Comparison

Hooklines vs Chord Borrower

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

Head to head
About

Hooklines

This app helps musicians, poets, and lyricists capture and organize creative ideas. It uses a snippet-based system to build lyrics, offering randomized lyric generation and word utilities like rhyming and thesaurus.

Highlights
  • Capture ideas as snippets
  • Organize lyrics in SnippetBooks
  • Drag-and-drop lyric building
  • Randomized lyric line generation
  • Rhyming and thesaurus tools
  • Built-in dictionary and spell checker
Features
Read full description

Hooklines is a creative workspace built for musicians, poets, lyricists, and songwriters who live for inspiration. Whether you’re capturing a quick idea on the go or developing a full set of lyrics, Hooklines helps you organize your creativity and bring structure to the songwriting process. Every great song begins with a spark — and in Hooklines, that spark takes the form of a snippet. Hooklines is inspired by the Verbasizer, an idea created by David Bowie, Brian Eno and Ty Roberts (the original idea and copyright of the Verbasizer is owned by Ty Roberts). Hooklines has taken that concept and expanded it with innovative concepts such as Snippets, SnippetBooks and randomized lyrics. Snippets are short phrases, lyric fragments, or complete lyric lines that capture your ideas as they come to you. These pieces of inspiration can later become part of a verse, a chorus, or even the hookline of your song. With Hooklines, you never lose a thought — you collect them, refine them, and transform them into lyrics that stick. Think of snippets as sparks of creativity where you come up with a couple words or a phrase that can serve as the starting point to a lyric line or even a whole song. When it’s time to write, Hooklines gives you a hands-on, drag-and-drop interface that makes lyric building intuitive and fun. You can experiment with structure, rearrange lines, and play with flow and rhythm — all while keeping your creative energy moving. The visual layout helps you see your song take shape, one line at a time, without losing the freedom to explore. Hooklines helps to spark creativity by letting it throw together bunches of random works - maybe you'll find a few words or phrase that gives you the inspiration for a new song. An exciting feature of Hooklnes is creating randomized lyric lines in a song. What is this you ask? Let Hooklines take all the snippets (or the words) in a SnippetBook you've selected, and add them all together in a single lyric line in a random order. You can redo a randomize lyric line, or create multiple randomized lyric lines in a song. Creating randomized lyric lines presents you with unique and maybe interesting combination of snippets, where a word combination might spark some imagination to help you in your writing. Need some help with rhymes or coming up with just the right word? Hooklines has built in word utilities such as rhyming, find words with similar meaning, and show me words that often follow another word. Hooklines also has a built in dictionary, thesaurus and spell checker! Lyric lines do not have to start, or even contain snippets. Just type in the lyrics you want into that line and you're good to go. Need to rearrange lyric lines, just grab the lyric line, drag it to where you want it, and just drop it in place. Feel like using a snippet in more than one song, trying to find the right song where that line sticks - no problem. Need to get the lyrics on printed paper, it's easy because Hooklines allows you to email the lyrics to yourself at any time. Once a song is finished, you can archive it, keeping it safely stored without cluttering your workspace. This way, you can revisit old material whenever you like — to refine it, reuse it, or simply enjoy seeing how your writing has evolved. At any time you can share a song via email. When editing a song, press the mail button in the top right and the song is emailed to you. Active versus Archived songs - Think of archived songs as ones you're done working (at the moment or for good). You can archive the to keep your song's creative starting point (or complete song) around. Hooklines isn’t just about storing words — it’s about nurturing creativity. It gives songwriters a clear, inspiring place to shape ideas, explore possibilities, and discover the perfect hookline. Whether you’re writing your first song or your hundredth, Hooklines helps you turn fragments into finished lyrics and inspiration into unforgettable music.

About

Chord Borrower

Features
Read full description

Chord Borrower — Modal Chord Progressions Borrow chords from any mode. Build progressions that sound nothing like everyone else's. Chord Borrower turns your phone into a modal chord instrument. Pick a key, and instantly play the seven diatonic chords of that scale — then stack on chords borrowed from Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, harmonic minor, melodic minor, and every other mode hiding inside your key. Tap through rows of chord buttons to hear how a single root note sounds across completely different modal colors, and build progressions no ordinary chord app could give you. Play in any key, any mode Choose a major or minor key, and your primary row lights up with its seven diatonic triads. Add up to six more rows, each pulled from a different mode built on that same root — the full set of major-scale modes, plus the modes of harmonic and melodic minor. Compare Ionian against Mixolydian, or drop into Phrygian dominant, all without changing key. Shape every chord your way Tap a chord button, then dial in its quality — 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, sus2, or sus4. Each button remembers its own setting, so you can build a progression where every chord has its own color and extension, exactly as you shaped it. Choose your voice Play everything through piano, kalimba, acoustic guitar, or synth — warm, musical presets that make every chord (and every borrowed mode) sound great. Designed to inspire A single clean screen, pastel colors, soft rounded buttons, and a friendly, uncluttered layout keep the focus on your ears, not the interface. Whether you're a songwriter chasing a fresh progression, a music student exploring modal theory, or just someone who loves the sound of an unexpected chord, Chord Borrower makes modal harmony playable, visual, and fun.

Screenshots

Hooklines4 screens
Chord Borrower2 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Hooklines at $0.99 against Chord Borrower's $2.99. On ads, in-app purchases, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Hooklines costs $0.99 and Chord Borrower $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard1 real difference · 8 level
Hooklines versus Chord Borrower: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHooklinesChord Borrower
Price$0.99 — better$2.99
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyWeekly—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaid—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.0 — better15.1
Further details — not scored
Size74 MB186 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperKurt MackallAaron Wilford

In-app purchases

None

Hooklines

No in-app purchases

None

Chord Borrower

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Hooklines free?
Hooklines costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Chord Borrower free?
Chord Borrower costs $2.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Hooklines or Chord Borrower have ads?
Neither Hooklines nor Chord Borrower shows ads.

Other comparisons