Guitar capo calculator

Find the easiest capo position for any key, or convert a chord chart for your capo. Free. No sign-up.

Capo chart: every key, every fret

Each cell is the chord family you finger when a song sounds in the row's key and your capo sits on the column's fret. Bright cells are the five open families — those are the positions worth reaching for.

Why a capo changes which shapes you play

A capo clamps every string at one fret, which raises the whole guitar by that many semitones. The shapes under your fingers don't change — what they sound like does. Finger a C-shape chord with a capo on the third fret and the room hears Eb. That gap is the whole trick: to play a song that sounds in Eb, you subtract the capo fret from the sounding key and play whatever key is left. Capo 3 leaves C, capo 1 leaves D, capo 6 leaves A, capo 8 leaves G — four different fingerings for one song.

Not all of those fingerings are equal. Guitar favors five chord families — C, A, G, E, and D, the CAGED set — because their keys fill out with open chords: ringing strings, easy grips, no barres. Keys like Eb, F, or Ab force barre chords all night if you play them straight. The calculator above ranks each viable capo position by how friendly its family is, so a flat-key piano song turns back into open shapes.

Capo or transpose?

A capo keeps the song in its original key — you match recordings and other musicians while your hands do easier work. Transposing rewrites the chords into a new key, which changes what everyone hears; that's the right call when a melody sits outside your singing range. If you need the sound to stay put, reach for the capo. If you need the pitch to move, use the transposer instead.

Keep practicing

• Chord transposer — shift a progression to a new key
• Chord library — diagrams for every shape you'll capo
• Song library — progressions to try your capo on