Feature-by-feature deep dive
Where each product wins, where each one falls short.
Platform support
OnSong: Apple-only. iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Mac. No Windows version, and the Android app was withdrawn from the Play Store in 2022. For an all-Apple team this is a non-issue; for a mixed team it's a hard wall.
Song7: Any modern browser — desktop or mobile — and installable as a Progressive Web App on iOS, Android, macOS, ChromeOS, and Windows. The volunteer who shows up with an Android phone or a Windows laptop is covered without a second thought.
Individual app or team platform
OnSong: Designed around one musician and their library. It's excellent at that. Sharing across a team is possible through OnSong Connect and Group plans, but it's an add-on to a fundamentally personal app, and individual plans limit you to 2–4 devices.
Song7: Built team-first from the start. One shared song library, setlists the whole team sees, and changes that sync in real time. There's no per-device seat math — members open it in a browser and they're in.
Song and chord chart management
OnSong: Mature chart handling — ChordPro, PDF chord charts, a document scanner for printed sheets, Nashville number-system display, chord diagrams, and integrations with licensed chart sources like MultiTracks and SongSelect. PDF support in particular is a real OnSong strength Song7 doesn't match.
Song7: Built-in editing of your own charts. Import from ChordPro or plain text with chord brackets, or snap a photo of a printed sheet and Song7's photo-to-chart OCR turns it into an editable chart (not just a stored PDF). Song7 does not import PDFs directly. The library is yours and your team's — Song7 doesn't provide a public database of copyrighted songs.
Setlist creation and planning
OnSong: Supports sets you build on your device. Sharing a set with bandmates runs through OnSong Connect; the planning model is still rooted in the individual's app rather than a shared team plan.
Song7: Drag-and-drop setlist builder is core. Pick songs, reorder by dragging, set the key per song, publish the set, and the whole team sees it instantly — no per-device syncing step to think about.
Transposition and key changes
OnSong: Strong, fast transposition and capo formatting on a per-device basis. Change the key on your iPad and your chart updates — but it's your copy.
Song7: One-tap transposition into any key, and because the library is shared, changing a song's key for Sunday updates every musician's chart in real time. No "did everyone re-sync?" moment.
Live performance hardware
OnSong: This is OnSong's home turf. Foot-pedal page turns (including AirTurn), programmable autoscroll with a timeline, backing tracks linked to Apple Music or Spotify, audio click and visual metronome, MIDI automation, and DMX stage lighting. For a performance-heavy setup, OnSong goes deeper than Song7.
Song7: Covers the essentials — autoscroll, a built-in metronome, and a built-in tuner — but doesn't ship curated foot-pedal hardware, MIDI/DMX automation, or backing-track playback. If hands-free pedals and stage automation are central to your service, OnSong wins this category today.
Annotations and notes
OnSong: Rich annotation tools on Premium — drawings, clips, and sticky notes layered onto charts. One of its stronger areas for musicians who mark up heavily.
Song7: Personal notes per song are supported. Heavy free-form drawing on top of a chart isn't the focus — Song7 favors structured editing of the chart itself over overlay markup.
Live presentation and projection
OnSong: Premium includes lyrics projection, stage monitors, and Google Cast output to an external display — driven from an Apple device.
Song7: Has a congregation-facing presentation mode that displays clean, full-screen lyrics on any screen with a browser — no Apple hardware required to drive it. Both products can project; Song7 does it without tying you to the Apple ecosystem.
Team collaboration and sync
OnSong: Collaboration happens through OnSong Connect and Group plans with shared OnSong Drive storage. It works, but it's a sharing layer on top of individual libraries rather than a single shared source of truth.
Song7: Real-time team sync is the core model. Multiple editors manage one shared library and setlists, members see published sets instantly, and multi-Space support lets multi-campus churches keep separate teams under one account.
Offline access
OnSong: As a native Apple app, charts are stored on-device and read offline without a thought. This is a genuine strength of a mature native app when the church Wi-Fi drops mid-service.
Song7: As a PWA, Song7 caches content for offline reading, but the offline experience is currently lighter than a fully native app. For situations where rock-solid offline is non-negotiable, OnSong's native caching has the edge.