DJ software, head to head
Crate Hackers vs Lexicon.
Crate Hackers helps you find music you do not own yet. Lexicon organises and repairs the collection you already have. If your problem is an empty crate they are not interchangeable, and if your problem is 40,000 untagged files they are not either. This compares both honestly on pricing, tagging, analysis and export.
Choose Crate Hackers if
- Finding new music is your bottleneck, not organising what you already own
- You would rather start from someone else's curated crates than build categories yourself
- You want duplicate checking without a full library manager
- A monthly subscription for an ongoing service makes sense to you
Choose Lexicon if
- You run more than one DJ app and need one library that stays in sync with all of them
- Your collection has accumulated duplicates, broken paths and inconsistent metadata that need cleaning up
- You want your own tag vocabulary rather than a fixed set someone else chose
- A subscription is acceptable, or the lifetime option is worth the larger one-time cost
Crate Hackers and Lexicon, side by side.
Feature by feature, including the rows where each one wins.
| Crate Hackers | Lexicon | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Price | ~$30/mo | From $9.99/mo |
| No subscription required | No | Lifetime option |
| Free trial or tier | 7-day trial | Free tier |
| Organising what you own | ||
| Mood and energy tagging | Pre-tagged crates | Custom tags |
| Your own categories and tags | No | Yes |
| Preset tag packs | Pre-tagged crates | No |
| Library cleanup and metadata repair | Duplicate check | Yes |
| Analysis | ||
| Automatic BPM and key detection | No | Yes |
| Automatic cue points | No | Yes |
| Finding tracks and building sets | ||
| Next-track suggestions | No | No |
| Find compatible from one track | No | No |
| Find and collect new music | Yes | No |
| Getting it into your DJ app | ||
| Export to Rekordbox, Serato, Traktor, Engine | Into DJ apps | Plus more |
| Cloud sync across devices | No | Paid plans |
| Mobile app | No | Paid plans |
| Desktop platform | Mac, Windows | Mac, Windows |
Pricing and features last checked July 2026. Both apps change, so check the official sites for current details.
Where Crate Hackers wins.
If these match how you DJ, Crate Hackers is your answer.
Finding and collecting new music
The only tool in this comparison built around discovery rather than around the collection you already have.
Pre-tagged crates
Ships ready-made categories, so there is something usable on day one without building a tag vocabulary first.
Duplicate checking
Catches duplicates as the collection grows, which is the cleanup problem most likely to bite a crate digger.
Where Lexicon wins.
If these match how you DJ, Lexicon is your answer.
Moves libraries between DJ apps
Exports to Rekordbox, Serato, Traktor and Engine plus others, so a collection built in one app is not trapped there.
Cleanup and metadata repair
Finds duplicates and repairs inconsistent metadata across a collection, which is the work nobody wants to do by hand.
Cloud sync and mobile on paid plans
Paid tiers add sync across devices and a mobile app, so the library is reachable away from the main machine.
Frequently asked questions
The honest answers, including the trade-offs.
Methodology
How we keep this honest.
Verified against the sources
Every claim is checked against the official Crate Hackers and Lexicon sites and current independent reviews.
We own our bias
We make Vibes, a library tool that works alongside both apps. We sell neither Crate Hackers nor Lexicon, which keeps this one neutral.
Live pricing
The Vibes price shown comes straight from our checkout, never a hardcoded marketing number.
Kept current
Last reviewed July 2026.
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