Resource Review · Worship Apps
PraiseCharts
The mobile and iPad companion to PraiseCharts.com — and the app most worship leaders quietly reach for when the rehearsal track has to be running in three minutes —
- Editor rating
- 4.4 / 5
- Starting price
- Free app, per-song purchases from $4.99
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- iOS · iPadOS · Android
- Developer
- PraiseCharts
- Launched
- 2014
The verdict
For worship teams already living inside the PraiseCharts catalog, the app is the obvious mobile front-end — fast chord-chart reader, surprisingly capable multitrack player, and a Pro tier that finally makes "unlimited streaming" feel like a real option instead of a marketing word.
Try PraiseCharts ↗Opens praisecharts.com
PraiseCharts has quietly become the favorite of worship leaders who care more about getting the right key by Saturday morning than about being on the trendiest worship app. The website has been the back-office workhorse of Sunday-morning music for almost two decades. The mobile and iPad app — which is what this review is about — is the thing that actually shows up on the iPad on the music stand at 7:45am.
It doesn’t try to be your set list builder. It doesn’t try to be your in-ear mixer. It doesn’t try to replace ProPresenter. It tries to be the cleanest possible way to buy, organize, and play back the chord charts, lead sheets, multitracks, and vocal arrangements that PraiseCharts has been licensing from publishers for years — and on that narrow goal, it lands well.
The catalog is the moat. Over 5,000 of the most-sung contemporary worship songs — the Hillsong, Bethel, Elevation, Maverick City, Phil Wickham, Brandon Lake, Cory Asbury, Passion, CityAlight, Vertical Worship body of work — all available as official licensed charts (not crowd-sourced approximations) and in many cases with matching split-track multitracks. The app is how that catalog gets onto stage.
✓ The good
- Catalog depth — 5,000+ contemporary worship songs, the actual licensed publisher arrangements, not user-uploaded approximations
- iPad chord chart rendering — clean, readable, transpose-in-place, scroll or paginate, dim-friendly for stage lighting
- Multitrack player is genuinely usable live — per-stem volume, click and guide vocal isolation, pad-only mode, key change without re-purchase
- Pro subscription is the rare "unlimited streaming" tier that earns the price — around $25/mo for the full catalog of charts and tracks if you’re a 4-songs-a-week team
- Per-song ownership stays yours — anything you buy outright is downloaded and lives in the app whether you keep Pro or not
- Setlist sharing — build a Sunday setlist on the app and push it to the rest of the team’s devices in seconds
- Offline mode that actually works — purchased and downloaded content plays without signal, which matters in basement green rooms
✗ Watch out
- The interface still looks like a worship product designed by engineers — functional, not delightful, and a few menus deep in places
- No first-party in-app sequencer or pad builder (yet) — you’re consuming tracks, not creating them
- Android version trails the iOS/iPad version on polish and on getting new features
- Pro subscription doesn’t cover everything — some publisher-locked premium arrangements still require per-song purchase even with Pro
- No built-in Ableton/MainStage-style routing — for click-to-IEMs setups you still need a dedicated playback rig or computer
Best for
- Worship leaders running iPad-based rehearsals and Sunday services
- Volunteer-led teams that need licensed charts in the right key by Friday night
- Small to mid-size churches that want multitracks without a full Ableton rig
- Music directors who already live in the PraiseCharts.com catalog and want a mobile front-end
Avoid if
- You need a full programmable playback rig with click, guide vocals, and stem control routed to in-ears
- You only sing public-domain hymns and never touch CCM
- You want to create your own original arrangements rather than play published ones
- You’re an Android-only team that needs feature parity with iPad on day one
What PraiseCharts is
PraiseCharts is the mobile and iPad companion to PraiseCharts.com — a licensed sheet-music and multitrack store for contemporary worship music. The app lets you browse the full 5,000+ song catalog, preview every chart and track, purchase items outright or stream them under a Pro subscription, and then play and read them in a stage-friendly interface during rehearsal and live worship.
Functionally it covers four content types: chord charts (Nashville and standard), lead sheets and full sheet music, multitrack stems and click/guide tracks for playback, and vocal arrangement charts for backing vocalists. The app is the playback and reading surface; PraiseCharts.com is still where heavier catalog management and team account admin happen.
Why worship teams reach for PraiseCharts on iPad
The single biggest practical difference between PraiseCharts and the apps it competes with is the catalog. PraiseCharts has been licensing directly from publishers — Hillsong, Bethel, Elevation, Maverick City, Capitol CMG, Essential, Integrity — for years. When you pull up "Gratitude" or "Hymn of Heaven" or "Praise" in the app, you’re looking at the official publisher-approved arrangement, with the actual chord voicings the recording uses, in any key, with matching multitracks that line up with the album cut. That is not the same product as a crowd-sourced chord-chart site.
The second difference is the workflow respect. PraiseCharts assumes you are a working worship leader, not a hobbyist. The transpose tool is one tap. The chart auto-resizes for the stage. The setlist syncs to your bass player’s phone before the run-through. The multitracks know what a "pad-only mode" is and why your acoustic-night service needs one. It is the thoughtful person’s worship-app — built around the rhythm of a weekly service, not around impulse purchases.
Chord charts and lead sheets: the iPad reading experience
The chart reader is what most people will spend the most time inside, and PraiseCharts has clearly iterated on it. Pull up any song you own (or any song in the catalog under Pro) and you get a clean, dim-friendly chart that respects iPad real estate — full-page lead sheets render at a readable size without zooming, and chord charts present chords above lyrics in the Nashville or standard format you set in your profile. Transpose lives at the top of the screen: tap to change keys and the chart redraws instantly, capo suggestions and all. Scroll is smooth, page-flip via Bluetooth pedal works (AirTurn, PageFlip), and there’s a dark-mode option that genuinely helps on a dim stage.
Where this matters: the iPad has quietly replaced the music-stand binder in most contemporary worship teams, and a bad chart reader makes the whole workflow worse. PraiseCharts treats the iPad as a first-class surface rather than a phone app stretched out. Two-column lead sheet view on a 12.9" iPad Pro is the closest digital equivalent to laying paper out on a piano. For a vocalist scanning lyrics on an iPad mini, the chord-chart-only mode strips it down to what they actually need. It’s the model that respects your work.
Multitracks and the in-app player: real playback on mobile
This is the feature that surprises new users. PraiseCharts started as a sheet-music store, but the in-app multitrack player has grown into a legitimate live-playback tool. Buy or stream a multitrack and you get an album-aligned stem set — click, guide vocal, lead vocal, BGVs, pads, electric, acoustic, keys, bass, drums — that you can mix per-stem inside the app. Mute the lead vocal so your vocalist actually has to sing. Solo the click. Drop the electric down 6dB because your live guitarist is covering it. Run a pad-only version under a spontaneous bridge. All of it happens inside the app, on the same device that’s holding the chart.
Why this matters: most worship teams sit in an awkward middle ground — bigger than acoustic-and-djembe, smaller than "we have an Ableton rig with a dedicated playback person." For that middle, the PraiseCharts app is a real solution. You can rehearse to album-accurate tracks all week, then on Sunday route the click to in-ears via a basic interface and run the whole service from the iPad. It is not as deep as a full MultiTracks Playback session, and the routing options are simpler — but for any team whose answer to "who runs tracks?" is "uh… nobody yet," this is the lowest-friction way to get there.
Pro subscription: when "unlimited" actually pencils out
Pro is the relatively new piece, and it is the one that changes how the app gets used. For around $25/mo, Pro unlocks unlimited streaming of the chart-and-multitrack catalog — which means a worship leader picking five songs for Sunday can audition, transpose, and play all five without buying anything. Add an extra song mid-week because the pastor’s sermon pivoted? Stream it. Need a backup song the band already knows in case the arrangement isn’t coming together? Stream it. The mental cost of "is this worth $5?" disappears, and that turns out to matter more than the dollar amount.
The break-even math is straightforward. Per-song chord chart purchases run around $4.99, and multitracks are higher. If your team is buying even four-to-five songs a month — and any weekly worship team is — Pro pays for itself. Most users do not need to keep paying per-song on top of that, with the exception of a handful of premium publisher-locked arrangements that stay outside the subscription. Anything bought outright stays in your library forever, so the right approach for most teams is: subscribe to Pro for breadth, and buy outright only the handful of "we play this every other week" songs you want owned permanently.
Pricing
Free app
$0
Download the app, browse the full catalog, preview every song, manage anything you already own — costs nothing until you buy something.
Per-song purchase
From around $4.99 per chart
One-time buy. Chord charts, lead sheets, and orchestrations priced separately; multitracks priced higher. Yours forever — downloads to the device, no subscription required.
Pro subscription
Around $25/mo
Unlimited streaming of the chart and multitrack catalog while subscribed. The break-even is roughly 4–5 song purchases a month — for any team doing weekly services, that math works fast.
Church / team plans
Custom
Multi-seat plans for larger worship teams, shared libraries, and centralized billing — quoted directly by PraiseCharts.
The pricing model is the part to understand before downloading. The app itself is free, and so is browsing — you can preview every song in the catalog without spending anything. Charges only show up when you actually buy a chart or multitrack, or when you subscribe to Pro.
Per-song purchases start around $4.99 for a basic chord chart and climb from there for orchestrations and multitrack packs. The advantage of buying outright is that it’s yours — downloaded to the device, playable offline, available even if you cancel Pro later. The disadvantage is that for a busy team, those purchases add up faster than expected.
Pro at around $25/mo is the right default for most worship teams. Unlimited streaming of the catalog, automatic access to new releases, and no decision-fatigue when you want to try a song. The break-even is a handful of songs a month — which is below the actual usage of any team running weekly services.
Team and church plans exist for multi-leader setups, with shared libraries and centralized billing. Those are quoted directly. For a small church, one Pro seat shared informally usually covers the band.
Where PraiseCharts falls behind
No first-party sequencer or pad builder. If you want to build your own custom transitions, atmospheric pads, or click-and-guide sessions from scratch, this app isn’t that — Loop Community and the Ableton/MainStage world still own that space.
Android trails iPad. The serious feature work happens on iOS and iPadOS first, and the Android app — while functional — has historically been a step behind on UI polish, gesture support, and pedal compatibility.
No deep Planning Center integration baked in. There’s some interop, but it’s lighter than what dedicated Planning Center-native apps offer for service-flow handoff. Most teams end up running PCO and PraiseCharts side-by-side rather than as a single workflow.
The interface is functional rather than delightful. PraiseCharts has prioritized catalog and reliability over UI sparkle for a long time, and it shows — a few menus take an extra tap, the typography is workmanlike, and discovery is built around search rather than browse.
Some premium arrangements stay locked even with Pro. A handful of publisher-restricted charts and tracks are still per-song-only. It’s a small fraction of the catalog, but it’s worth knowing if a specific song matters to your team.
PraiseCharts app vs. MultiTracks Playback vs. OnSong
Different strengths. PraiseCharts is better at being a one-stop catalog-plus-player for teams that just want licensed charts and tracks in one app. MultiTracks Playback is broader and deeper on the playback side specifically — more advanced routing, in-ear control, professional rig integration. OnSong is broader on the chart-reading-and-setlist side specifically — better at importing your own PDFs and ChordPro files, more flexibility for teams whose catalog isn’t centered on CCM publishers.
For a team building around the contemporary worship catalog from the ground up, PraiseCharts is the most "everything in one app" answer. The catalog is the catalog, the tracks line up with the charts, and Pro makes the breadth genuinely useful. For a team that already owns multitracks from various sources and needs a more sophisticated playback rig, MultiTracks Playback is the more capable engine — and the two apps coexist happily in many churches, with PraiseCharts as the chart reader and MultiTracks as the playback brain.
OnSong sits in a different lane. It’s the best app on the market if your library is mostly your own — PDFs, hymnal scans, original songs, ChordPro files — and you need it to read, transpose, and present cleanly. It’s less of a fit if you want to buy a song you don’t already own. PraiseCharts is the store-plus-reader; OnSong is the reader-only with better import tools.
The bottom line
For worship teams whose Sunday morning includes anything from the contemporary publisher catalog — which is most of them — PraiseCharts on iPad is the lowest-friction way to get a licensed chart in the right key, with matching tracks, in front of the band. The interface won’t win design awards, the Android version trails the iPad, and a real Ableton rig still beats it on routing depth. But the catalog is unmatched in its lane, the Pro subscription finally makes "unlimited" pencil out for weekly teams, and the in-app multitrack player closes a real gap for churches between acoustic-only and full-playback-rig. Buy the app, take Pro for a month, and see if your Saturday rehearsal gets shorter. It probably will.
Alternatives to PraiseCharts
MultiTracks Playback
The professional standard for in-ear-routed multitrack playback. Deeper rig integration than PraiseCharts; pairs well with it rather than replaces it.
OnSong
The best chart reader on iPad if your library is mostly your own PDFs and ChordPro files. Stronger on import and presentation; no store of its own.
Planning Center Services
The all-in-one service planning and team scheduling tool most churches already run. PraiseCharts plugs in as the chart-and-track layer.
WorshipTools
Free chart reader, setlist, and presentation suite. Lighter on catalog and tracks than PraiseCharts; strong on price.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the PraiseCharts app the same as the PraiseCharts website?
- They share the same catalog and account, but the app is the mobile and iPad front-end optimized for live use — reading charts on stage, playing multitracks during rehearsal, and managing setlists on a phone. The website is still where heavier admin and large-batch purchases happen.
- Do I need the Pro subscription, or can I just buy songs one at a time?
- Either works. Per-song purchases stay yours forever and are downloaded to the device. Pro at around $25/mo gives unlimited streaming of the catalog and pays for itself if you use more than four-to-five new songs a month — which is essentially every weekly worship team.
- Can I use the app to run tracks live on Sunday?
- Yes. The in-app multitrack player handles per-stem volume, click routing, and guide-vocal isolation well enough for most small-to-mid-size worship teams. For more advanced in-ear routing or a fully programmable rig, MultiTracks Playback or an Ableton/MainStage setup goes deeper.
- Does it work offline?
- Yes, for anything you own outright or have downloaded under your Pro subscription. The app caches purchased and recently-streamed charts and tracks locally, which matters in green rooms and basements with weak signal.
- How is it different from MultiTracks Playback?
- PraiseCharts is a catalog-plus-reader-plus-player in one app, centered on the contemporary worship publisher catalog. MultiTracks Playback is a dedicated playback engine with deeper routing, in-ear control, and rig integration. Many churches use both — PraiseCharts for charts and Pro streaming, MultiTracks for the live playback rig.
- Is it available on Android?
- Yes, but the iOS and iPadOS versions get new features first and tend to feel more polished. If your team is iPad-based on stage, you’ll have the best experience. Android works, just expect a small lag on feature parity.
- Can I share purchases or a Pro subscription with my whole worship team?
- Individual accounts are tied to one person, but PraiseCharts offers team and church plans with shared libraries and centralized billing for multi-leader setups. Most small teams just share one Pro seat and push setlists out to band members’ free accounts.