Deep Green vs ChessView
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Deep Green
This app provides a classical chess experience with a clean, native interface and customizable piece designs. It supports open game formats, offers a unique chess engine with adjustable strength, and features a private, ad-free environment.
- Clean, native user interface
- Customizable chess piece designs
- Open game format (PGN/FEN)
- Adjustable strength chess engine
- Private and ad-free experience
- System-level integration
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A no-nonsense classical chess app. - CLEAN UI: Deep Green offers a distraction-free experience in a clean, native user interface, with Liquid Glass on iOS 26 and later. - CUSTOM PIECE DESIGN: Beautiful chess set designed specifically for Deep Green and rendered at high resolution in both outline and 3D throughout the app. - MADE FOR IPAD: Dedicated menu bar, multiple windows, and refined trackpad, mouse, and Apple Pencil support. Squares highlight as you hover over the board. - MADE FOR IPHONE DUO: Adapts to both displays and every pose. The board centers on the fold like a folding chess board, and the game controls follow the system into the vertical bar. - TIGHT SYSTEM INTEGRATION: System-level sharing, drag and drop, AirDrop, undo/redo, contextual menus, Quick Look previews of chess files, Dark Mode, high contrast support and more. - OPEN GAME FORMAT: Games can be shared, saved, copied, pasted, imported, exported in the ubiquitous, open source PGN and FEN formats. Deep Green can open chess files straight from the Files app. - UNIQUE CHESS ENGINE: Enjoyable opponent with adjustable strength, praised for its humane gameplay, developed for Deep Green on the Apple Newton more than 25 years ago. - TWEAKABLE APPEARANCE: Engage the knights in the game by having them turn towards the center of the board, apply a humane, slightly random placement of the pieces. - IN YOUR LANGUAGE: Available in English, German, and Danish. - MODERN ARCHITECTURE: Written in Swift as a fully native app – modern, maintainable, and prepared for the future. - PRIVATE, AD-FREE: No ads, no tracking, no analytics, no nonsense. If you like Deep Green, please rate it favorably on the App Store.
ChessView
Scan chess positions from photos, books, or screenshots and instantly play them out on a digital board. Analyze PGN files, import your online games, and explore classic matches. Offers optional AI commentary for deeper insights.
- Scan positions from photos/screenshots
- Import PGN and FEN files
- Replay and branch off game moves
- Full move validation
- Import Chess.com games
- Built-in classic games
- Optional AI commentary
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See a chess position anywhere — in a book, on another screen, on the table in front of you — and have it on a board you can play with, in seconds. ChessView is a study tool, not another place to play. Scan a position with the camera or from a screenshot, open a PGN file, or pull in your Chess.com games — then replay them, branch off, and work out what actually happened. Free, offline, no account, no ads, no tracking. SCAN A POSITION FROM A PHOTO Point the camera at a real board, or choose a screenshot from Chess.com, Lichess or a chess book. ChessView reads the position and puts it on your board. Anything it misreads, you fix in the position editor — then start playing it out. PLAY IT OUT ON A REAL BOARD Full move validation: legal moves, en passant, castling, promotion. Drag the pieces, step back and forth through the whole game, flip the board, and branch off wherever you want to see what would have happened. OPEN PGN AND FEN FROM ANYWHERE PGN files from Files, Mail, Messages or any app that can share them. Paste a FEN string and it loads. Export any position or game as PGN, FEN or a PNG image, and share it in one tap. YOUR CHESS.COM GAMES, OFFLINE Type your username, pick a month, and your games are in the library — ready to replay any time, with or without a connection. STUDY THE CLASSICS Famous games come built in — Byrne–Fischer, Morphy, Short–Timman, Lasker–Thomas — so there is always a position worth looking at. SEE THE EVALUATION Evaluations and main lines come from the Lichess cloud database: free, fast, no account needed. For positions the database doesn't know, ChessView offers a sensible continuation of its own. OPTIONAL: COMMENTARY IN PLAIN WORDS Add your own OpenAI API key and ChessView will explain a position or a whole game in sentences — the plan, the key ideas, the moment it turned. Entirely optional: everything above works without it. Your key is stored in the iOS Keychain, used only from your device, and never sent to us. PRIVACY, ACTUALLY No account. No ads. No analytics. No tracking. Your games and your settings stay on your iPhone and iPad. WHY I BUILT IT Getting a chess position onto my phone used to be absurdly hard. A diagram in a book, a screenshot from a game, a FEN string someone sent me — none of it could just be opened and played through on an iPhone. PGN files were worse. So I built the app I wanted: open anything, put it on a real board, move the pieces. — Pavel, solo developer Designed for iPhone and iPad.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: ChessView at 5.0 against Deep Green's 3.9. ChessView also leads on monetization model (free vs paid) and update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 4 months). Deep Green's advantage is ratings volume (76 vs 1) and iOS requirement (16.4 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
ChessView holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.9. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Deep Green has 76 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Deep Green ships an update every 4 months, ChessView every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and September 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Deep Green | ChessView |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.9 (76 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 66.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 76 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 24 MB | 21 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Cocoa Stuff | Pavel Gnatyuk |
Customer experience
Deep Green
ChessView
Bugs and requests
Deep Green
Reported bugs
4 issues- App crashes when promoting pawns
- Board orientation issues when rotating device
- Unresponsive UI elements
- Compatibility problems with newer iOS versions
Requested features
5 requests- Game saving and loading functionality
- Online/multiplayer mode
- Customizable board/piece themes
- Difficulty settings for beginners
- Indicators for check, checkmate, and draw
ChessView
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Deep Green
No in-app purchases
ChessView
No in-app purchases









