What is the difference between .gp, .gpx, .gp5, .gp4 and .gp3?
Short answer. They are the same program's format at five points in its life: .gp3, .gp4 and .gp5 come from Guitar Pro 3, 4 and 5; .gpx from Guitar Pro 6; and .gp from Guitar Pro 7 and 8. The last two are zip containers, the first three are binary files.
Open your tab file with Tabline
The lineage
| Extension | Written by | What it is |
|---|---|---|
.gp3 | Guitar Pro 3 (1999) | Binary. The oldest one still found on forums. |
.gp4 | Guitar Pro 4 | Binary. Adds more effects and articulations. |
.gp5 | Guitar Pro 5 | Binary. The most common format on tab sites by far. |
.gpx | Guitar Pro 6 | A container: a compressed bundle holding an XML score. |
.gp | Guitar Pro 7 and 8 | A zip archive holding the score as XML. |
Why the newer ones are archives
Up to version 5 the format was a single binary stream: efficient, but every new feature meant a new
version number and a new parser. From version 6 the score became XML inside a container, which is why
you can rename a .gp to .zip and look inside. It also means a newer file can
carry things an older one had no way to express.
Which one will I actually meet?
.gp5, overwhelmingly. Most tab archives were built in the Guitar Pro 5 era and never
re-exported. .gp turns up in anything written recently, and .gpx is the odd
one out — a six-year window of files.
Does the version change what you can read?
Not for the things that matter on a phone. Notes, strings, frets, tuning, tempo, repeats and the common articulations are in all five. Newer files can hold richer notation and more instruments. A player that supports the whole range — as Tabline does — makes the distinction mostly invisible: you tap the file, you get the page.
What about .tg, .ptb and plain text tabs?
Different programs. .tg is TuxGuitar's own format, .ptb is Power Tab, and
the ASCII tabs you see pasted into forum posts are text with no timing in them at all. Tabline does not
open those; it reads the Guitar Pro family and MusicXML.
One app for all five
Tabline opens every version from Guitar Pro 3 to Guitar Pro 8, plus MusicXML.
