9 Omnichord Alternatives That Cost Less (Hardware and Apps)

The closest cheap Omnichord alternative is the Minichord, a $174.99 open-source instrument with 21 chord buttons and a touch strip you strum like a harp. For Suzuki’s own design at less than a new OM-108, look for a used QChord. If you only want the idea in your pocket, an iPhone chord app costs under $10. Below are six hardware picks and three apps. We make one of the apps, and it is marked (ours).

The two features an Omnichord alternative should copy

The Omnichord is Suzuki’s electronic take on the autoharp, first sold in 1981. Two features define it. The first is a grid of chord buttons in rows of major, minor and 7th chords: press one and the instrument plays that whole chord. The second is the strum plate, which Suzuki calls Sonic Strings: a touch strip that plays the notes of the chord you are holding as you brush a finger along it, so one sweep sounds like a harp glissando. A song in C takes three buttons (C, F and G) and one finger on the plate. The built-in drum rhythms and auto-bass line come third, and several picks below have beats of their own.

The catch is the price. In late September 2026 a new OM-108 (the reissue Suzuki announced in 2024) was $769 at Thomann’s US store and $900 to $1,000 at most US dealers on Reverb, while vintage OM-27 and OM-84 models were mostly listed between $550 and $800. Why the Omnichord is so expensive covers the reasons. Everything below costs less than a new OM-108. The Minichord, the HiChord, the J-6 and the apps are the big savings; the QChord, the autoharp and the Orchid cost about what a used vintage Omnichord does.

Cheap Omnichord alternatives with a strum plate

1. Minichord (Benjamin Poilve, sold by Seeed Studio). $174.99, standalone hardware. This is the nearest thing to a small Omnichord you can buy new. Its 21 chord buttons sit in seven columns, one per natural note, ordered F, C, G, D, A, E, B, so the three main chords of C major (C, F and G) sit side by side. The rows give you major, minor and dominant 7th chords, and a sharp button raises any of them a semitone, turning F into F# or C minor into C# minor. A strip split into 12 zones plays the notes of the held chord, so a finger dragged along it gives you the harp run. There is no speaker (it switches on when you plug in headphones or a cable), a charge lasts about 7 hours, it works as a USB MIDI instrument, and the whole design is open source.

2. Suzuki QChord (Suzuki). Discontinued, used only, about $460 to $690. The QChord is Suzuki’s 1999 redesign of the Omnichord, with a new body, more sounds, a better speaker and a slot for song cartridges called QCards. It keeps the chord buttons and strum plate, so it plays like the real thing, and in September 2026 used ones were listed on Reverb for a little less than most vintage Omnichords. Before you pay, ask for a video of the strum plate working from end to end and a photo inside the battery compartment (old batteries leak and corrode the contacts), and check that the power adapter is included.

3. Oscar Schmidt OS21C autoharp (Oscar Schmidt). About $500 to $670 new at US dealers, acoustic. The autoharp is the instrument the Omnichord was designed to imitate, and the OS21C is Oscar Schmidt’s most popular model, with 36 strings and 21 chord bars. Press a bar and its felts mute every string outside that chord, so a strum across all 36 rings out only the chord you chose. It needs no batteries, but it does need tuning, and 36 strings take a while. Pick it if you want the strummed-chord sound in a room, from real wood and real strings.

Chord synths like the Omnichord (no strum plate)

These three give you one-button chords and a built-in sound engine, but no touch strip. They suit players who care more about the chords than the harp sweep.

4. HiChord (Pocket Audio). $320, on pre-order at the time of writing. A handheld chord synth from a Toronto company. Its seven chord buttons play the chords of whichever of the 12 keys you pick, and a nine-way joystick pushes the held chord brighter, darker, jazzier or suspended. Strum is one of 13 play modes, alongside Lead, Drone, Arpeggio and a step sequencer, and it has a built-in speaker, more than 30 instruments, a drum machine and a six-track looper. If a pocket chord box appeals, our HiChord alternatives list has more like it.

5. Roland J-6 (Roland). About $270 new. A 295-gram chord synth in Roland’s AIRA Compact range. Pick one of its 100 chord sets and each key plays a full chord, voiced by a four-voice engine modeled on the Juno-60, with 64 presets. Nine phrase styles, each with 12 variations, turn a held chord into arpeggios and rhythms, and a sequencer stores your progressions. It has no speaker and nothing to strum. Its MIDI and sync jacks let it follow a drum machine’s tempo or drive another synth, so it suits a desk that already has gear on it.

6. Telepathic Instruments Orchid (Telepathic Instruments). $649. A desktop chord synth with onboard sounds designed by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. A one-octave keyboard picks the root, four buttons pick the chord type (major, minor, suspended or diminished), and four more add a 6th, minor 7th, major 7th or 9th. Two voicing dials walk the chord up and down through inversions. Three engines (subtractive, FM and a vintage electric piano) sit behind Strum, Harp, Arpeggiate and Pattern modes, with two built-in speakers, effects, 20 drum beats and a looper. At 1.8 kg it lives on a desk, and at $649 it costs $120 to $350 less than a new OM-108, depending on the store, so buy it for the extended chords and the voicing dials.

Omnichord alternative apps for iPhone

A phone screen is already a touch strip, which makes it a natural home for strummed chords. For a longer comparison with more apps, see our side-by-side of Omnichord apps for iPhone.

7. Gelato Chord (ours) (Gelato Audio). Free with a one-time $4.99 in-app purchase, iPhone. We built it in the spirit of the Omnichord and the HiChord. You choose a key, and seven keys give you its chords from I to vii°; beside them sits a melody plate of twelve strings. The strings in the chord you hold light up, and a sweep across the plate plays a run, louder the faster you go. One difference from an Omnichord: the plate holds the whole scale of the key, so a sweep plays a scale run with the chord tones lit up, and Strum mode is what rolls just the chord, like a harp. A wheel labeled VOICING makes the held chord richer or more open without changing which chord it is. The free version covers the whole instrument in Play mode with three sounds; the $4.99 purchase adds Strum, Lead, Arp and Repeat, the loop recorder and all 59 sounds (see what each version includes). The trade-off: you get the chords of one key at a time, where an Omnichord’s button grid reaches chords outside the key.

8. Omnisound (Konstantin Torsten Schutz). Paid, $0.99 in the US at the time of writing, iPhone, iPad and Apple silicon Macs. A direct tribute to the synth-harps of the 1980s: tap a chord, sweep a finger across its sonic strings, and add a rhythm. It also runs as an AUv3 plugin inside GarageBand, Logic and AUM, with MIDI in and out, so you can play it from a keyboard or record strums straight into a project. It first came out in June 2026, so it has a much shorter track record than C.ARP.

9. C.ARP (Paolo Giorgi). Paid, $9.99 in the US, iPhone, iPad and Apple silicon Macs. On the App Store since 2019, C.ARP is inspired by old keyboards, omnichords and tape effects. You hold a chord button and swipe or tap the strum area, with 84 chords to pick from. It adds an arpeggiator, a play-along band in eight styles, a sampler that turns your voice into an instrument, and Bluetooth MIDI out to a Mac. The one price covers everything, with no in-app purchases.

Which Omnichord alternative to buy

Start with how you want to play, then set the budget.