Best karaoke bars in Singapore

You'll recognise this popular joint from its mascot, a big giant cat. Although it has many locations around the island, Ganso Manekineko at Orchard Cineleisure is by far one of the biggest outlets. We’re talking 80 karaoke rooms with an additional five VIP suites complete with pool tables. Prices start from $15 for 2 hours of karaoke, and include free flow soft drinks, snacks and ice cream. The state-of-the-art karaoke systems boast a library of 150,000 songs, updated fortnightly, and you’ll soon even be able to select songs, and personalise and control the system from your smartphone with the mobile app.  

The convenience store of the karaoke world, K Box has several store locations around Singapore. This one’s the most convenient, with a long list of English songs, 100 rooms, a dial-your-food service and an assortment of pool tables should you get bored of warbling badly. The cheap rates and deals tempt a young, and largely teenage crowd. 

The ultimate after-party spot, Skinny's Lounge has cheap drinks, a pool table, a beer pong table, riverside views and deeper inside the darkened bar, a KTV room awaits. A group minimum spend of $200 secures you the whole room for an hour – order the Pimm's Cup punch ($200), served out of a repurposed Carlsberg beer dispenser, when in doubt. 

Unlike other karaoke venues, Teo Heng’s rates go by room sizes (per hour), making it fairly cheaper than other karaoke options. Choose from three types of rooms, the smallest allowing a maximum capacity of four people, the medium for six and the largest room for ten. While the song selection available here isn’t too spectacular, it does have a decent spectrum of genres making it perfect for a family get together. They range from classics for the oldies (we're talking Abba and The Carpenters) and relatively modern pop jams for the younger ones (think Avril Lavigne circa 2010). Each outlet also has a small snack section selling bags of chips and bottled water starting from a dollar each but feel free to bring your own food and drinks. Just make sure to clean up after yourselves once your K session is over.

If you're looking for a fancy place to wind down after a long day, or you're hosting a special occasion, K Suites is your spot. As the premium sister to K Box, it mainly targets the more sophisticated corporate and celebrity crowd. In terms of the song selection, K Suites features a range of the hottest hits - as well as golden classics - in plenty of languages; the only gripe is that not all artist names are arranged in alphabetical order on their list, which makes it a challenge to find songs at times. 

Karaoke is a communal activity is usually done in a private room with some of your close friends and family but not at this joint. At Good Cheer 2, you can play a game of darts, have a drink and then belt out some tunes at the karaoke corner. It gets a bit noisy with so many things going on at the same time but that just makes the atmosphere merrier. 

Cash Studio has been around for quite some time now – and it shows. The décor wears thin at parts and their song selection system isn’t touchscreen. Lucky for us, their sound system, mics, TVs and song selection’s navigability – the most important elements of karaoke – all work well, which proves that old can still be good. People don’t just come to Cash Studio because it’s cheap, though. They come for the Daiichikosho-produced DAM karaoke systems, which have a pretty updated range of J-Pop, J-Rock, anime fare and more. One word of warning: if you want to use the DAM machines (which are programmed in Japanese and separate from the English-language song selection), know your hiragana and your katakana, or else you won’t stand a chance at using the system.

For wannabe Singapore Idols, Party World is the obvious place to hone your singing skills. Affordable room rentals and a hefty bilingual song catalogue should ensure hours of crooning entertainment, not to mention various discounts available to NTUC cardholders. No surprise where the next family night will be at. 

Located on the second floor of The Foundry building in Clarke Quay, Tang Music Box allows punters to sing their hearts out into the wee hours of the morning, with 25 rooms that can accommodate group sizes ranging anywhere from three ($70 for a mini room/three hours) to 30 people ($1,620 to rent out their massive club room). Snacks and beverages – including a range of craft beers – are available from their in-house café The Meeting Place.

If you want value for your dollar, look no further than the appropriately named Ten Dollar Club. For $10, you get not just five hours of karaoke (reduced to three during the evenings), but also free flow of drinks for parched throats from all the singing. The décor leans towards the homely, which in the business of KTVs makes it slightly unusual. You don’t get glitzy spectacular spheres and trendily designed dark rooms here; instead, you’re treated to an array of soft amber lights, ’90s wallpapers and the sort of sofas that sit better than they look. True, the song selection menu is a complete drudgery to navigate and the song list isn’t exceptional, but hey, your dollar is stretched as far as it can go. If you want to save even more money, you’re also welcomed to bring your own snacks.