Lotus Chess vs ClassNotes
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Lotus Chess
Master chess openings, tactics, and endgames with a personalized training system. Analyze your games, identify weaknesses, and learn winning strategies against human opponents. Improve your chess skills from beginner to competitive levels.
- Personalized opening courses from your games
- Import games from Chess.com/Lichess
- Master endgames with step-by-step lessons
- 100,000+ chess puzzles
- Offline access to lessons
- In-depth game analysis
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Lotus Chess is a powerful chess training app designed to help you improve faster than any other chess learning app. It provides a complete system for mastering openings, tactics, and endgames. Join more than 250.000 chess learners across the world — from beginners starting with the fundamentals to competitive players with 2300 Elo. Unlike most apps — which focus on engine-perfect theory — Lotus Chess teaches attacking chess that helps you win against human opponents. --- Opening Training Built for Real Games Lotus Chess analyzes up to 3000 of your online games, identifies your weaknesses, and creates a personalized, tailored course to make your openings bulletproof. Lotus Chess teaches you crushing lines that exploit common mistakes, instead of showing you boring theoretical lines that rarely happen in actual games. To do this, Lotus Chess’ AI has analyzed 100.000.000+ games to identify the lines that give you the highest win probability against real players. Opening Features • Personalized opening courses generated from your own games • Import games from Chess.com or Lichess for automatic analysis • Identify your most common opening mistakes • Train openings repeatedly until they become natural • Learn from a library of 80+ openings --- Master the Endgame Endgames decide a huge number of chess games, yet they are often the most neglected part of training. Lotus Chess includes a complete endgame course designed to teach practical endgame technique step-by-step. Endgame Training Includes • 60+ detailed lessons • Fundamental checkmates (queen, rook, etc.) • Advanced techniques like building the bridge • 180+ training positions to practice against a human-like engine Instead of only studying theory, you get to play and convert winning positions to reinforce what you’ve learned. --- Additional Features • All Endgame and Opening Lessons work offline (Great for the airplane and your commute) • 100,000+ chess puzzles • In-depth analysis of your online games • Personalized training recommendations --- Built by Chess Players Lotus Chess was created by two brothers who started playing chess at age four. After building a math learning app with over 6 million downloads, they set out to create the ultimate chess learning platform. The result is Lotus Chess: a modern chess training system that combines opening preparation, endgame mastery, and personalized analysis — which is now being used by over 250.000 learners across the world. Privacy Policy & Terms of Use: https://www.lotus-chess.com/privacy-policy
ClassNotes
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ClassNotes is a handwriting-first notebook for iPad, built so what you write is exactly what stays on the page. WRITE, DON'T FIGHT YOUR APP Your Apple Pencil ink is recorded exactly as you draw it — no smoothing, no reshaping, nothing "cleaned up" behind your back. Turn on live beautification only if you want your handwriting typeset as you go. SMART TOOLS, ON YOUR TERMS • Hold a shape steady and watch it snap into a clean line, circle, rectangle, or triangle — still adjustable until you lift the pencil • A real two-finger ruler for straight edges • Paint bucket fill that flows under your ink, not over it • Scribble to erase • Sticky tape, text boxes, and photo/file drops • Full undo/redo history, per page NOVA, YOUR AI STUDY PARTNER Circle anything — a diagram, an equation, a paragraph — and ask NOVA about it. It sees exactly what you circled, not just the text, so it can actually explain a graph or work through the diagram you drew. MADE FOR NOTEBOOKS 28 cover designs, 14 paper templates, custom paper and line colors, multiple page sizes and orientations, and a dedicated whiteboard page for freeform sketching. FIND ANYTHING Search across typed text and your own handwriting — even pages you never touched with a keyboard. STAYS IN SYNC Signs in with your ClassMate account. Notebooks, pages, and attachments sync automatically, and pages you write on iPad show up — searchable, zoomable — right in the ClassMate app. READ ANYWHERE The iPhone companion app is a fast, read-only viewer for your whole library — perfect for a quick look between classes. Free to use. No paywall on the notebook.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: ClassNotes at none against Lotus Chess's 4. Lotus Chess's advantage is iOS requirement (13.0 vs 26.0). On price, update cadence, ads 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. Lotus Chess sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $7.99 per month. ClassNotes asks for nothing beyond the download.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 15, 2026 and October 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Lotus Chess | ClassNotes |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (1.1K ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 86.3% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1.1K — better | — |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 242 MB | 11 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Lotus Chess UG | Tony Aboud |
Bugs and requests
Lotus Chess
Reported bugs
2 issues- Login screen freezes
- Incompatible with older devices
Requested features
4 requests- Library to explain the WHY behind the moves
- Link to an online library
- Ability to remove pre-selected openings
- Review of daily correspondence games
ClassNotes
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Lotus Chess
- Pro Subscription - 1 Month7 Days trial$7.991 Month
- Pro Subscription - 1 Month7 Days trial$9.991 Month
- Pro Subscription - 1 Year7 Days trial$49.991 Year
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- Pro Subscription - 1 Year7 Days trial$69.991 Year
ClassNotes
No in-app purchases









