You have a .gp5 file and no Guitar Pro licence. You do not need one to read it. A GP5 reader that runs in the browser opens the file, shows the tab and the standard notation, and plays it back — on a laptop, a tablet or a phone, with nothing to install.
What a .gp5 file actually is
GP5 is the file format of Guitar Pro 5, and it is still one of the most common tab formats on the internet. Unlike a PDF or a screenshot of a tab, a .gp5 file stores the music as data: every note, its rhythm, the string and fret, the tuning, the tempo, and usually several instrument tracks. That is what makes it playable. A reader is not displaying a picture — it is rendering the score from that data.
Newer Guitar Pro versions save .gpx and .gp files. A good reader opens those too, along with MusicXML, the open format most notation programs can export.
How to open a GP5 file in your browser, free
- Register for free on the Exerzisor demo. You can create your own school there and test everything with your own files.
- Upload the file as a sheet.
.gp5,.gpx,.gpand MusicXML are accepted. - Open it. The file is rendered as an interactive score: tab, standard notation, or both.
- Press play. The built-in synthesizer plays the score, and the cursor follows along bar by bar.
It runs in any modern browser on computers, tablets and phones, and the iPad is fully supported. There is no app to download and nothing to convert.
What you can do with it once it is open
- Switch the view: score, tab, both, or chords. Useful when a student is moving from tab toward standard notation.
- Pick the tracks: when a file has several instruments, each track is a labelled button you can toggle on or off, so you can hide the drums and keep the guitar.
- Slow it down: playback speed goes from 0.25× to 2×, in 5% steps.
- Loop a passage: drag across the bars you want, and the loop snaps to the beat. Everything outside it is dimmed.
- Transpose: shift the key up or down.
- Zoom and print: zoom up to 300%, pinch-to-zoom on tablets, or print a clean copy to paper or PDF.
The online tab player guide goes through the practice workflow — slow down, loop, speed back up — in more detail.
GP5 reader vs. Guitar Pro itself
Be clear about what a reader is for. Guitar Pro is a full notation editor: you write, edit and engrave tabs in it. A browser reader is for opening and practising from a file someone else has written. If you only ever need to read, hear and loop tabs, you do not need the editor. If you transcribe music yourself, you still will.
Exerzisor is not affiliated with Guitar Pro or Arobas Music. It simply opens their file format, using the open-source alphaTab engine.
For guitar teachers
The reason a GP5 reader exists inside a teaching platform is the student who receives your tab and cannot open it. Attach the file to a lesson, and the student opens it on whatever device they practise on. You can point at bars 17 to 24 instead of writing "work on the solo" — see assigning practice homework for why that matters.
Free to try, free to run yourself
Testing on the demo server costs nothing: register, create your own school, upload your own files. If you like it, you can install Exerzisor on your own server for free, or ask us to help set it up.