Is it worth paying for…

Is it worth paying for Ringtone Maker apps?

Last reviewed September 2026. Pricing and plans change; check Ringtone Maker apps's own site for current figures.

Short answer: No. Trimming thirty seconds out of a song is a solved problem that costs nothing to do, and the App Store charts are full of apps that will do it and then charge a weekly subscription to let you use the result. The free tool here trims, fades and exports a WAV or an MP3, enforces Apple's own length limits, and tells you the free GarageBand route for installing it. The one thing the paid apps genuinely have is a tap that installs the tone, and that exists because Apple does not let anyone else do it.

Where the paywall sits

Look at what the charts actually contain. Ringtone Maker – RingTune sat at number 28 in Music in the Australian store in September 2026, rated 4.4 from about 9,400 ratings, with in app purchases listed from A$3.99 up to A$56.99. Its own description offers a free trial that renews automatically, and its reviews are full of people describing that as a trap. Others in the same list, such as Ringtones: for iPhone, sell weekly subscriptions from about US$4.99 after a three day trial. One app reported by its own users charges US$7.99 a week.

A weekly subscription is the tell. Nobody makes a ringtone every week. The pricing is built for someone who installs the app once, makes one tone, forgets, and keeps paying. And the paywall sits on the last step rather than the work: several of these apps will happily cut the audio for free and then ask for money to install it or even to see the instructions.

To be fair to them, there is a real reason the last step is worth something. Apple does not allow any app except its own to write a ringtone into your phone's settings, so these apps have built their own routes around it, and that is the part you would be paying for.

What the free version here does

Opens a song, a voice note or a video, since only the audio is read. MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG and the audio inside an MP4 or MOV all work, depending on your browser.
A waveform you drag across to pick a section, with handles you can nudge by a tenth of a second, and typed start and end times when you want to be exact.
Apple's limits enforced rather than explained: 40 seconds for a ringtone, 30 for an alert or text tone, or no limit if you just want a clip.
Fade in and fade out, which matters more than it sounds: a ringtone that stops mid note sounds broken when the call is answered.
Evens out the volume, optional mono to halve the file, and a preview that plays exactly what the file will contain, looped if you want.
Downloads a WAV or an MP3 at 128, 192 or 256 kbps, encoded in your browser. No watermark, no account, no limit on how many you make.
Written instructions for both phones, including the free GarageBand route on iPhone and the Finder drag on a Mac.

Open Ringtone Maker — free, no account

When paying might still make sense

You want to tap one button and have the tone appear in your iPhone's settings. Apple reserves that, so an app with its own workaround is the only way, and the GarageBand detour here is genuinely more fiddly.
You want a library of ready made tones to browse rather than a song of your own to cut.
You want per contact tones and wallpapers managed in one place, which is what the bigger apps in that chart are really selling.
You are on a phone with no computer nearby and no patience for a two app dance. Paying a few dollars once to save an afternoon is a fair trade; paying every week is not.

How this one stays free

It runs entirely in your browser. There is no server to pay for, nothing is uploaded, and the code is open source. There is nothing to cancel because there was nothing to sign up for.

Ringtone Maker apps is a trademark of its owner. This page compares products and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Ringtone Maker apps.