Comparison

Chess.com vs Chess Sudoku

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Chess.com

Engage in online and offline chess matches with millions of players worldwide. Improve your skills through interactive lessons, over 500,000 puzzles, and powerful AI opponents. Compete in tournaments and explore various chess variants.

Highlights
  • Online multiplayer chess
  • Offline play against AI
  • Extensive puzzle library
  • Interactive chess lessons
  • Tournament participation
  • Chess variants
  • Game analysis
Features
Read full description

Play chess lessons online with over 265 million players from around the world! Chess is known as the best strategy board game in the world! Enjoy unlimited 3D offline pocket chess games and improve your chess rating with 500,000+ puzzles, more than 20 million chess games a day, lessons, and over 100 powerful bot opponents. Unlock your inner chess master today! PLAY CHESS ONLINE: - 2 Player online chess mode is entirely free to enjoy with your friends. - Join tournaments with players online or friends and become a master. - Play games in real-time from one minute per game to 30 minutes or longer with friends. - Review your strategy and game lessons and lay out daily correspondence in online chess. - Play exciting chess variants in our app: chess960 (Fischer-Random), blitz chess, puzzle rush, bullet chess, puzzle battle, or blindfold. CHESS PUZZLES: - Enjoy 500,000 + unique puzzles. - Rated mode automatically adjusts to your skill level to help you improve. - Race the clock with a timer to beat your high score in Puzzle Rush. - Practice puzzles with specific themes in this strategy board game (checkmate in 1, in 2, in 3, blindfold, endgames, fork, skewer, sacrifice, timer, etc.) CHESS LESSONS: - Hundreds of quality chess lessons and online videos made by masters (Learn and practice your skills with chess problems) - Interactive puzzles tutorials with tips and game recommendations. - Learn all the chess rules and strategies in a step-by-step lesson plan (opening, endgame...) CHESS COACHING: - Learn from helpful and immersive visual chess coach lessons. - Review your games with the coach and learn the strategy of the board game for every move. - Play games with the coach, who will guide you through the fundamentals move by move and provide helpful hints as you play. PLAY CHESS ONLINE AGAINST THE COMPUTER: - Choose the level of computer opponent you want to play and set a timer. - Analyze your chess games offline and learn to see where you went wrong and how you can improve. CHESS COMMUNITY: - Join a community of more than 200M online chess players. Find friends! - More than 20M games played each day. - Compete to get your own rating and try to join the best player online chess leaderboards against other players. - Watch the most popular superstars: Hikaru, GothamChess, or Magnus! ... and MUCH MORE: - Play chess games offline against the computer and the clock with a timer. - Articles by the best coaches and masters. - Explore openings like Queen´s Gambit or Sicilian Defense. - Challenge and play with your friends in an online chess game. - Choose from 20+ board themes and 3D pieces. - Get in-depth performance stats about your games, puzzles, and lessons. Playing pocket chess online has never been so easy! Chess.com is the place to play chess games online with your friends and other players! Share your suggestions and comments. Our support team is happy to help you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year! ABOUT CHESS.COM: Chess.com was created by chess players and people who love chess! Team: http://www.chess.com/about

About

Chess Sudoku

This app combines classic Sudoku with chess-inspired logic. Solve puzzles where digits cannot repeat in rows, columns, or boxes, and also adhere to specific chess piece movement rules for added challenge. Earn stars by solving puzzles to unlock more.

Highlights
  • Knight Sudoku puzzles
  • King Sudoku puzzles
  • Queen Sudoku puzzles
  • 100 crafted puzzles
  • Human-tested hints
  • Star-based progression
Features
Currently charting
Read full description

***** AUGUST UPDATE ***** 15 new King puzzles, all 100 puzzles are out now! ------------------------------------- Presented by Cracking The Cryptic, YouTube’s most popular Sudoku channel, comes a new game that connects two of the world’s biggest mind games: Chess and Sudoku! How does Chess Sudoku work? Well we’ve taken the classic sudoku game everyone knows and loves and created puzzles with chess-related twists! There are three different types of puzzles in the game: Knight Sudoku; King Sudoku and Queen Sudoku. In Knight Sudoku, in addition to the normal rules of sudoku (no repeated digit in a row/column/3x3 box) a digit must not appear a chess knight’s move away from itself. This simple extra restriction introduces lots of clever additional logic that makes the puzzle even more interesting! King Sudoku and Queen Sudoku work the same way: ie it’s always normal sudoku but, in King Sudoku a digit must not be a single diagonal move away from itself; and, in Queen Sudoku, every 9 in the grid acts like a chess Queen and must not be in the same row/column/3x3 box OR diagonal of any other 9! As with their other games (‘Classic Sudoku’ and ‘Sandwich Sudoku’), Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe (the hosts of Cracking The Cryptic) have personally crafted the hints for the puzzles. So you know that every puzzle has been play-tested by a human being to ensure that the sudoku is interesting and fun to solve. In Cracking The Cryptic’s games, players start with zero stars and earn stars by solving puzzles. The more puzzles you solve, the more stars you earn and the more puzzles you get to play. Only the most dedicated (and cleverest) sudoku players will finish all the puzzles. Of course the difficulty is carefully calibrated to ensure lots of puzzles at every level (from easy through to extreme). Anyone familiar with their YouTube channel will know that Simon and Mark take pride in teaching to be better solvers and, with their games, they always craft the puzzles with the mindset of trying to help solvers improve their skills. Mark and Simon have both represented the UK many times at the World Sudoku Championship and you can find more of their puzzles (and lots of others) on the internet’s biggest sudoku channel Cracking The Cryptic. Features: 100 beautiful puzzles from the Knight, King and Queen variants Hints crafted by Simon and Mark!

Screenshots

Chess.com4 screens
Chess Sudoku3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Chess.com at Free against Chess Sudoku's $4.99. Chess.com also leads on update cadence (weekly vs every 2 months) and ratings volume (860K vs 148). Chess Sudoku's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 12) and ads (none vs shown). On rating 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Chess.com is free to download; Chess Sudoku costs $4.99 up front. Chess.com sells 12 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Chess Sudoku asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Chess.com against 4.9 for Chess Sudoku. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chess.com has 860K ratings behind it against 148, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 64% of Chess.com's written reviews are positive against 84% of Chess Sudoku's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Chess.com ships an update weekly, Chess Sudoku every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 27, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard9 real differences · 2 level
Chess.com versus Chess Sudoku: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterChess.comChess Sudoku
PriceFree — better$4.99
Rating4.8 (860K ratings)4.9 (148 ratings) — better
Positive reviews64.4% of reviews84.4% of reviews — better
Number of ratings860K — better148
Update frequencyWeekly — betterEvery 2 months
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
Best chart rank#1 — better#173
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Apple WatchiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS17.010.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size447 MB71 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperChess.comNick Carney

Customer experience

Chess.com

All ratings858,821 ratings
Positive95.8%
Neutral1.5%
Negative2.6%
Written reviews9,347 reviews
Positive64.4%
Neutral5.9%
Negative29.7%

Chess Sudoku

All ratings148 ratings
Positive97.3%
Neutral2.0%
Negative0.7%
Written reviews64 reviews
Positive84.4%
Neutral12.5%
Negative3.1%

User reviews

Chess.com

From 860K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Excellent app for learning and improving chess skills
  • 🎓 Comprehensive lessons, puzzles, and analysis tools
  • 🌍 Large player base for quick matchmaking
  • 📊 Detailed game statistics and progress tracking
  • 💻 Seamless integration between mobile app and website

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Frequent connection issues and game freezes
  • ⏱️ Unreliable and inconsistent game timers
  • 🔒 Lack of transparency around anti-cheating measures
  • 💰 Aggressive paywall for advanced features
  • 🤖 Subpar AI opponents with questionable move choices

Chess Sudoku

From 148 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Great puzzles
  • 💡 Innovative chess constraints
  • 👍 Intuitive interface
  • 👍 Helpful hints
  • 👍 Smooth gameplay

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Queen move puzzles have errors
  • 🐛 Puzzles lack variety
  • 🐛 Difficulty ratings are odd
  • 🐛 App can be boring after finishing puzzles
  • 🐛 High power consumption

Bugs and requests

Chess.com

Reported bugs

5 issues
  • Incorrect move suggestions in game analysis
  • Inability to leave or manage chess clubs within the app
  • Puzzle mode crashing when attempting to reveal the solution
  • Inconsistent behavior when switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data
  • Pieces not registering correctly on the board during gameplay

Requested features

5 requests
  • Ability to customize board and piece themes
  • Option to pause and resume games at a later time
  • Improved game analysis with more detailed explanations
  • Enhanced social features for interacting with other players
  • Offline mode for practicing puzzles and tactics

Chess Sudoku

Reported bugs

12 issues
  • Queen move puzzles have errors/contradictions
  • Puzzles sometimes have multiple solutions
  • Queen puzzles sometimes appear as plain sudoku
  • Queen sudoku has errors forcing restraint breaks
  • iPad app doesn't allow 180-degree orientation change
Show 7 more
  • iPad app doesn't allow landscape play (initially)
  • Highlighting colors difficult to toggle
  • Buttons are too small and confusing
  • Queen rules not followed in some puzzles
  • Queen puzzle 1 has incorrect entries/solutions
  • Queen sudoku has numbers on the same diagonal
  • Queen sudoku has numbers within a king's move

Requested features

17 requests
  • Larger number buttons
  • More puzzle variety
  • More puzzles overall
  • Cloud saves
  • Landscape mode for iPad
Show 12 more
  • More color options for cell painting
  • Tutorial for notation
  • Consolidate apps into one with IAP
  • Remember last opened puzzle
  • Button to clear markings from selected cells only
  • Indicator for relevant hint cells
  • Tool to notice current mode (Knight, King, Queen)
  • More colors for notation
  • Option to disable beginner tools
  • Improved corner note alignment
  • Option to play horizontally on iPad
  • Better button optimization based on frequency of use

In-app purchases

12 purchases

Chess.com

Subscriptions12
  • Gold Membership7 Days trial$4.991 Month
  • Gold Membership7 Days trial$6.991 Month
  • Platinum Membership7 Days trial$6.991 Month
Show 9 more
  • Platinum Membership7 Days trial$10.991 Month
  • Diamond Membership7 Days trial$14.991 Month
  • Diamond Membership7 Days trial$16.991 Month
  • Gold Membership7 Days trial$29.991 Year
  • Platinum Membership7 Days trial$49.991 Year
  • Gold Membership7 Days trial$49.991 Year
  • Platinum Membership7 Days trial$79.991 Year
  • Diamond Membership7 Days trial$99.991 Year
  • Diamond Membership7 Days trial$119.991 Year
None

Chess Sudoku

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Chess.com free?
Chess.com is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Chess Sudoku free?
Chess Sudoku costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Chess.com or Chess Sudoku?
Chess Sudoku is rated higher. Chess.com averages 4.8 out of 5 from 860K ratings, while Chess Sudoku averages 4.9 from 148 ratings.
Do Chess.com or Chess Sudoku have ads?
Chess.com shows ads; Chess Sudoku does not.
Which is updated more often, Chess.com or Chess Sudoku?
Chess.com ships an update weekly, and Chess Sudoku every 2 months. Most recently, Chess.com was updated on October 29, 2026 and Chess Sudoku on October 27, 2026.
Which is more popular, Chess.com or Chess Sudoku?
Chess.com currently peaks at #1 in the App Store charts, and Chess Sudoku at #173. Chart position reflects recent download velocity rather than total install base.

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