10 Chord Progression Apps for iPhone That Play the Chords

All ten apps below play chord progressions out loud on an iPhone. Four suggest or generate progressions, two play a whole band under chords you type in, and four are chord pads you play with your thumbs. To spend nothing, start with GarageBand’s chord strips; to learn why chords fit together while you write, start with Suggester 2.

We make one of them, Gelato Chord, so it is marked “ours” at number 8. The other nine come from other developers, and we checked each one’s developer, price model and platforms against its App Store listing in September 2026.

Apps that play chords for you: the three kinds

The kinds differ in who picks the chords. A generator picks them for you, from a mood, a style or a shuffle button, and plays the chord progression back. A backing-band app waits for you to type chords in, then plays them with drums and bass underneath. With a chord pad app, each button holds a whole chord and you do the playing.

Most of these apps start from diatonic chords, the seven chords built from one key’s scale. In C major those are C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am and Bdim, numbered I ii iii IV V vi vii°. When an app shows I V vi IV in C, it means C, G, Am, F. Keep the chords in C major open while you try the apps.

Best chord progression generator and maker apps

Numbers 1 to 4 generate or suggest progressions; 5 and 6 play the chords you enter with a band.

1. Suggester 2 (Mathieu Routhier). Free with in-app purchases (a monthly subscription or a one-time key). iPhone, iPad and Mac, plus Android.

   Suggester labels chords with Roman numerals, so you pick them by their job in the key (I is home, V pulls back toward it), and it suggests chords that fit the ones you already have. A library of classic progressions gives you somewhere to start. There are piano, guitar and ukulele views, export as audio, MIDI or text, and an AUv3 plugin version for use inside a DAW.

2. Autochords (Astrocode). Free with in-app purchases (Pro as a subscription or a lifetime purchase). iPhone and iPad.

   Pick a mood and Autochords hands you a main progression, plus alternative progressions for a bridge or a solo section. You hear each one on the instrument you choose, with guitar, piano or ukulele diagrams so you can play along. Pro adds your own progressions, tempo control and MIDI export.

3. ChordButter (Christian Hengst Daniels). Free with in-app purchases (subscription or lifetime). iPhone, iPad and Mac.

   ChordButter builds a song out of chord blocks. A song generator writes progressions in different styles, chord suggestions help when you stall, and a note guide shows which melody notes fit the chord underneath. You can switch the backing between arpeggios and rhythm patterns, add drums and bass, keep lyrics in a built-in notepad and export MIDI. It comes from the maker of Tonaly.

4. Chord Progression Generator (Michael Krautsieder). Free with in-app purchases (subscription or lifetime). iPhone and iPad.

   Tap shuffle and it makes a progression in the scale you chose; keep tapping until one sticks. You can set BPM and instrument, add a rhythm and a bassline, and export three MIDI files: chords only, bass only, and both together. The last update was in November 2021, so check that it runs well on your phone before you pay for Premium.

5. Chordbot (Contrasonic AB). Paid, with a free Chordbot Lite that cannot save or export. iPhone and iPad.

   Type in chords, pick a style, and Chordbot plays them back with piano, guitar, synth, bass and drum tracks from more than 70 style presets. It knows over 60 chord types in every inversion, splits a song into sections like verse and chorus, and exports MIDI or WAV. Song-O-Matic generates chords for a whole song from a pop, jazz or experimental profile. The last update was in May 2022; Lite plays everything the full app does, so it doubles as a free test on your phone.

6. iReal Pro (Technimo). Paid, with extra style packs as in-app purchases. iPhone and iPad, with separate versions for Mac, Android and Windows.

   iReal Pro plays a rhythm section under a chord chart, in 50 accompaniment styles from swing and bossa nova to rock, funk and reggae. Download charts shared by other users for free or type your own, then transpose, loop a tricky section or change the tempo. Its home turf is jazz standards, but a new chart with D, A, Bm, G and a rock style gives you a pop backing track to practice over.

Chord pad apps you play with your thumbs

Pads turn a progression into something you perform, and it sticks in your hands faster than a list of chord names does. GarageBand comes first because it costs nothing.

7. GarageBand (Apple). Free. iPhone and iPad.

   Open a Keyboard or the Guitar and tap the Chord Strips button. Tap the top of a strip to sound the chord, or swipe across a Guitar strip to strum it. Turn the Autoplay knob to a numbered position and one tap plays a pattern that follows your chord changes. Under Settings, Edit Chords lets you build custom strips with an added note and a different bass note, so a Cmaj7 or a G/B is a few swipes away. With up to 32 tracks, the progression can grow into a song in the same app.

8. Gelato Chord (ours) (Gelato Audio). Free with one $4.99 in-app purchase. iPhone.

   The seven keys hold I ii iii IV V vi vii° of whatever key you set, each labeled with its chord name. Slide a finger across them to walk through changes, and each note moves the shortest way to the next chord, so the changes sound smooth. A melody plate shows the key’s scale as twelve strings and lights up the ones in the chord you hold, and a color wheel pushes that chord toward 7ths and 9ths or opens it toward sus sounds without changing which chord it is. The free version is the whole instrument in Play mode with three sounds; the purchase adds Strum, Lead, Arp and Repeat, all 59 sounds and the loop recorder. The trade-off is one key at a time, so a borrowed chord such as Bb in C major means switching key or scale.

9. Navichord (Denis Kutuzov). Paid, with a free Navichord Lite. iPhone and iPad.

   Navichord lays notes out on a grid where neighboring chords share notes, so you find progressions by moving short distances. One finger plays a major or minor chord from any root, two or three fingers add 7ths and 9ths, and you save the chords you like to pads to build a progression. It covers 28 scales, can find chords that match a melody and sends MIDI to other apps and hardware. The last update was in February 2021; Lite leaves out MIDI and sync but is enough to check the app runs on your phone.

10. Chords Pad (Loop-Sessions). Free with ads and in-app purchases. iPhone and iPad, plus Android.

    A chord sampler: tap any chord to hear it and see its notes on a keyboard, with its inversions lined up underneath. The Chord Progress view lays out typical progressions as buttons and shifts them to any root, and Custom Pad gives you bigger buttons holding the chords you pick. Nine of its 28 sounds are free; one-time purchases add the other sounds, chords with extra tensions such as 7(b9) and 7(13), and an ad-free version. Use it to hear what a symbol like C7sus4 or Cm6 sounds like before you write it into a song.

Free chord progression apps

GarageBand is the only app here that is free with nothing held back. Every other free download keeps its full version behind an in-app purchase, and the models differ:

Where an app sells both a subscription and a lifetime price, do the math first. On the US App Store in September 2026, the lifetime prices for Autochords, ChordButter and Chord Progression Generator cost about one to three years of their yearly plans, and Suggester’s one-time iOS key cost about four months of its monthly plan. If you expect to keep using the app past that point, pay once.

To test progressions before installing anything, the free online chord player on this site plays all 24 major and minor keys in the browser, as triads or 7ths, with a strum option.

Which chord progression app fits which songwriter

• You know no theory and want ideas now: Autochords for a progression from a mood, ChordButter for a whole sketch with melody and lyrics.
• You want to understand what you are writing: Suggester 2, whose Roman numerals and suggestions teach as you go.
• You want a band to play along with: Chordbot for your own songs, iReal Pro for standards and practice.
• You want to play the chords yourself: GarageBand if it is already on your phone, Navichord if you like exploring harmony on a grid.
• You finish music in a DAW: Chord Progression Generator for quick MIDI files, or Suggester 2 as an AUv3 plugin. ChordPolyPad (Laurent Colson), an AUv3 MIDI effect for hosts such as AUM, and ChordMapMidi (Malcolm Mugglin), which makes no sound of its own, missed this list because both are built to drive other apps.

A quick way to compare two apps: play C, G, Am, F (I V vi IV) at about 90 BPM, then reorder it as Am, F, C, G (vi IV I V). The app that makes that swap fastest will keep up with your ideas. Write the Roman numerals next to the chord names too: in G major the same I V vi IV becomes G, D, Em, C, which is how you move a song to suit a singer. For more shapes, work through the 12 most common chord progressions, and for lyric and recording apps, see our songwriting apps for iPhone.