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Through the many years I have been in the piano industry I have been approached by many people asking about a free piano they had seen on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, been offered by a friend of family member, or even found in a giveaway ad.
This always makes me apprehensive because for the most part they end up being anything but free in the long run.
Occasionally, a piano offered by a relative or a good friend might be a decent one, but more often than not you are getting a liability, especially if you know nothing about pianos.
In this case, what you don't know can really hurt you.
Many pianos offered for free are done so because the owner couldn't get any money for it due to the state of it.
Even though pianos are useful for a very long time, they do not last forever.
When pianos are past their usable life span, they become quite worthless.
Technology changes, replacement parts become unavailable, and the cost of bringing them to playing condition, which sometimes can't be done at all, are prohibitive factors for acquiring one.
Here is the breakdown of the cost of a free piano:
That free piano can actually cost you more money than expected. Money that you can't get back because the value can remain at $0 after all the time, effort, and cash you expended.
My advice is to buy a good modern piano from a reputable dealer and even though it's not free, your money will be well spent because you will be guaranteed to have a playable instrument that will last a long time.
According to the Piano Technicians Guild (PTG), seasonal and even daily changes in humidity make a piano's wood parts swell and shrink. That affects tuning stability and how the keys feel.
In July 2026, Stanford reported on a study led by concert pianist Elizabeth Schumann, the Billie Bennett Director of Keyboard Programs at Stanford, with support from the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance.
Bonn — the city where Beethoven was born in 1770 — just wrapped up its month-long Beethovenfest, which ran from September 3 to October 3, 2026.
It was a homecoming in more ways than one. The festival's main venue, the Beethovenhalle, reopened in December 2025 after being closed for almost ten years of renovation. This September it was back at the center of the festival, with the London Symphony Orchestra opening the program.