Casual Chess vs OpeningTree
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Casual Chess
Engage in turn-based chess matches at your own pace, either against friends or random opponents. Features include move-by-move play, draw offers, and game notation with figurines. Optimized for various devices, it notifies you when it's your turn.
- Play move by move
- Invite friends or play random opponents
- Turn-based gameplay
- Send draw offers
- Notation with figurines
- Sound notifications for your turn
Read full descriptionHide full description
Play a game of chess and make a move any time you want. Invite your friends or play against a random opponent. - Play move by move - Uses Game Center for match making - Turn based gameplay - Publish the Game - Send Draw Offers - Notation with figurines - Support for portrait and landscape orientation - Navigate throught the game played so far - Universal application - Optimized for new devices - Sounds notification when it is your turn - Picture of opponent displayed Enjoy.
OpeningTree
Explore chess openings with an extensive opening book and engine analysis. Analyze your games, create custom lines, and study moves from high-rated players. Accessible for visually impaired users.
- Extensive opening book
- Crafty engine analysis
- Load and analyze PGN games
- Create custom move lines
- Accessible for visually impaired
- Mark moves with colors
- Save board to PGN
Read full descriptionHide full description
OpeningTree is a chess openings book based on high rated over the board games that lets one explore the tree of openings and engine analysis is available. Chess game files can be shared with the app to check against the book or to just view. Users can make their own side line moves and back up to return to main line. Also includes ten classic game collections and users can import their own games into the app. Game list are also searchable by tags. The updated opening book is compiled from 640,000 high rated games from recent years with both players rated 2300 and over. Just touch moves in the list or make moves on the board to see what the response is. The numbers next to moves indicate how many games resulted in wins-draws-losses. The idea comes from computer opening books as if we can open up the book and see what those moves are that people play in response to opening positions. Users do not pick an opening to study but start with the full tree. The analyze button on bottom right of board is to flip between viewing the openings move table or seeing Crafty engine analysis. +1.00 score means white is ahead a pawn. -1.00 score means black is ahead a pawn. There is a move now button to make the engine play the current best move if the users wants to try playing a position out against the engine. OpeningTree's board is accessible to the blind and visually impaired using Voice Over. With Voice Over enabled in device settings, tap on a square for info, double tap to select. Or choose from three move methods. When going forward in a loaded PGN game, moves will be announced on each tap of the forward button. Moves can be marked with colors(red, green, yellow) and colorizing a move at the end of a line will extend the line i.e. add move so it shows later. There is also an option to make a note on a position using the control bar. In the Actions menu if the user has imported a chess games file to the App, for example by opening a PGN file with OpeningTree from a mail attachment or download(long touch on the attachment/download for this option), a game from a PGN file can be loaded and checked against the book. If a user makes a new move, back up to the main line to return to the game. To ensure speed, it will only read/load a max of 5000 games. With bigger files users will only see first 5000 games. There is a Save Board to PGN option on the Actions menu. It saves the current moves to openings-user-games.pgn, a file OpeningTree will create on first save. Games are saved with opening name as white and black name to spot the lines in each game. This allows the users to export data out of the App such as favorite lines with the mail games option when looking at a game list. The App comes with six PGN game files that can be optionally installed when no PGN files have yet been opened by the App or the user has deleted their PGN files previously opened and likewise has none to access. If this is the case, this option shows when going to Actions -> load PGN. The files contain a mix of famous classical games, collections of former world champions Gary Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen's games and more recent games from two top ranked international tournaments. PGN stands for portable game notation. It's a file extension that can be used with text files that contain chess games in the PGN format. PGN files can be read by apps to display the games in them. If a game is loaded in the App one can then go to 'Actions -> show game data' to view the raw PGN text.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: OpeningTree at 83% against Casual Chess's 17%. OpeningTree also leads on rating (4.4 vs 2.7) and update cadence (every 2 months vs every 19 months). Casual Chess's advantage is price (Free vs $0.99) and iOS requirement (5.1.1 vs 15.6). On 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
Casual Chess is free to download; OpeningTree costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
OpeningTree holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 2.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: OpeningTree has 31 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 17% of Casual Chess's written reviews are positive against 83% of OpeningTree's.
Casual Chess ships an update every 19 months, OpeningTree every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Casual Chess | OpeningTree |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 2.7 (3 ratings) | 4.4 (31 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 16.7% of reviews | 83.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 3 | 31 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 19 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #76 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 5.1.1 — better | 15.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 69 MB | 52 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | ChessBase GmbH | Michael Adams |
Customer experience
Casual Chess
OpeningTree
In-app purchases
Casual Chess
No in-app purchases
OpeningTree
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Casual Chess free?
Is OpeningTree free?
Which has better reviews, Casual Chess or OpeningTree?
Do Casual Chess or OpeningTree have ads?
Which is updated more often, Casual Chess or OpeningTree?
Other comparisons















