Frescobaldi is free software, freely available under the GNU General Public License.

It is designed to run on all major operating systems (Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows).

It is named after Girolamo Frescobaldi, an Italian composer of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque period.

Frescobaldi has its roots in LilyKDE, a plugin for KDE's Kate text editor developed by Berendsen, originally released in 2007.

[4] Instead, the official installation tutorial for LilyPond 2.24 and later guides beginners towards Frescobaldi,[5] reflecting Frescobaldi's de facto status as the most popular LilyPond editor.