graciously and quickly refunded my money. As a music director of a small town Methodist Church in west Texas, I was not sure about the "big guy" company. You were great! My highest recommendation to all guitar players...THIS is the place to come!! Great product! Wonderful team of folks to help you!!
Thank you!!! Muse Team
and especially Anton Kapichnikov!!

Ultimate guitar has always been a "open source" / user generated content platform, it's fair that you have cost associated with hosting a website, I'm sure that could be covered with a (very) small subscription for users and ad revenue, but no one wants to use your web app. Let us download the tabs like before !

I had a sub for 2 years. I really like the product although the usability of the Windows interface could be improved.

The low score is for appalling customer service. A while ago I emailed customer support to point out that on a tab page they had a link to 'get Tonebridge' which is effects software, and doesn't run on Windows. I also pointed out that the sequence of links behind it deceived me into downloading a different software, Muse, which happens to be owned by the same company. I received no reply. I posted about this on the forum and my post was removed. I posted again and it was removed again. I messaged both the forum moderator and support to ask why, and received no reply. As far as I know the link to Tonebridge is still there with the misleading links after it.

Most recently my auto-renewal was blocked by my bank. The transaction was two weeks before the expiry of my subscription and I had received no warning email. Despite the fact that my account said there was time left, I could not access my tabs. I messaged support, and received no reply, ever. I posted a message on the forum, and it was removed. I posted a message on the UG subreddit, sent my username as requested to a support person there, and when I followed up that I'd had no response, my message was deleted.

Whilst unable to access my still valid account I was offered renewal for about £36. A couple of days later it was £25, then went back to £36. It's now £99 which is supposed to be a 75% off offer.

There are plenty of complaints on Reddit about subscriptions going wrong and not being able to get a meaningful response from support.

As others have complained UG appear to be aggressive in their pricing and selling methods, and whilst it's a good product their customer service makes it something I can't support. A change in attitude would make such a difference to me and many others.

Edit: It's ironic that in response to this review and me saying that I'm leaving because I've received no response from the support team on multiple occasions, that UG in their reply suggest I contact the support team. That's exactly what I tried to do.

Nearly all of the content is user generated. The reward is to place print tabs and download guitar pro tabs behind a paywall. Shame that you didn't do this from the start because nobody would have posted tabs. I will never post one again. Exploiting free hard work is shameful.

Seems like they removed the ability to download tabs to push their sh*tty, outdated browser-based tab app. Absolute usless mugs.

On July 12, 2025, I purchased a one-year Ultimate Guitar Pro subscription and submitted a cancellation request later the same day. I explicitly requested a full refund based on the refund clause publicly available in their Terms of Service at the time.

The Terms of Service then stated (Section 4.1):

“If you cancel a subscription within 14 days of purchase of a longer subscription (quarterly, semiannual, annual, or biennial), you may be eligible for a partial or full refund. Your account will not auto-renew for any recurring periodic charges at the end of the subscription term. As a courtesy to you, we will convert your Account to a free account at the end of the 30-day period.”

This clause clearly allowed for a full refund within the 14-day period, and I acted well within that timeframe. Furthermore, Canadian consumer protection laws, which apply to this transaction, support the right to a full refund for digital subscriptions canceled shortly after purchase, particularly when no substantial use or download has occurred.

After my request, I was asked by customer service to point to the relevant clause in the Terms of Service. By that time, however, the clause had been silently modified to a narrower policy that allowed only a partial refund:

“If you cancel your subscription during the first fourteen (14) days of your subscription term you will receive a refund of the difference between the then-in-effect annual fee and the then-current monthly fee.”

This change appears to have occurred between July 14 and 15, 2025, without notification, and the displayed revision date remained June 15, 2021. No versioning or notice was provided to reflect the policy change.

I have retained both versions of the refund clause and the timeline of changes. These are being submitted as part of a credit card dispute and formal complaints to the appropriate Canadian consumer protection authorities.

UPDATE:
The response provided below by Ultimate Guitar appears to be a generic reply seen on many negative reviews on this platform. In practice, communication with customer service has been unproductive. Messages are often ignored, and follow-up emails eventually go unanswered.

I encourage other users to also review the complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau for Ultimate Guitar USA, LLC located in San Francisco.
If necessary, consider submitting your own complaint through that channel.

I don't see a way to communicate with the Administration to resolve issues. My new subscription is not being recognized. I am constantly being asked to pay for a subscription that I have already paid. This makes using the site almost impossible. I probably did a new subscription with a different social medial account and I am logged in with the original account.

I would appreciate help to resolve this issue.

Obribado!

Ultimate Guitar is an amazing resource that I have been using daily for years. It is packed with features to help guitar players from beginners to professionals.

Your maximum scroll rate of 1.5X is often too slow, i.e.; it doesn't keep pace with the song. One should be able to increase the scroll rate up to say 2.5X so the pacing does not fall behind.
Seems like an easy fix and I'm sure you've heard about this from others.
Thx,
David

Decades of reliable service on a safe site!

The way Ultimate Guitar is set up makes it easy to play songs whether you're a beginner or a touring guitarist. They also have bass tabs, etc. You can learn from their lessons online. Use the website for free or pay for whatever instruction you might need. I love Ultimate Guitar