Sibelius is not defunct. They still have regular updates every year. Now, Avid has certainly made using Sibelius a pain at times, but it's still a great program if you can get past that.

To the OP, the main programs around now are Sibelius (you can purchase a perpetual or subscription license), Dorico (perpetual license only iirc) and MuseScore (free option that I've heard is pretty good if you can live with its limitations).


Sibelius was bought by Avid years ago and has definitely made this not as user friendly, but for the most part the software has been the same since I started using it in 2009. I still prefer it even with Avids BS.

Dorico was created by the team that originally made Sibelius. I've heard friends use it and really like it, but I've never tried it. I've heard it takes getting use to.

MuseScore is easy to download and poke around with. It's pretty intuitive and since it's free, I would recommend you try out that first. Then if you don't like it, look at one of the other two.

Lastly, if you have Finale (RIP) on your computer, it will still work even though it went belly up. There are just no more updates or support for it.