SUDOKU Garden vs MindChess
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SUDOKU Garden
Engage your mind with a pure Sudoku puzzle experience featuring intelligent note-taking and solving assistance. Enjoy a clean interface with features designed for both beginners and experts to enhance puzzle-solving enjoyment.
- Auto Smart Note
- Enable Smart Fill
- Logic-Based Hint System
- Clean Interface
- Beginner to Expert Levels
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Challenge your mind with our beautifully crafted Sudoku (Number Place) app – no ads, just pure puzzle fun. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll love the clean interface and powerful features designed to make solving puzzles even more enjoyable. Key Features: Auto Smart Note Smart Note automatically suggests possible numbers for empty cells as soon as you open a puzzle. No need to manually update notes – stay focused on solving! Enable Smart Fill Save time with Smart Fill, which intelligently fills cells using the “Last Free Cell” and “Last Remaining Cell” techniques. This powerful feature is available in Expert and Master difficulty levels for advanced players. Logic-Based Hint System Stuck on a puzzle? Our hint system analyzes the board and offers logical next moves without giving away the answer. Perfect for learning and improving your skills while preserving the challenge.
MindChess
Enhance your chess skills with daily training sessions, tactical puzzles, and bot matches. Analyze your games, build opening repertoires, and track your progress with detailed statistics. This app offers a comprehensive suite of tools for chess improvement.
- Daily chess training drills
- Themed tactical puzzles
- Play against AI bots
- Import and analyze your games
- Opening repertoire builder
- Progress tracking and statistics
- Home and Lock Screen widgets
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MindChess is a daily chess gym and a study companion. Train board vision, memory and calculation in 60-second sessions, sharpen your tactics, play bots, and take what you learn to your own games. THE GYM • Thirteen short drills: Square Color, Coordinates, Same Color, Same Diagonal, Bishop Captures, Two Knights, Collision, Memory, Mate in 1, Fork Finder, Piece Snapshot, Knight Distance and Opening Flash. • Timed mode (60 seconds, Game Center leaderboards) and Training mode (3 lives). • A daily challenge and a daily streak, with streak freezes and an optional reminder. • 39 achievements: badges at 10, 50 and 100 games of every drill, also in Game Center. TACTICS • Themed puzzles in four modes: Rated, with your own tactics rating; Practice, with free hints; Streak, until your first miss; and Time trial, 3 or 5 minutes with 3 lives. • Pick one of 24 themes or Mix, and review the puzzles you miss. PLAY BOTS • Nine characters with their own style, from beginner to advanced, plus Stockfish at the strength you choose. • Download the free Maia-2 model and some bots play like people at their level. Everything runs on your device. YOUR GAMES • Connect your Lichess or Chess.com account and import your games. • Game databases, PGN import and a viewer with variations, notes and marks. • Analysis: Stockfish 19 on your device, offline, with an evaluation bar and the top 3 lines. With Pro, the game report marks your mistakes, the key moments and your brilliant moves. OPENINGS • Repertoire: play through your lines and the app brings each one back right before you'd forget it. • Learn mode walks you through every new line, with its comments and arrows, before the first question. • Opening explorer: what Masters, Lichess players and you have played from any position, with a linked Lichess account. Save the moves to your repertoire. PROGRESS AND TOOLS • Statistics that tell you what to improve in your training, repertoire and games. • Widgets for your Home Screen and Lock Screen: daily challenge, reviews, streak, personal bests and shortcuts. • Diagram scanner: snap a diagram and get the position ready to edit. Free. • Chess clock: increments, stages and time odds, for games with your phone on the table. • Notation your way: English, Spanish or figurines. The same board, with your look, across the app. ON EVERY SCREEN MindChess works on iPhone, iPad, iPhone Duo and Mac. MINDCHESS PRO Pro unlocks every drill, tactics and bots with no daily limit, Stockfish analysis and the game report, unlimited repertoires, lines and imports, lines from your own games, full statistics, unlimited game databases and clock controls, and 11 Pro piece sets. Free stays useful: the basic drills, 15 tactics puzzles a day, a daily game against the beginner bots, game import, the opening explorer, the scanner and the PGN viewer. MindChess is not an online chess server. It is the place where you train between your games. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: SUDOKU Garden at none against MindChess's 2. SUDOKU Garden also leads on iOS requirement (15.1 vs 18.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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. MindChess sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. SUDOKU Garden asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for SUDOKU Garden against 5.0 for MindChess. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | SUDOKU Garden | MindChess |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 150 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | SATOSHI UCHIDA | omar megdadi |
In-app purchases
SUDOKU Garden
No in-app purchases
MindChess
- Monthly subscription$0.991 Month
- Yearly subscription$9.991 Year
Questions
Is SUDOKU Garden free?
Is MindChess free?
Which has better reviews, SUDOKU Garden or MindChess?
Do SUDOKU Garden or MindChess have ads?
Which is updated more often, SUDOKU Garden or MindChess?
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