Comparison

Candidate Moves vs ChessLab

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

Head to head
About

Candidate Moves

Sharpen your chess tactics with interactive puzzles and position analysis. This app helps players of all levels improve tactical vision and decision-making through carefully selected positions and detailed explanations.

Highlights
  • Interactive chess puzzles
  • Position analysis
  • Tactical pattern recognition
  • Progressive difficulty levels
  • Detailed solution explanations
  • Streak tracking
Features
Read full description

Master chess tactics through engaging puzzles and position analysis! Candidate Moves is your personal chess tactics trainer, designed to help players of all levels sharpen their tactical vision and improve their decision-making abilities. INTERACTIVE PUZZLES - Carefully selected positions from real games - Multiple-choice format makes learning engaging - Animated chess board visualizations - Detailed explanations for every solution IMPROVE YOUR CHESS GAME - Build your tactical pattern recognition - Monitor your solving accuracy - Watch your chess understanding grow - Track your solving streaks FEATURES FOR ALL SKILL LEVELS - Suitable for beginners to advanced players - Progressive difficulty levels - Clear, easy-to-use interface - Learn classic tactical patterns - Practice finding the best candidate moves LEARN AS YOU PLAY - Understand the reasoning behind each move - Develop your calculation skills - Improve your pattern recognition - Learn from your mistakes with detailed explanations Perfect for: - Chess players looking to improve their tactical skills - Beginners wanting to learn basic patterns - Intermediate players honing their calculation - Advanced players maintaining their tactical sharpness - Anyone who enjoys solving chess puzzles Whether you have five minutes or an hour, Candidate Moves helps you make the most of your practice time. Each puzzle is carefully selected to teach important tactical patterns and improve your chess vision. Train your tactical eye, improve your calculation skills, and become a stronger chess player with Candidate Moves – your pocket chess trainer! This application is subject to the standard Apple EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

ChessLab

Features
Read full description

ChessLab is a complete chess companion for iPhone and iPad: play, analyze, train and experiment, with the Stockfish engine built in and without ever leaving the app. HUMAN OPPONENTS Nine characters played by Maia-3, a network trained on millions of human games: it does not look for the best move, it plays the one a human of that level would play, blunders included. Each has a style, a repertoire, a temperament, a portrait, and an adjustable level on the human scale. Or take on Stockfish itself, from beginner (~900 Elo) to maximum (~3190 Elo). With or without a clock. Hints, a warning before risky moves, and an evaluation bar can all be toggled on demand. TWO PLAYERS Play locally on the same device, with a "pass-and-play" mode that flips the pieces so both players read the board comfortably. ANALYZE Run a game or a position through Stockfish: move-by-move classification (inaccuracy, mistake, blunder, brilliant move…), an evaluation graph, best-move and opponent-threat arrows, and auto-play through the moves. Import by PGN, FEN, position editor, or photo scanner. OPENINGS Pick an opening and step through it move by move: every move is explained, the alternatives are offered, and colored arrows link the board to the move list. 58 hand-written openings (bilingual), all reviewed by the engine, with simplified spaced-repetition training to memorize them. THE ENDGAME CORNER 78 courses proven by endgame tablebases — the exact mathematical verdict: no taught move gives up a win, no recommended defence loses a draw. Nine families, from the opposition to famous studies. And free training: finish the position against best defence, where any move that preserves the verdict is accepted — not just the lesson's move. VARIANTS Chess960 (Fischer Random Chess): a randomly drawn starting position, one chosen by number, or one you compose yourself, with a full post-game analysis just like "Play" mode. Eleven more variants against the computer, each with its own analysis: King of the Hill, Three-Check, Horde, Racing Kings, Atomic, Antichess, Crazyhouse, Stolen Move (a token every 7 moves lets you play twice in a row), Duck Chess, Barricades and Random Barricades. YOUR OWN REPERTOIRES Import your openings as PGN, variations included, and drill them with the same system. Share a repertoire as a single file — no account, no server. What you already know about a position counts right away in the imported repertoire. PUZZLES Over 100,000 tactics puzzles from the Lichess database, filterable by rating and theme, plus puzzles generated automatically from your own mistakes in analysis. Spaced repetition and progress tracking included. LABORATORY Pit two Stockfish configurations against each other over a series of games to compare their strength, with an estimated Elo gap and confidence interval. EDITOR AND SCANNER Set up a position by hand, or scan it from a screenshot or a photo — review and correct the recognized position before playing or analyzing it. BUILT FOR IPAD Full-size board with move list, graph and MultiPV visible at once, keyboard and trackpad support, polished portrait and landscape layouts. iCLOUD SYNC (optional) Turn on iCloud sync in Settings so your games follow you across all your devices, via your private iCloud. No account to create, no ChessLab server. Off by default: the app works fully offline. PRIVACY Offline by default: no ChessLab server, no analytics, no ads. Your games and settings stay on your device. iCloud sync, if you enable it, uses your own private iCloud — your data is never shared with the developer. Fully bilingual, French and English. ChessLab embeds the Stockfish engine (GPLv3 license), the University of Toronto's Maia-3 network (AGPLv3 license) and free vector piece sets — cburnett (GPLv2+/CC BY-SA), chessnut (Apache 2.0) and merida (GPLv2+). Full source code and license notices are available from within the app (Settings → Licenses).

Screenshots

Candidate Moves4 screens
ChessLab4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: ChessLab at none against Candidate Moves's 1. Candidate Moves's advantage is iOS requirement (15.1 vs 18.0). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Candidate Moves sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $8.99 per month. ChessLab asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 3, 2026 and October 2, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Candidate Moves versus ChessLab: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCandidate MovesChessLab
PriceFreeFree
Rating1.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyWeeklyWeekly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.1 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size30 MB169 MB
Age rating4+4+
Developermartin schranzThierry Maeder

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Candidate Moves

Subscriptions1
  • Unlimited Access$8.991 Month
None

ChessLab

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Candidate Moves free?
Candidate Moves is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is ChessLab free?
ChessLab is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Candidate Moves or ChessLab have ads?
Neither Candidate Moves nor ChessLab shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Candidate Moves or ChessLab?
Candidate Moves ships an update weekly, and ChessLab weekly. Most recently, Candidate Moves was updated on October 3, 2026 and ChessLab on October 2, 2026.

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