SocialChess vs Chess
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SocialChess
Play chess online with friends or random opponents, with options for fast-paced live games or relaxed daily matches. Improve your skills with game reviews, insights, and strategy tools. Enjoy a clean, ad-free experience with social features like chat and profiles.
- Live and daily chess games
- Play with friends via invite link
- Random opponent matching
- Game reviews and insights
- Chess960 and premoves
- Chat and group chat
- Cross-device syncing
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Play chess online with friends: fast games on the clock, or relaxed daily games you can move whenever you have a moment. Clean, beautiful, and never any ads. PLAY YOUR WAY • Live games from 1 to 90 minutes, with optional increments • Daily games with 1, 3 or 5 days per move. Keep many going at once • Play a Friend: send your personal invite link and start playing • Get matched with a random opponent, or find players by username • Chess960, premoves, conditional moves and optional takebacks • Push notifications when it's your move • Your account and games sync across all your devices and the web IMPROVE YOUR GAME • Game reviews with an accuracy score and a move-quality chart • Insights: plain-English explanations of why a move worked, or didn't • Second Chance: replay your mistakes and find the better move • Strategy Board: explore any position with engine lines SOCIAL • Chat and group chat • Profiles with photo, comments and a location map • Browse any player's games, and their opponents' games • Elo ratings and player rankings • Watch live games MEMBERSHIP SocialChess is free to play forever, or upgrade to a membership to unlock more features: • Up to 100 daily games at a time • Unlimited game reviews with Insights • Second Chance on any player's games • Elo charts and per-opponent statistics • All board styles • PGN export and a server archive of your games • Unrated games • Chat images and translation OUR PRINCIPLES • No ads, ever • Your privacy and data are respected • Features are chosen carefully and shaped by your feedback Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula
Chess
Manage and study chess databases and games in PGN format with advanced analysis tools. Supports game creation, modification, and import from various sources. Includes engine analysis, opening book management, and puzzle training.
- PGN database and game management
- Create, modify, and import games
- Advanced engine analysis with Stockfish
- Opening book and ChessBase support
- Chess 960 (Fischer Random) support
- Diagram recognition for PGN conversion
- Puzzle training and online play
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Chess Studio is the first and only application for iPhone and iPad able to manage chess databases and games in PGN format in a complete and efficient way. Chess Studio is an application designed and built for those players who really want to deepen their knowledge in the field of chess, studying chess regularly and participate in tournaments. Chess Studio allows you to: • Read database and games in PGN format (also with extended notation of moves). • Create, delete and modify folders and databases. • View games with annotations and textual comments and keep track of the displayed games. • Use a double chessboard on the same screen for better game analysis. • Visualize moves and variants in compact mode or indented mode. • Modify existing games with move annotation and textual comments. • Insert new games and positions. • Insert, replay and analyze games in Chess 960 mode. • Insert moves with annotations and textual comments. • Insert variation, subvariations etc. • Insert and visualize graphical annotation (colored arrows and highlighted squares). • Share Databases and Games through Airdrop. • Download chess database from internet. • Download chess database directly from PGN Mentor site. • Import games, database and Opening Books from other applications. • Merge two or more databases. • Copy/Paste games and positions. • Analyze games with Stockfish 19 Engine with the support of the Neural Networks (up to 5 lines of analysis simultaneously) with the support of the Engine Evaluation Bar. • Replay games automatically. • Visualize Pawn structure. • Manage Variations and sub-variatons: delete and promote variations. • Read the weekly Magazine The New In Chess (TWIC) and download the games. • Uploading and Downloading PGN Database to/from Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive. • Three different modes for moving pieces. • Analyze endgames with Endgame Tablebases. • Analyze and study Chess Openings in the Chess Openings Section. • Create and manage Opening Books in Polyglot format. • Import and manage ChessBase Opening Books (ctg format). • Automatically classify a database according to ECO code. • Replay, enter and analyze Chess 960 games (Fischer Random Chess). • Play against the engine both in standard mode and in Chess 960 mode. • Play online through the LiChess platform • Train by solving Puzzles • ChessBase Database support. • Diagram Recognition: this feature allows the user to take and/or upload photos of chess diagrams and convert them into PGN format positions. Other features and technical details: • Modify the board size. • Professional chess fonts and figurines for moves notation and annotation. • Preview of the game in the board tapping the Info button. • Quick search feature. • Advanced search feature. • Complete management of Null Moves with Tutorial. • Visualization of ECO code and Opening during game replay or game insertion. • Visualization of Book Openings during game replay or game insertion. • Portrait/Landscape mode for all devices. • Support of Slide Over and Split View mode. • Function to move up within variants and subvariants. • iOS 26 compatible and optimized for all the devices. • Sharing of databases across devices via iCloud Drive (also with Chess Studio for Mac OS). • Sound option. • Support for iPad Pro Keyboard or bluetooth keyboard. • VoiceOver/Accessibility support. • Direct contact via email with the developer to report problems, ask for explanation and suggestions (very quick answer!). • Languages: English, Italian, Spanish and German. Complete description at: https://chessstudio.wordpress.com/chess-studio/ To view the privacy policy and Terms of Use (EULA) visit https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ The application is continuously updated with new features and improvements. No registration! No advertising! No sharing of personal data!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: SocialChess at Free against Chess's $3.99. SocialChess also leads on ratings volume (7.3K vs 118). Chess's advantage is review sentiment (92% vs 82%). On rating, update cadence, 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
SocialChess is free to download; Chess costs $3.99 up front. SocialChess sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $14.99 per year and Chess sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.7 for SocialChess against 4.7 for Chess. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: SocialChess has 7.3K ratings behind it against 118, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 82% of SocialChess's written reviews are positive against 92% of Chess's.
SocialChess ships an update weekly, Chess every 2 weeks. Both last shipped on November 6, 2026.
| Parameter | SocialChess | Chess |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $3.99 |
| Rating | 4.7 (7.3K ratings) — better | 4.7 (118 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 82.1% of reviews | 92.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 7.3K — better | 118 |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 106 MB | 237 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Woodchop Software LLC | Giordano Vicoli |
Customer experience
SocialChess
Chess
User reviews
SocialChess
From 7.3K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Excellent app for playing chess
- 👍 Clean, user-friendly interface
- 👍 Large player base and easy to find opponents
- 👍 Ability to play slow or fast games
- 👍 No ads or distractions
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional glitches and bugs
- 🔋 Potential battery drain issues
- 💰 Subscription fees for some features
- 🤖 Concerns about cheating and bots
- 🤬 Issues with toxic/abusive players
Chess
From 118 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Powerful chess database features
- 👍 Comprehensive analysis tools
- 👍 Excellent PGN management
- 👍 Great value for price
- 👍 Frequent updates and improvements
Room to improve
- 🐛 Steep learning curve
- 🐛 Occasional crashes
- 🐛 Unintuitive interface
- 🐛 Some users find it confusing
- 🐛 Missing dark mode
Bugs and requests
SocialChess
Reported bugs
4 issues- Freezing or crashing during gameplay
- Inaccurate game statistics and ratings
- Delayed or unresponsive move registrations
- Inability to cancel or delete games
Requested features
5 requests- Add chess analysis and training tools
- Implement anti-cheat measures
- Improve game history and statistics tracking
- Allow customization of board and piece designs
- Add tournament and team play modes
Chess
Reported bugs
12 issues- Problem saving updated game data
- Engine stopped working after 30 seconds
- App crashes when adding annotations without hitting 'edit mode' first
- Crash opening .pgn in landscape mode
- Crashes when selecting a cell with 0 games associated
Show 7 moreShow fewer
- App freezes sometimes
- Download stuck on 'downloading'
- Dropbox issues on earlier iOS versions
- Program not bulletproof upon saving work
- Can't download cbv files
- Graphical annotations drawing unwanted arrows
- App doesn't work after iOS update
Requested features
20 requests- Add dark mode
- Add board flip button
- Improve interface for screen reader users
- Add private game feature with code
- Add computer whole game analysis with annotations
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Add coloring moves based on annotation
- Add drawing arrows that are saved
- Add bookmark feature
- Add buttons/swipe to go forward/backwards to next/previous game
- Add select all function for copying games
- Add autoplay games
- Remember last position/game opened in a database
- Support Millennium boards
- Support UCI engine compatibility
- Optimize database game view
- Make edit mode arrows slimmer and add more colors
- Allow direct iCloud access to databases without export
- Make graphical annotations optional/disableable
- Improve font size adjustment for moves and annotations
- Add search with multiple criteria
In-app purchases
SocialChess
- Annual Membership$14.991 Year
- 1 Year Membership$14.99
- 1 Year Gift Membership$14.99
Chess
- Monthly Premium Subscription3 Days trial$0.991 Month
- Yearly Premium Subscription3 Days trial$8.991 Year
Questions
Is SocialChess free?
Is Chess free?
Which has better reviews, SocialChess or Chess?
Do SocialChess or Chess have ads?
Which is updated more often, SocialChess or Chess?
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