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Tap Tempo BPM Counter
Tap along to any song and read its tempo instantly. Works with your mouse, your finger or the spacebar — and you can hear the tempo played back before you use it.
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Found your tempo? Generate a drum loop that locks to it.
Generate drum loops with Drumloop AIHow to find the BPM of a song by tapping
- Play the song you want to measure — on any device, out loud or in headphones.
- Tap the pad in time with the beat you feel as the pulse. Use the Space bar if you prefer the keyboard.
- Keep tapping for at least eight beats. The reading settles as you go and the steadiness label tells you when it is reliable.
- Hit play to hear your tempo clicked back, or send it straight to the full metronome.
What tempo is your genre?
Once you have a number, this is the fastest way to sanity-check it. If you tapped 92 BPM on something that sounds like boom bap, you are almost certainly right. If you tapped 92 on a drum and bass track, you tapped the snare rather than the hi-hat and the real tempo is 184.
| Genre | Range | Typical | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hip hop | 80–100 | 90 | Boom bap sits at the low end; modern rap creeps toward 100. |
| Boom bap | 85–95 | 90 | Swung 16ths and a heavy backbeat define the pocket. |
| Trap | 130–150 | 140 | Written at 140 but felt at 70 — the halftime illusion. |
| Lo-fi | 70–90 | 80 | Deliberately behind the beat, often with swing. |
| R&B | 60–90 | 75 | Slow tempos with dense 16th-note hi-hat work. |
| Reggaeton | 90–100 | 95 | The dembow pattern locks to this narrow window. |
| Rock | 110–140 | 120 | Straight eighths, backbeat on 2 and 4. |
| Metal | 140–200 | 160 | Double kick and blast beats push the top end. |
| Funk | 95–115 | 105 | Sixteenth-note ghost notes make it feel faster. |
| Jazz (swing) | 120–200 | 140 | Counted in swung eighths on the ride. |
| House | 120–130 | 125 | Four-on-the-floor; 128 is the club standard. |
| Techno | 125–150 | 135 | Faster and drier than house, with off-beat hats. |
| Drum & bass | 160–180 | 174 | 174 is the genre default; the bass implies half that. |
| Dubstep | 138–142 | 140 | Written at 140 with the snare landing on beat 3. |
| Drill | 138–145 | 140 | Sliding 808s over a halftime feel. |
| Pop | 100–130 | 120 | Radio pop clusters tightly around 120. |
| Afrobeats | 100–118 | 108 | Syncopated kick with a triplet-leaning shaker. |
| Ballad | 60–80 | 70 | Slow enough that subdivisions carry the pulse. |
How tap tempo works
Every time you tap, the tool records the moment in milliseconds. The gap between two consecutive taps is one beat, and tempo is just that gap converted into beats per minute: 60,000 ÷ the gap in milliseconds. Tap twice with exactly half a second between the taps and you get 120 BPM.
A single gap is a fragile measurement, because human timing wobbles by a few milliseconds every beat. So instead of using the last gap, the tool keeps the most recent eight and averages them. The more you tap, the more the random error cancels out.
Averaging alone is not enough, though. One badly mistimed tap — a sneeze, a scroll, a missed beat — would drag the average a long way off. Before averaging, the tool finds the median gap and discards any interval more than 40% away from it, so a fumble is ignored rather than smeared across the result.
The steadiness label reports how much your taps varied around the average. "Rock solid" means your intervals were within about 2% of each other, which is tighter than most people manage without practice, and a strong sign the number is trustworthy.
When tapping beats automatic detection
Automatic tempo detection — like our BPM finder — is faster when you have the audio file to hand. Tapping wins in three situations: when the music is playing somewhere you cannot capture it, such as a rehearsal room or a record shop; when the track has rubato, a slow build or a tempo change that confuses an algorithm; and when you want the tempo of something that has no clear transients at all, like a legato string pad. Tapping also lets you deliberately choose the pulse you care about, which is the one thing automatic detection cannot do for you.
Frequently asked questions
How do I count the BPM of a song manually?
Count the beats you would clap along to for 15 seconds and multiply by four, or count for 30 seconds and multiply by two. It works, but it is easy to lose count and the result rounds to the nearest four (or two) beats. Tapping along instead averages many beats at once and gives you a fractional reading, which is why this tool is more accurate for anything you intend to produce or practise to.
How many times do I need to tap to get an accurate BPM?
Two taps produce a number, but it will be rough. Eight taps is the sweet spot — the tool averages the most recent eight intervals and throws out any tap that lands more than 40% away from the median, so one fumble does not ruin the reading. If the steadiness label says "Rock solid" or "Steady", you can trust the number.
Why does the BPM keep changing while I tap?
The reading is a rolling average, so it follows you. Small drift of one or two BPM is normal human timing. Large jumps usually mean you are switching between tapping quarter notes and eighth notes — pick one pulse and stay with it. If the number settles at roughly double or half what you expected, see the next answer.
The tool says 174 BPM but the song feels like 87. Which is right?
Both, and this is one of the most common points of confusion in tempo. A drum and bass track written at 174 BPM has a bass and snare pattern that feels like 87. Producers call this halftime. Use whichever number matches the grid you are working on: 174 if you are lining up hi-hats, 87 if you are writing the bassline. Tapping the snare rather than the hi-hat generally gives you the halftime figure.
What BPM is most music?
Around 120 BPM is the single most common tempo in popular music, and human beings tend to tap at roughly 120 when asked to keep an arbitrary beat. Genres cluster tightly, though: hip hop sits near 90, house near 125, and drum and bass near 174. The chart further down this page lists typical ranges for eighteen genres.
Can I hear the tempo I tapped?
Yes. Press the play button after tapping and the tool clicks your tempo back at you so you can check it against the source before committing. For time signatures, subdivisions, accents and a speed trainer, open the full online metronome — the tempo carries across.
Does this work on a phone?
Yes. Tap the pad with your finger; the tap target fills most of the screen on narrow widths. Everything runs locally in the browser, so it works offline once the page has loaded and no audio or data is sent anywhere.
Can I get drum loops at the tempo I found?
Yes — that is what Drumloop AI does. Describe the groove you want and it generates an original, royalty-free drum loop at exactly that BPM. You can also browse the free drum loop library, which is organised by tempo and genre.
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You have the tempo. Now get the groove.
Describe the beat in your head and Drumloop AI generates it — original, royalty-free, at exactly the BPM you just tapped.