DroPilot Pentatonics vs ChordSmith
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
DroPilot Pentatonics
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DroPilot Pentatonics helps you master pentatonic and blues scales on guitar, with clear fretboard diagrams and tools built for real practice. Choose major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, major blues, minor blues, or dorian pentatonic. Pick a key, explore all 7 classic positions, and view notes, intervals, or color-coded shapes on the neck. Build chord progressions or use smart suggestions to see which scale fits each moment. Play the scale alone or over a progression with piano, bass, and drum backing. Includes count-in, loop, metronome, and tempo control. Also includes a tuner, pentatonic dictionary, left-handed mode, favorites with backup, and an in-app guide. Available in English and Spanish. DroPilot Pentatonics Pro unlocks advanced features with a one-time purchase. Part of the DroPilot family: Voicings, Arpeggios, Modes, and Pentatonics.
ChordSmith
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ChordSmith is a chord finder, a chromatic tuner and a drum machine built for the same instrument — yours. Sixty of them, from six-string guitar and four-string bass through banjo, mandolin, ukulele, violin, cello and double bass, and on to the bouzouki, oud, guzheng, sitar, koto, nyckelharpa, balalaika, charango and kantele. CHORD FINDER Pick a chord and see how to play it on the instrument in your hands, in up to 100 voicings, ordered from the easiest shape upward. Change the tuning and the shapes change with it — every voicing is computed for the strings you actually have, not looked up in a table for standard tuning. DADGAD, drop D, open G and every other preset is one tap away. CHROMATIC TUNER Five displays to choose between: a sweep needle, a strobe for last-cent work, chromatic spokes, a continuous note strip, and one you will want to see for yourself. Every instrument carries its own tunings, drop and open included. Set your reference by ear as well as by number — play a note from a piano, a drone or another player's instrument and the app takes its pitch as the tonic, which is how you tune to an ensemble that is not at A=440. Haptic tuning lets you feel the tuning as a gentle tick: quick when you are far off, slowing as you close in, a steady pulse once you arrive. An optional soft cue marks the moment you lock on. Needle response sets how steady the reading is, from Responsive to Steady. Notes, cents and frequency read out in retro LED-style digits. METRONOME AND DRUM MACHINE Ten kits — standard, click, electric, 808, Latin, cajón, djembe, darbuka, tabla and taiko — and twenty-seven feels, from straight eighths and a swung shuffle through son and rumba clave, bossa nova, the reggae one-drop, bembé, tresillo, maqsum and malfuf. Tap tempo, a BPM counter, compound and odd meters, and an accent pattern you edit, so 7/8 sounds like the 7/8 you are counting. CHORD DETECTION Play a chord and the app names it, tracks the key as you go, and keeps a running transcript of what it heard. The spectrum analyser spans eight octaves, C0 to C8, and runs on the room rather than on a preset, so it works with no instrument selected at all. NINE TUNING SYSTEMS Equal temperament, and the ones that came before it: Werckmeister III, quarter-comma meantone, Vallotti, Young II, Kirnberger III and Pythagorean, with a temperament octave for tuning a piano, harpsichord or clavichord by ear. Quarter-tones as 24-TET for maqam, and Thai equidistant 7-TET for the krachappi, the phin and the saw. SIXTY INSTRUMENTS Guitar in six, seven and eight strings and the Russian seven; bass in four, five and six; ukulele in three sizes; mandolin, five-string and tenor banjo, violin, viola, cello, double bass and the Hardanger fiddle; cavaquinho, viola caipira, vihuela, guitarrón, bajo sexto, cuatro, charango, bandurria and laúd; Greek bouzouki in tetrachordo and trichordo, the Irish bouzouki, Turkish and Arabic oud, bağlama, gambus; erhu, pipa, guqin, guzheng, koto, gayageum, shamisen, sanshin; sitar, tanpura, veena and the Carnatic violin; balalaika, domra, dombra, morin khuur, nyckelharpa, kantele; krachappi, phin, saw duang, saw u and the đàn ghi-ta phím lõm; piano, harpsichord and clavichord. BOUGHT ONCE Fourteen days to try everything, then one purchase, yours for good. No subscription, no account, no advertising. The tuner and the detector run entirely on your device — nothing you play is recorded, uploaded, or sent anywhere. The app works with no network connection at all, which matters more in a rehearsal room than it does in a shop.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: DroPilot Pentatonics at every 4 days against ChordSmith's fortnightly. DroPilot Pentatonics also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 16.4). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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
Both are free to download. DroPilot Pentatonics sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and ChordSmith sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
DroPilot Pentatonics ships an update every 4 days, ChordSmith fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 5, 2026 and October 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | DroPilot Pentatonics | ChordSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 — better | 16.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 69 MB | 49 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Pablo Niveiro | Remnant Workshop, Inc. |
In-app purchases
DroPilot Pentatonics
- DroPilot Pentatonics Pro$6.99
ChordSmith
- Lifetime$0.99
Questions
Is DroPilot Pentatonics free?
Is ChordSmith free?
Do DroPilot Pentatonics or ChordSmith have ads?
Which is updated more often, DroPilot Pentatonics or ChordSmith?
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