Chess vs Chess Max Academy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chess
Discover the world of chess with this interactive e-book. Learn the rules, terminology, and essential strategies through engaging content and practice moves with interactive diagrams. Improve your game, whether you're a beginner or looking to refine your skills.
- Interactive e-book format
- Teaches rules and terminology
- Covers essential strategies
- Interactive diagram feature
- Practice legal moves
Read full descriptionHide full description
Over 600 million people worldwide know how to play chess. Now you can learn how to play too, with Learn Chess! Learn Chess is a short, fun, interactive e-book that teaches you the rules, terminology, essential strategies, and more. Even if you already know the rules, it can help you improve your game. Features: - 118 pages of content - 91 chess diagrams - Interactive diagram feature lets you try out legal moves Learn Chess is made by the developer of tChess Lite and Pro, the popular and critically acclaimed iPhone chess games.
Chess Max Academy
Learn chess through interactive courses and activities. Engage with explanations, puzzles, and practice games to improve your skills. Designed for various learning levels, it makes understanding chess concepts easy and fun.
- Interactive chess courses
- Activity-based learning
- Explanation activities
- Capture activities
- Puzzle and tactics solving
- Multiple-choice quizzes
- Play against computer
Read full descriptionHide full description
It's time to learn interactive chess courses with activity-based solving! Our courses have hundreds of activities from various learning levels. The different types of interactive activities help you digest the information easily. 1) Explanation Activity: This will teach you a concept in a concise way. 2) Capture Activity: The most fun and engaging way to learn piece movements and captures. 3) Puzzle Activity: Solve interesting puzzles and tactics from a given position. 4) MCQ Activity: Test your knowledge with quiz-based multiple-choice questions. 5) Play with Computer: Train your skills by practicing must-know positions with the computer.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: Chess Max Academy at free against Chess's paid. Chess Max Academy also leads on update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 9 months) and rating (5.0 vs 4.7). Chess's advantage is ratings volume (200 vs 2). On price, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases 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.
Chess Max Academy holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chess has 200 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 92% of Chess's written reviews are positive against 100% of Chess Max Academy's.
Chess ships an update every 9 months, Chess Max Academy every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 22, 2026 and September 15, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chess | Chess Max Academy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (200 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 92.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 200 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 months | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 86 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tom Kerrigan | Chess Max Nexus Inc |
Customer experience
Chess
Chess Max Academy
In-app purchases
Chess
No in-app purchases
Chess Max Academy
No in-app purchases
