iWriteMusic vs SessionHost
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
iWriteMusic
Create professional-quality sheet music efficiently on your smartphone. This app offers an intuitive interface and a powerful input system designed for small screens, making music notation accessible for musicians of all levels. Share your compositions as PDFs, JPGs, or MIDI files.
- Intuitive and simple user interface
- Efficient One-Flick Entry System
- Professional quality sheet music creation
- Supports major notation elements
- Useful playback options
- Export to PDF, JPG, and MIDI
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Music Writing is easy and fun when you use iWriteMusic! Ever wished you could quickly create sheet music in your small free time? Ever thought smartphones were too small to create sheet music? iWriteMusic enables efficient sheet music creation even on small smartphone screens. Unlike other cramped and cumbersome apps, it is designed meticulously for small screens,comprehensive suite of essential tools for concerts, lessons, and music classes! Best fit for professional musicians, music teachers and students. For songwriters, composers and arrangers. For both singers and instrumentalists (piano, violin, cello, guitar, flute, saxophone, trumpet, drums, etc.). Great for writing down ideas, creating lesson materials, creating lead sheets, or creating scores and parts for chorus groups, choirs, chamber orchestras, jazz bands, Latin bands, orchestras, and more. For daily practice, rehearsals, concerts, iWriteMusic will help you enrich your musical life! Check out 7 reasons to choose iWriteMusic. 1. You can understand this app almost instantly! Because of Truly Intuitive and Extremely Simple user interface, you barely need to read pages of manuals nor watching numbers of instruction videos. Unlike Finale, Sibelius and other similar apps, you just have a few things to learn to be able to use this app pretty well. 2.Double your productivity with our Highly Efficient Input System. If you’re already familiar with notation apps and looking for faster & more efficient entry system, try our innovative One-Flick Entry System along with Traditional Entry System to get your job done in no time! What is Traditional Entry System? - The choices will appear with ToolBox. - Select a value and the location separately. - Recommended to those who are not yet familiar with any music notation apps. What is OneFlick Entry System? - The choices will appear when you touch the screen. - Select a location and the value at once. - The selection will change as you slide your finger to left/right. - Recommended to those who are familiar with music notation apps and looking for faster and more efficient entry system. 3. Creates beautiful sheet music - absolutely professional quality! - rich options for page layout adjustment - easy parts creation - easy score/parts management - direct print-out via AirPrint 4. Supports most of major notation elements - multi-track writing - multi-voice writing - percussion/drums notation - chord symbols and lyrics - multi-bar rest - time change - key change - clef change - tempo change - grace note - articulations and dynamics marks - easy song transpose - partial transpose and many more! 5. Useful playback options for practice - mixer with solo, mute and voice select - loop and swing options 6. Data & sheet music sharing - exports/Imports iWriteMusic data file - exports PDF or JPG - exports Standard MIDI file which can be imported by other apps such as GarageBand 7. Extremely Compact Size (15 MB) You can save your device storage space for photos and other apps. ATTENTION: Latency during playback and drawing may occur by device capacity or number of tracks and background applications.
SessionHost
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Give everyone a turn at your next jazz jam session. SessionHost helps hosts choose who plays next, balance the instruments, and track how many songs each musician has played. Spend less time organizing and more time enjoying the music. BUILD THE NEXT LINEUP Register players and their instruments, then start a session. After each song, mark it played to generate the next lineup. SessionHost considers instrument roles and completed play counts to help spread playing opportunities more evenly. KEEP PLAYERS ON STAGE Pin a musician to keep them on the same instrument for following songs until unpinned. Edit the current lineup and choose which registered instrument each player will play. FOLLOW THE FLOW OF YOUR SESSION See total and per-instrument play counts. Add musicians, let them sit out, or adjust the front-line limit as the session unfolds. Register up to three instruments per player in order of preference and add custom instruments to suit your group. PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF Keep several sessions in progress, revisit completed sessions, and reuse previous participants and session settings. Add song titles to keep a record of what you played. Made for iPhone and iPad, with English and Japanese interfaces. No account required. Session data is saved on your device, and session management works offline. Banner ads require an internet connection.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: SessionHost at Free against iWriteMusic's $9.99. SessionHost also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 2 months). iWriteMusic's advantage is ads (none vs shown). On device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
SessionHost is free to download; iWriteMusic costs $9.99 up front. iWriteMusic sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. SessionHost asks for nothing beyond the download.
iWriteMusic ships an update every 2 months, SessionHost every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 12, 2026 and October 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | iWriteMusic | SessionHost |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.5 (181 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 73.2% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 181 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 — better | 16.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 19 MB | 48 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | iWriteMusicProject | Ragdoll LLC |
In-app purchases
iWriteMusic
- Advanced File Management$0.99
SessionHost
No in-app purchases









