Chordsight vs Chordify: a free, private Chordify alternative
Chordsight and Chordify both turn a song into chords you can play along with. Chordsight is free, needs no account, and analyzes your audio on your own device instead of on a server.
Find chords in a songSide-by-side comparison
| Chordsight | Chordify | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free tier; Premium subscription unlocks extras such as offline use and printing |
| Account | Not needed | Needed for uploads and saving songs |
| Ads | None | On the free tier |
| Where audio is analyzed | In your browser, on your device | On Chordify's servers |
| Input | Audio files (MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, FLAC) | YouTube and other links, audio files, a large ready-made song library |
| Chords recognized | 24 major and minor chords | Broader vocabulary, plus community edits |
| Beat-synced chord grid | Yes | Yes |
| Transpose and capo | Yes | Yes |
| Guitar and piano diagrams | Yes | Yes, plus ukulele and mandolin |
| Mobile apps | Works in mobile browsers | iOS and Android apps |
When Chordify is the better choice
If you want to paste a YouTube link, browse a library of songs that other people already analyzed and corrected, or use a dedicated mobile app, Chordify does more. Its chord vocabulary is also wider than Chordsight's major and minor triads.
When Chordsight fits better
- You have the song as a file: your own recording, a demo, a rehearsal take or a track you bought.
- You don't want to create an account or see ads.
- Your audio is private, such as an unreleased song, and should not be uploaded anywhere.
- You want to see how the detection works: Chordsight shows the pitch content of every beat and its confidence.
How to get the chords of a song with Chordsight
- Open Chordsight and click Upload a song, or drag the file onto the page.
- Wait a few seconds while it detects the tuning, tempo, beats and chords.
- Press play. The current beat lights up on the chord grid and the diagram follows along.
- Use Transpose to change the key, or Capo to get easier guitar shapes.
How the chord detection works
Chordsight computes a chromagram, which measures how strongly each of the 12 pitch classes sounds over time. It tracks the beat with spectral flux and dynamic programming, compares each beat against 24 chord templates, and smooths the result with a hidden Markov model that favors chords from the song's key. All of this runs in JavaScript with the Web Audio API.
Try Chordsight free