The ukulele’s affordability and popularity have inspired many to start playing. To make your learning journey smoother, we’ll help you pick up the best ukulele for beginners right here.
Best Ukulele For Beginners Under $50 | Best Ukulele For Beginners Under $50 Product Image | Product Title | *GEARANK | **Sources | Check Prices |
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Best Ukulele For Beginners Under $100 | Best Ukulele For Beginners Under $100 Product Image | Product Title | *GEARANK | **Sources | Check Prices |
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*Gearank = Rating score out of 100.
**Sources = Number of gear owner and user opinions analyzed for these product Gearank Ratings.
Research Process: How Gearank Works
The Ukulele’s compact size, easy playability, and affordability make it a great starter instrument, especially in the sub-$50 price range.
But with so many options available, finding quality instruments amidst the many cheap ukuleles can be daunting.
This is where we come in with an updated look at the best ukulele for beginners, based on current reviews, ratings, and our expertise.
Here you can see which among the many budget-friendly ukuleles are worth getting, be it for jump-starting your musical journey, or for use as a portable beater instrument.
Whether you’re buying a uke for a young upstart or you are curious to try one yourself, this guide is for you.
The Best Ukulele For Beginners Under $50
Pros:
- Kid-friendy design
- Toy-like but plays well
- Compact
- Might be too small for older kids
- Design is really made for kids
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First Act is known for kid-friendly instruments, and this ukulele follows their tried and tested formula of utilizing familiar kiddie brands to better appeal to youngsters. This good ukulele is tied to the educational show called Blippi, as can be seen on the distinct graphic on its top.
This ukulele comes in a small 20″ soprano size that is easy on the hands of kids. The strings have enough tension, and the action isn’t high. It’s a great beginner ukulele for kids with small hands who have yet to develop finger strength.
And while it does look like a toy, this mini ukulele tunes and plays like a real instrument, with its nylon strings, guitar-style tuners and bridge, and good build quality.
Given Blippi’s popularity among kids, this is an easy pick for gift-givers and receivers alike. Reviews are mostly written by satisfied parents who gifted this to their kids, who then received it with wide smiles. Aesthetics is its main strength but it also gets commended for its build quality, some even report that it can withstand toddler use, with some reasonable guidance.
While many are happy with its compact and lightweight profile, some find it too small. And while the Blippi graphic may appeal to toddlers and young kids, it may not appeal as much to older children.
Give a child the gift of music with this affordable and kid-friendly instrument.
- Size: 20 inches
- Top: Not specified
- Neck: Not specified
- Fingerboard: Not specified
- Weight: 1.3 lbs
Vangoa 21-Inch Soprano Ukulele Mahogany
This good beginner ukulele includes a tuner, capo, music sheet, extra strings, picks, and a padded case. With an all-mahogany body and polished finish, it produces a bright tone and accommodates small hands. It’s playable for kids and adults.
Pros:
- Comes in full-package
- Well-built and aesthetically-pleasing
- Good sound quality
- Strings can get out of tune initially
- Original strings sound too bright
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For any beginner’s uke, you’d want something that has the whole package so you won’t have to go back and forth buying a tuner or a bag. The Vangona Soprano Uke covered–everything you need to get started.
This great starter ukulele includes a tuner, capo, a music sheet/manual, some extra strings, and picks. Most of all, it comes with a padded, hard ukulele case so you can carry it around.
The build quality is what you would expect from a miniaturized version of acoustic guitars. Having a polished finish, it’s an all-mahogany body that produces a bright tone. For an affordable uke, it also has a good aesthetic value that’s also good for display as well.
Brighter tones aside, it’s very playable and accommodates small hands primarily, but even older kids and adults will enjoy playing ukulele with the feel of this instrument.
The only thing to be aware of is that the stock strings tend to sound too bright and can get out of tune the first few sessions. Some have reported trying to replace the strings and the issue gets resolved easily.
Whether you’re going for the soprano, concert, or the 26-inch tenor (the most expensive version), it’s a great beginner ukulele for kids and intermediates alike.
- Size: 21, 23, and 26 inches
- Top: Mahogany
- Neck: Mahogany
- Fingerboard: Walnut
- Weight: Varies depending on size
Kmise KMU21S 21 Inch Mahogany Soprano Ukulele
This great ukulele is a 21″ soprano with a mahogany body. It has a nice finish and good playability with low action and no buzz. The tone is full yet bright, not toy-like. It includes essential accessories like extra carbon nylon strings, a clip-on tuner, and a gig bag.
Pros:
- Great value for money
- Extra accessories included
- Clean and clear sound
- Compact size can be off putting for some
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This Soprano Ukulele from Kmise gives you all the essentials that make a ukulele pleasant to play and listen to.
The body is made from mahogany, and craftsmanship is quite high for the price. Everything about the instrument feels polished, ensuring a comfortable playing experience.
Tuning stability and accuracy are ensured by its pure copper closed tuners with 18:1 tuning ratio. This also also makes tuning quicker and easier.
This ukulele ships with carbon nylon strings that run through its 15-fret fingerboard. Together with its compact mahogany body, you get a lively sound, that’s quite good for the price range.
Finally, it comes with accessories which include a gig bag, a tuner, a strap, and an extra set of strings.
- Size: 21 inches
- Top: Mahogany
- Neck: Not specified
- Fingerboard: Walnut
- Weight: 1.5 lbs
The Best Ukulele For Beginners Under $100
Kala MK-SS Makala Shark Soprano Ukulele
This good beginner ukulele features a shark-shaped bridge, a Philippine Mahogany top, and composite back and sides. It comes in six solid colors and offers a sweet tone with good resonance. Easy to play, it suits both kids and adults, though it includes only a basic bag.
Pros:
- Different-colored designs
- Sweet sound
- Decent craftsmanship with great value
- Paint can chip easily
- Strings might need restretching
- The bag doesn’t offer padded protection
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Kala said this ukulele is for casual players who want to “sink their teeth into” playing.
The MK-SS Makala is designed with a shark-shaped bridge, and it features a top made of Philippine Mahogany. The back and sides are made of composite material to withstand accidental bumps. They didn’t specify exactly what the composite material is.
This good beginner ukulele offers 6 solid color varieties as well so you could pick and choose what best expresses your taste.
For this price range, I was surprised at how well it sounds–a sweet tone with good resonance. It’s also easy to the hands that kids and adults would be able to pick up.
It doesn’t include any accessories except for the bag, however. There aren’t any pads either and it’s just meant to carry around the uke. I’ve also seen a few reports on the painting getting chipped over and the strings needing restretching.
Overall, this is a cool ukulele with a nice shark design made for beginners.
- Size: 21 Inches
- Top: Philippine Mahogany
- Neck: Mahogany
- Fingerboard: Rosewood
- Weight: 1.5 lbs
Donner DUC-1 Concert Ukulele
This great beginner ukulele, the Donner DUC-1, offers good build quality with a laminated wood top, mahogany body, and rosewood fingerboard. It includes a tuner, strap, picks, extra strings, and a hard case. It produces a rich tone and has good fret intonation, making it a decent starter uke.
Pros:
- Good intonation
- Comes with accessories
- Great for beginners
- Untunes easily at times
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Among the beginner ukuleles out here, the Donner DUC-1 best represents “going affordable yet good quality.”
The DUC-1 is a concert ukulele that has good built quality from top to bottom–you get a top material made of high-pressure, laminated wood. It has a mahogany body with a fingerboard made of rosewood.
Donner gave you the whole package by including a tuner, a uke strap, picks, extra Aquila nylon strings, and a polishing/cleaning cloth. However, what I wanted to highlight is their hard ukulele case. For a price under $70, this is more than what you could get. More high-end ones like Cordoba 15CM don’t provide you with a gig bag.
This great beginner ukulele surprisingly produces a rich tone even for its price point. It’s not super warm or carries with it a solid low tone, but it’s a pleasant resonance. The intonation of the frets is also aligned with no issues when fretting them across. It’s all
When you first buy this, however, you might need to play it a few times so that the strings adjust accordingly. There aren’t any issues with the tuning pegs or the neck, but it’s something to keep in mind.
Donner ukuleles also have soprano, tenor, and even left-handed options to best suit one’s hand size and playing style. It’s truly a decent starter uke worth checking out.
Donner is a popular brand that offers other instruments for cheap. They offer acoustic guitar models, electric guitars, keyboards and more.
- Size: Concert (23-inches)
- Top: Laminated wood
- Neck: Mahogany
- Fingerboard: Rosewood
- Weight: 2.64 lbs
Kala KA-MK-P Makala Pineapple Soprano Ukulele
This mini ukulele, the Kala KA-MK-P, features a mahogany body and neck with a walnut fingerboard. Its beginner-friendly action and string tension suit smaller hands. Praised for its sound and affordability, it’s ideal for young players, despite lacking accessories and having a thick neck.
Pros:
- Good sounding uke
- Great playability
- Ideal for young players
- Produces a relatively warmer sound
- Thick neck
- Doesn’t come with accessories
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The Kala KA-MK-P is one of our last recommended ukuleles for beginners on this list. It’s an entry-level “pineapple” shape soprano ukulele with mahogany body. The neck is also crafted from mahogany and is fitted with a 12-fret walnut fingerboard.
Being an entry-level musical instrument, the action and tension of the strings are meant to be beginner-friendly. The narrow nuts and string spacing fit smaller hand sizes.
This ukulele produces a good sound, some even comparing it positively against ones that are priced two or three times higher. But the best thing about it is its affordability, comfortable size, and playability, which makes it ideal for younger players.
The only drawback I could think of is probably the lack of accessories and the c-neck being a bit thick.
For the money, it’s hard to beat the value of the Kala KA-MK-P as one of the best ukuleles for beginners out there.
- Size: Soprano (21 inches)
- Top: Mahogany
- Neck: Mahogany
- Fingerboard: Rosewood
- Weight: 1 lb
Things to Consider When Buying a Great Beginner Ukulele
To make the process of buying a bit easier for you, we’ve collected a handful of things that can help you get the best ukuleles in this price range. This is ideal for beginners, and even for experienced players who are looking for a portable and affordable addition to their tool kit.
Geared vs. Friction Tuners
While friction tuners are becoming increasingly less common, there are still cheaper instruments that utilize this design. Basically, friction tuners hold a string through friction. You pull the tuning peg away from the headstock a bit, turn the tuner, and then push it back down. This design is problematic since it’s really easy for the string to lose said tension.
The ukes that have included a tuner in this guide are geared tuners–they hold the string’s tension with a gear. Should you choose to go with a different uke, make sure that it has geared tuners before you buy it. This is a really easy thing to check for. All you have to do is look on the back of your ukes neck and check to see whether or not there’s a gear (or a little metal box near where you tune your ukulele).
Still, given the price range, don’t expect cheap geared tuners to be as reliable as the ones on more expensive ukuleles. As you’ll see above, tuning stability is a common issue among cheap ukuleles in general.
Body Size
We went over different ukulele sizes in depth in our article The Different Ukulele Sizes Explained, so we’re just going to briefly gloss over the subject here. Basically, the bigger a uke is the warmer (more bass and mid frequencies) it will sound and the louder it will be.
The two biggest sizes (tenor ukuleles and baritone ukuleles) don’t sound as traditional as the smaller sizes. Tenor ukes, however, are much more common and less expensive than baritone ukes.
In your ukulele journey, you’ll frequently encounter concert and soprano ukes more frequently. Soprano ukuleles dominate in the sub $50 price range, and rightly so, given that bigger ukuleles are expected to cost more.
The sizes, listed from smallest to largest, are as follows:
- Soprano and Pineapple Ukulele: Usually 20-21 inches
- Concert Ukulele: 23 inches
- Tenor Ukulele: 26 inches
- Baritone Ukulele: 30 inches
Quick Tips
The ukulele is easier on the hands than a guitar with steel strings. It’s a good alternative for those who want to learn guitar but something more compact.
You’d appreciate the playability and aesthetic of ukuleles more at higher price ranges, where some would offer solid wood components, better hardware, and a smoother neck. But since this guide is focused on beginner ukuleles, don’t expect to find one with a solid mahogany top in this list.
In addition to quality, there are other challenges to buying and playing a ukulele.
Even if you’re just buying a uke on behalf of a child, they’re going to need to get some help to get started.
The best ukulele for beginners is maximized with the right supplementary info. Below we’ve collected a few videos that’ll help you get started. We’d recommend bookmarking this page and then referring back to it after your uke arrives. Happy strumming!
How to String a Ukulele
How to Hold the Ukulele
How To Strum The Ukulele
Must-Know Ukulele Chords
Best Ukulele For Beginners Selection Methodology
The first edition was published in 2017. The current edition was published on July 25, 2024
We looked at all the ukuleles that you can buy from major American music gear retailers for under $50, including bundles that come with accessories. For this edition, some ukuleles have become unavailable, making way for a number of new entries into the guide. To ensure our data is up-to-date, we processed over 46,000 sources that include the most recent reviews and ratings. All these data were then fed into the Gearank Algorithm to produce the rating scores out of 100 you see above. This allowed us to filter the list to just the highest rated qualifying ukuleles. For more information about our methods see How Gearank Works.
About the Author and Contributors
Here are the key people and sources involved in this guide’s production – click on linked names for information about their music industry backgrounds.
Lead Author & Researcher
Contributors
Allen Articulo: Supplemental Writing and Research.
Mason Hoberg: Supplemental writing.
Jason Horton: Editing and Illustrating.
Media / Image Credit
The individual product images were sourced from websites, promotional materials, or supporting documentation provided by their respective manufacturers.
Main/Top Image: Created by Gearank.com using photographs of the Winzz Soprano, JDR UK-211 and Kmise KMA26T.
The videos above have been embedded in accordance with YouTube’s Terms of Service.
Related Guides and Articles
Comments:
20 responses
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Publication of our January 2022 Edition resulted in the following ukuleles coming off the recommended list above:
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We have removed the Hola! HM-21 due to a price increase, but you can still see our analysis of it here.
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I would like to know which ukuleles were in the rating besides those that made top 5. Also, because of very high inflation maybe you should up your price point.
I would also like to see ratings on beginners and intermediate tenors and concerts.
Sopranos do not interest me at all.-
Hi Jasneskis,
You can see a list of all the Ukuleles that we have rated here.
You can also see our recommendations for Concert Ukes in this guide.
We currently don’t have a dedicated guide to tenors, however we have produced ratings for some (mostly acoustic-electric) which you can see here.
Your point about inflation is a good one and we will take that into consideration for the next edition of this guide.
I hope this helps, and if you have further questions please go ahead and ask.
Jason.
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We’ve removed the Eastrock Soprano from the recommended list above because its price increased above the $50 limit for this guide.
It remains on our recommended list of Soprano Ukuleles
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Our March 2021 update resulted in the following ukuleles coming off the recommended list above, but you can still see our analysis of them:
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Because the price is above $50 we have moved our analysis of the Kmise KMU21S to the guide: The Best Soprano Ukuleles.
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As a result of our May 2020 update, the following came off the recommended list above, but you can still see our analysis of them:
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I have played 3 of the four listed here and own the Kala and the Kmise. Of the three I’ve tried I like the Kmise the best.
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Today we removed the following ukulele from our recommended list above due to a lack of availability:
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A few years back, my brother and I got Soprano Ukuleles for our kids and the size was perfect for their fingers with their ages ranging from 5 to 10.
Any highly rated Soprano Uke, preferably with a gig bag, should be good. The Kmise KMU21S which we’ve recommended above offers very good value in the bundled extras currently available at Amazon.
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The following ukuleles were removed from our recommended list above as a result of our August 2018 update, but you can still read what we have to say about them:
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Are they no longer included in the recommended list because they are no longer being made as well as they once were, because better options are now available, or for some other reason?
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The reason is because there were more highly rated options available this year.
The data we have provides hints at why this is the case but it doesn’t allow us to provide definite reasons for why users rated other options more highly.
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Hi Linda,
I have removed the name of the ukulele and the link from your post for two reasons – we don’t want to encourage advertising spam and we don’t want to direct anyone to that particular uke you mentioned.
That uke is not one that we would recommend because there are many suspicious reviews associated with it.
If you’re looking for a concert uke then please look at the Cordoba 15CM or the Caramel CC102A, or you can read our guide: The Best Concert Ukuleles – Up To $300.
I hope this helps,
Jason.
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