Chess Era vs ChessLab
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
Chess Era
This online chess school connects students, coaches, schools, and parents. Students can play, challenge friends, and track progress. Coaches can conduct tournaments and provide live online lessons, while schools manage classes and students.
- Play with other students
- Challenge friends
- Track progress
- Collaborative study
- Conduct tournaments
- Online coaching with video
- Student game analysis
- School management dashboard
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Congratulations on choosing Chess as one of the means to improve our child's critical thinking and problem solving skills. Chess Era is an Online Chess School built around 4 key stake holders: Students, Coaches, Schools and Parents. 1. Starting with Students, they can: 1. Play with other students 2. Challenge their friends 3. Track their progress 4. Share their ideas with others to have a collaborative study 2. We have some excellent tools for the Coaches as well. They can: 1. Conduct tournament among students 2. Do Online Coaching with Board and Live Video 3. Can analyse every student's game and work 4. Have full control on student's progress and tracking 3. Now the most important feature the Chess Era provides is for the School managements: 1. Gives you a dashboard for the class and the student 2. Can do announcements 3. Assign coaches for the batches and track them 4. Handle multi school/branches with tracking 4. Parents also benefit from the Chess Era as it ensures 1. Their child's engagement and enthusiasm 2. And help them track the progress of their Child
ChessLab
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ChessLab is a complete chess companion for iPhone and iPad: play, analyze, train and experiment, with the Stockfish engine built in and without ever leaving the app. HUMAN OPPONENTS Nine characters played by Maia-3, a network trained on millions of human games: it does not look for the best move, it plays the one a human of that level would play, blunders included. Each has a style, a repertoire, a temperament, a portrait, and an adjustable level on the human scale. Or take on Stockfish itself, from beginner (~900 Elo) to maximum (~3190 Elo). With or without a clock. Hints, a warning before risky moves, and an evaluation bar can all be toggled on demand. TWO PLAYERS Play locally on the same device, with a "pass-and-play" mode that flips the pieces so both players read the board comfortably. ANALYZE Run a game or a position through Stockfish: move-by-move classification (inaccuracy, mistake, blunder, brilliant moveโฆ), an evaluation graph, best-move and opponent-threat arrows, and auto-play through the moves. Import by PGN, FEN, position editor, or photo scanner. OPENINGS Pick an opening and step through it move by move: every move is explained, the alternatives are offered, and colored arrows link the board to the move list. 58 hand-written openings (bilingual), all reviewed by the engine, with simplified spaced-repetition training to memorize them. THE ENDGAME CORNER 78 courses proven by endgame tablebases โ the exact mathematical verdict: no taught move gives up a win, no recommended defence loses a draw. Nine families, from the opposition to famous studies. And free training: finish the position against best defence, where any move that preserves the verdict is accepted โ not just the lesson's move. VARIANTS Chess960 (Fischer Random Chess): a randomly drawn starting position, one chosen by number, or one you compose yourself, with a full post-game analysis just like "Play" mode. Eleven more variants against the computer, each with its own analysis: King of the Hill, Three-Check, Horde, Racing Kings, Atomic, Antichess, Crazyhouse, Stolen Move (a token every 7 moves lets you play twice in a row), Duck Chess, Barricades and Random Barricades. YOUR OWN REPERTOIRES Import your openings as PGN, variations included, and drill them with the same system. Share a repertoire as a single file โ no account, no server. What you already know about a position counts right away in the imported repertoire. PUZZLES Over 100,000 tactics puzzles from the Lichess database, filterable by rating and theme, plus puzzles generated automatically from your own mistakes in analysis. Spaced repetition and progress tracking included. LABORATORY Pit two Stockfish configurations against each other over a series of games to compare their strength, with an estimated Elo gap and confidence interval. EDITOR AND SCANNER Set up a position by hand, or scan it from a screenshot or a photo โ review and correct the recognized position before playing or analyzing it. BUILT FOR IPAD Full-size board with move list, graph and MultiPV visible at once, keyboard and trackpad support, polished portrait and landscape layouts. iCLOUD SYNC (optional) Turn on iCloud sync in Settings so your games follow you across all your devices, via your private iCloud. No account to create, no ChessLab server. Off by default: the app works fully offline. PRIVACY Offline by default: no ChessLab server, no analytics, no ads. Your games and settings stay on your device. iCloud sync, if you enable it, uses your own private iCloud โ your data is never shared with the developer. Fully bilingual, French and English. ChessLab embeds the Stockfish engine (GPLv3 license), the University of Toronto's Maia-3 network (AGPLv3 license) and free vector piece sets โ cburnett (GPLv2+/CC BY-SA), chessnut (Apache 2.0) and merida (GPLv2+). Full source code and license notices are available from within the app (Settings โ Licenses).
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: ChessLab at none against Chess Era's shown. ChessLab also leads on update cadence (weekly vs every 3 weeks). Chess Era's advantage is device support (4 vs 2) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 18.0). On price and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Chess Era ships an update every 3 weeks, ChessLab weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 1, 2026 and October 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chess Era | ChessLab |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Positive reviews | 25.0% of reviews | โ |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Weekly โ better |
| Ads | Yes | No โ better |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported | โ |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac โ better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 โ better | 18.0 |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 106 MB | 169 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | KREEDALOKA PRIVATE LIMITED | Thierry Maeder |
In-app purchases
Chess Era
No in-app purchases
ChessLab
No in-app purchases









