Comparison

Chord! vs What Chord?

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Chord!

This app serves as a comprehensive reference for chords and scales, supporting various fretted instruments. It allows users to create songs, transpose them, and generate printable PDFs. It also offers features for analyzing and understanding chord and scale formations, even for beginners.

Highlights
  • Chord and scale reference for fretted instruments
  • Chord and scale fingering computation
  • Song writing and transposition
  • Print-ready PDF generation
  • Audio track linking and playback
  • Chord and scale analysis
  • Customizable tunings
Features
Read full description

Chord! is a chord and scale reference that works with any fretted instrument like guitar, basses, ukulele, banjos,… It computes and analyses all the possible fingerings for chords, scales, and arpeggios. With Chord!, you can also write a song by simply dragging and dropping chords, transpose it in any key, compute the fingerings with any tuning and generate a beautiful print-ready PDF, etc. You can also import your existing songs in text format (please note that the app does not ship with songs). You can also link audio tracks from your music library and play them at the same time while adjusting their pitch and/or speed. You don't even have to know music theory to use it: behind its brute force, the app knows how to handle by itself some subtleties of music to give meaningful results. If you don't have to be an advanced player to use the app, you can however take a look under the hood and tweak the parameters if you like! Whatever is your level or your instrument, Chord! will adapt and give you the most precise answer. You can search for any chord, split (like D/F#), or not. If you're a beginner, you can choose the chord from a list, but you can also use the intelligent keyboard to enter the chord as it is written. If this keyboard is a great way to enter chords, it is also very useful to discover and understand how the chords are formed. You can also enter some notes on a neck to find which chords it can be. You can hear how each fingering sounds. Chord arpeggios are also supported, as well as drop voicings (drop 2, drop3, etc.). The app also ships with the biggest list of named scales (and you can create your own scales). It analyses and presents them with nice interactive views (scale, score, and keyboard). Of course, it can also lay down these scales on a neck (with sound) and compute their fingerings. Like for chords, you can even search for a scale from its fingering! Each scale can be harmonized (decomposed into chords). You can also enter a sequence of chords to find which scale you can use to improvise onto. You can use one of the hundred tunings that ship with the app, or you can add your own ones, for any instrument, with or without a capo, even with broken strings if you want! The app uses custom and unique algorithms to generate charts, easily input complex harmonic structures, extract chords from fingerings, determine finger positions, compute keys of scales, generate chords from scales and find scales that go well with some chords. For example, Chord! is the right tool in these situations: • You want to have your songbook available at any time, in your pocket; • You're a beginner and you want to know how to play easily a D/F# chord; • One gave you a ukulele and you want to know how to tune it and how to play the G Hawaiian scale; • You want to know on what scale you can improvise for some chord sequence (and the answer can be different than the Pentatonic minor!); • You want to print your song and share it with your band. • You want to experiment with this nice open tuning, moreover with a bottleneck; • Your little sister can't make bar chords and you want to show her how she can do without bars, with three (little) fingers only; • You want to impress your little sister by showing her how you can play the same chords with two bars! • You want to understand how this fingering for C13 is actually a fingering for C13; • You broke a string and want to know how to play some chords without; • You want to know how Django managed to play with two and a half fingers. The app fully supports left-handed instruments. Main functions of the app: - Write, transpose, fingerize, print, and share songs; - Search chord fingerings (or chord charts); - Search chords from fingerings; - Search scale fingerings; - Search scales from fingerings; - Search chords from scale; - Search scales from chords.

About

What Chord?

Identify chord names by their shape on a guitar fretboard. Quickly name chords you're playing or discover new ones by adjusting finger positions. Ideal for musicians who need to name chords for sharing or understanding song structures.

Highlights
  • Identify chord names by shape
  • Discover new chord variations
  • Name chords for sharing
  • Understand chord progressions
  • Simple and intuitive interface
Features
Read full description

Playing cool chord but have no idea what its name is? You'd like to share your song but not sure how to correctly name the chords you are using? You just have slided one of you fingers up a fret while playing familiar chord and wonder what the chord has now become? It is really simple with WhatChord app! Give it a try!

Screenshots

Chord!4 screens
What Chord?4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: What Chord? at Free against Chord!'s $4.99. Chord!'s advantage is update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 4 months). On rating, review sentiment, ratings volume and ads 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

What Chord? is free to download; Chord! costs $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Chord! against 4.8 for What Chord?. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 383 and 169 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 83% of Chord!'s written reviews are positive against 87% of What Chord?'s.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Chord! ships an update every 3 weeks, What Chord? every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 21, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Chord! versus What Chord?: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterChord!What Chord?
Price$4.99Free — better
Rating4.8 (383 ratings) — better4.8 (169 ratings)
Positive reviews82.9% of reviews86.7% of reviews — better
Number of ratings383 — better169
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeks — betterEvery 4 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPod
Requires iOS12.2 — better13.0
Further details — not scored
Size18 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperThomas GrapperonPavlo Ignatov

Customer experience

Chord!

All ratings377 ratings
Positive96.3%
Neutral1.1%
Negative2.7%
Written reviews193 reviews
Positive82.9%
Neutral6.2%
Negative10.9%

What Chord?

All ratings137 ratings
Positive94.9%
Neutral2.9%
Negative2.2%
Written reviews30 reviews
Positive86.7%
Neutral6.7%
Negative6.7%

Bugs and requests

Chord!

Reported bugs

2 issues
  • Chord harmonization issues
  • Inconsistent behavior when modifying chord voicings

Requested features

4 requests
  • Audio playback of created songs
  • Improved workflow for editing and saving custom chords
  • Integration with music notation software
  • More tutorial videos and user guides

What Chord?

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Chord!

No in-app purchases

None

What Chord?

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Chord! free?
Chord! costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is What Chord? free?
What Chord? is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Chord! or What Chord??
Chord! is rated higher. Chord! averages 4.8 out of 5 from 383 ratings, while What Chord? averages 4.8 from 169 ratings.
Do Chord! or What Chord? have ads?
Neither Chord! nor What Chord? shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Chord! or What Chord??
Chord! ships an update every 3 weeks, and What Chord? every 4 months. Most recently, Chord! was updated on October 23, 2026 and What Chord? on October 21, 2026.

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