Short answer: if you already have the song's .txt, stay on UltraStar. The game was never the problem — building the file is.
If you landed here because ultrastardeluxe.org won't open, the
program is fine. That address answers 410 and lands on a
parked domain. The living project is at usdx.eu and in the
UltraStar-Deluxe/USDX repository on GitHub, which had a commit in
August 2026. The song archive is still at usdb.animux.de, and the
community — UltraStar, Vocaluxe and Performous in one place — lives in a
Discord of a little over 2,600 people.
A lot of people search for an "UltraStar alternative" thinking the project folded. It didn't. If a broken link is what brought you here, the fix is a new address, not a new program.
UltraStar plays a .txt file in its own format: every syllable
with a start beat, a duration and a note pitch. It doesn't generate
that file — it plays it.
As long as the song you want is on usdb, that's invisible: download it, drop the folder in your library, sing. The cost shows up the day the song isn't there, and then the list is this:
Anyone who has done it knows the number: about an hour per song, and more than that the first time. It isn't hard. It's slow, and it's the only thing standing between "I wanted to sing that one" and "I'm singing that one".
That's why the right question is almost never "which program replaces UltraStar". It's "what saves me the hour of building the file". Two different problems, and switching games doesn't solve the second one.
You upload a file that's already yours and it hands back the song ready to sing: it splits the vocal from the instrumental, looks for the officially published lyrics and shows the match percentage against the audio (if it doesn't match, it says so and falls back to transcription), measures the pitch of every syllable and builds the chart. It runs in the browser: nothing to install, no graphics card needed.
And the part that matters to someone already on UltraStar: you can
download the generated .txt, named in the "Artist - Title"
pattern. The download is the chart only — the audio doesn't come with it, and
you already have the audio, because you're the one who uploaded it. If the
transcription got a line wrong or a note came out an octave high, there's a
lyrics-and-timing editor inside the site, and the server keeps a copy of the
original file before the first save.
| UltraStar Deluxe | StarSinger | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | free, open source | Free: 3 songs/month · Pro: US$ 3.99/month |
| Where it runs | your computer | the browser, our server |
| Where the karaoke comes from | a .txt you download or build | generated from the file you upload |
| Building the lyrics | by hand, ~1 h per song | automatic, 2 to 3 min |
| Timing quality | better, made by hand | automatic, fails on screamed vocals |
| Privacy | nothing leaves the machine | the file goes to the server |
| Pitch scoring | yes | yes, note by note |
| Two singers | yes | yes, two separate microphones |
| Lyrics and timing editor | yes | yes |
| Installation | program, audio and setup | none |
Stay on UltraStar if the songs you sing are on usdb, if you don't want to pay anything, or if the file can't leave your machine. In those three cases there's no reason to switch, and any page saying otherwise is selling.
Use a generator when the song doesn't exist ready-made anywhere and the alternative is spending the night in an editor. Accepting two things: the lyrics come from transcription and you'll be reviewing them, and the file goes up to a server.
And you can use both. Generate here, download the .txt and sing
it on your own UltraStar is a legitimate route — it's the same format.
It isn't dead. The address ultrastardeluxe.org is gone — it answers HTTP 410 and lands on a parked domain. The project continues at usdx.eu and in the UltraStar-Deluxe/USDX repository on GitHub, with a commit in August 2026, and the song archive is still at usdb.animux.de.
There is, and that's what separates the two categories. UltraStar plays a finished lyrics file but doesn't generate one; an automatic generator does the vocal separation, the transcription and the timing from audio you already have. What it can't do is match the quality of hand-made timing.
You can: StarSinger lets you download the .txt in UltraStar format, named Artist - Title. The download is the chart only, without the audio — the audio is the file you uploaded yourself. Review the lyrics before playing: automatic transcription makes mistakes.
It's free and open source, with no quota and no subscription, and nothing on this page changes that. What it costs you isn't money, it's the time to build the lyrics file when the song isn't in the archive.
StarSinger does those three steps for you. You upload a file you already have, it separates the vocals, transcribes the lyrics with per-syllable timing and gives you a karaoke that plays in the browser, with pitch scoring. You can try it without paying: the Free plan does 3 songs a month and asks for no card — the vertical video comes out watermarked. Past that, Pro is US$ 3.99 a month.
The caveats, because they're real: the transcription gets words wrong on screamed or heavily distorted vocals, and processing takes 2 to 3 minutes per song with the cloud accelerator on, and over 10 when it is down.
Try it free