ChessBase Mobile Chess vs Chess Puzzles
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ChessBase Mobile Chess
Access a vast chess game database, save and analyze your own games, and practice openings. This app offers advanced notation and sharing features, with a free tier and optional premium upgrades for more extensive cloud storage and search capabilities.
- Access 13+ million chess games
- Save and sync personal game databases
- Analyze games with built-in engine
- Live opening book statistics
- Create and practice opening repertoires
- Advanced game notation and sharing
- PGN file compatibility
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ChessBase Mobile is the training, playing, and analysis platform for chess players who track their progress by the numbers. ChessBase Mobile is built by ChessBase, the company behind the standard desktop software used by world champions and club players alike for over 30 years. Solve tactics puzzles rated by difficulty and watch your Elo rise or fall with every attempt. No participation trophies, your rating reflects exactly where you stand. The tactics database draws from positions in real games, not synthetic exercises, so the patterns you train are the patterns you encounter at the board. Puzzle Fight puts you head-to-head against another player in a timed series of 24 tactical positions. Both players solve the same puzzles simultaneously. The one who solves more, faster, wins - and gains Elo. Structured competition, not a casual minigame. Play live games in Blitz and Rapid formats against opponents worldwide. Premove support, clean interface, no clutter. The ChessBase Online Database contains over 14 million games. Search by player, position, or opening. Review grandmaster games, study endgame structures, track opening trends - the same database used by professionals, accessible from your phone. Cloud analysis with several engines, including Fritz and Lc0. Basic cloud analysis with Fritz is free. For deeper analysis, scalable cloud servers are available, from Large to Gargantuan, paid per minute in ducats. Lc0 brings neural network evaluation for positions where classical engines struggle. The engine panel shows evaluation, depth, and principal variation. Build and maintain your opening repertoire in the cloud. 300 opening overviews with repertoire suggestions help you get started with new systems. A live opening book provides up-to-date statistics for every position. Three practice modes let you drill your variations until they stick. Annotate your games with comments, symbols, variations, arrows, and markings. Save games and analyses in cloud databases that synchronise across all your devices. Share positions and games via link, image, GIF, FEN, QR code, or PGN. Upload and download PGN files for full compatibility with desktop software. AI Kibitzer provides live commentary during games and puzzles — with personality. Chess-legend anecdotes, opinions, the occasional bad joke. Like a friend with too much chess trivia sitting next to you. Audio output included. Available in 27 languages. Customisable board colours, piece sets, and notation display. Light and dark mode across all screens, or set to follow your device preference. No ads. No energy systems. No artificial gating. Open the app, train, close the app. Free to use, all functions are available at no cost. ChessBase Premium unlocks expanded cloud storage and unlimited database search results. Free: search the online database (max 50 games displayed), up to 10 cloud databases (10 MB total), cloud clipping for up to 10 games. Premium: unlimited database search, up to 200 cloud databases (500 MB total), cloud clipping for up to 400 games. Privacy policy: https://en.chessbase.com/pages/security Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Chess Puzzles
Enhance your chess skills with adaptive tactical training. Solve millions of real-game puzzles to build pattern recognition and increase your rating. The system adjusts to your level, offering structured sessions for steady progress.
- Adaptive puzzle difficulty
- Millions of real-game chess puzzles
- Themed tactical training (forks, pins, etc.)
- Engine-supported analysis
- Rating growth and accuracy tracking
- Structured training sessions
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Turn every puzzle into progress. Train with 5M+ puzzles from real games, personalized to your level. When you make a mistake, understand why - and learn from it. That’s the idea we built this app around. Solving more puzzles is useful, but we wanted training to be about more than getting a position right or wrong. We wanted every puzzle to teach you something - about the move you missed, the pattern you didn’t recognize, or the way you calculated the position. There are more than 5 million puzzles from real games. But the number itself isn’t really the point. What matters is finding the right positions for you, at the right difficulty, and helping you learn from them. When you make a mistake, you can understand why. Use hints, explore better moves, get coaching, and look deeper into the position instead of simply moving on to the next puzzle. Over time, your training starts to reveal which tactical patterns give you the most trouble. You can practice across 64 motifs and patterns - forks, pins, sacrifices, checkmates, endgames, and many more - and spend more time on the ideas that need it. You can also see how your training develops over time: your rating, accuracy, training time, and performance across different patterns. And when you’re ready for something truly advanced, there are more than 300,000 composed chess problems from solving competitions. They’re difficult, precise, often beautiful - and solving them can be one of the most satisfying forms of chess training. We’ve also tried to make this a place you’ll actually want to come back to. Solve a few puzzles when you have five minutes. Sit down for a longer session when you feel like training seriously. Build a streak, reach a milestone, or simply keep showing up. Whether you’re new to tactics or have been playing chess for years, the goal stays the same: Learn something from every puzzle. Play better chess. And we’re here to help you along the way. Privacy Policy: https://chess.phd/privacy/ Terms of Use: https://chess.phd/terms/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Chess Puzzles at 95% against ChessBase Mobile Chess's 41%. Chess Puzzles also leads on rating (4.8 vs 2.9) and update cadence (every 3 days vs every 6 months). ChessBase Mobile Chess's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.6 vs 18.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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. ChessBase Mobile Chess sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $3.99 per month and Chess Puzzles sells 20 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per 7 days. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Chess Puzzles holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 2.9. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chess Puzzles has 242 ratings behind it against 18, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 41% of ChessBase Mobile Chess's written reviews are positive against 95% of Chess Puzzles's.
ChessBase Mobile Chess ships an update every 6 months, Chess Puzzles every 3 days. Both last shipped on October 25, 2026.
| Parameter | ChessBase Mobile Chess | Chess Puzzles |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 2.9 (18 ratings) | 4.8 (242 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 40.6% of reviews | 95.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 18 | 242 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 112 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | ChessBase GmbH | Sergei Tovmasian |
Customer experience
ChessBase Mobile Chess
Chess Puzzles
In-app purchases
ChessBase Mobile Chess
- ChessBase Premium (Monthly)$3.991 Month
Chess Puzzles
- Premium Weekly3 Days trial$3.997 Days
- Chess.PhD Weekly Access3 Days trial$3.997 Days
- Chess.PhD Premium (1 Week)$4.997 Days
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- Premium Weekly3 variants$4.997 Days
- Chess.PhD Weekly Premium3 Days trial$4.997 Days
- Chess.PhD Monthly Premium$6.991 Month
- Chess.PhD Monthly Access$7.991 Month
- Chess.PhD Premium (1 Month)$9.991 Month
- Premium Monthly3 variants$9.991 Month
- Premium Annual$29.991 Year
- Chess.PhD Annual Access$39.991 Year
- Chess.PhD Premium (1 Year)7 Days trial$49.991 Year
- Chess.PhD Premium (1 Year)3 Days trial$49.991 Year
- Premium Annual2 variants$49.991 Year
- Premium Annual3 Days trial2 variants$49.991 Year
- Premium Annual7 Days trial$49.991 Year
- Premium 1 Year3 Days trial$49.991 Year
- Chess.PhD Annual Premium$49.991 Year
- Premium Annual7 Days trial$79.991 Year
- Premium Annual3 Days trial$79.991 Year
Questions
Is ChessBase Mobile Chess free?
Is Chess Puzzles free?
Which has better reviews, ChessBase Mobile Chess or Chess Puzzles?
Do ChessBase Mobile Chess or Chess Puzzles have ads?
Which is updated more often, ChessBase Mobile Chess or Chess Puzzles?
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