Comparison

dotChess vs AGENTIC CHESS

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

Head to head
About

dotChess

Engage in classic chess matches with friends, AI opponents, or players globally. This modern application allows you to track your statistics, communicate during games, and resume play across multiple devices.

Highlights
  • Play live games with friends
  • Challenge AI bots
  • Global matchmaking
  • Account creation and stat tracking
  • In-game chat
  • Cross-device play
Features
Read full description

dotChess is a modern chess app built for playing with real people. Play live games with friends, challenge AI bots, or get matched with players worldwide. Create an account, track your stats, chat during games, and pick up where you left off on any device.

About

AGENTIC CHESS

Experience AI chess matches played entirely on your device. Choose champion models, compete in ranked games, and analyze performance. Offers a unique benchmark for on-device AI capabilities without cloud reliance.

Highlights
  • On-device AI model chess matches
  • Ranked Elo ladder progression
  • Tournaments against scaled opponents
  • Manual play and coached games
  • Hardware performance benchmarking
  • Private by design, no account needed
Features
Read full description

Watch real AI models play chess — entirely on your iPhone. Agentic Chess turns your phone into a live arena for on-device language models. Pick a champion, send it into ranked matches against the built-in house opponent, and watch every move unfold with a real game clock and live commentary. No cloud, no server — the models think on your device. (Minimum device specification is iPhone 12, and IOS 26) YOUR CHAMPION, YOUR LADDER • Choose a champion from a roster of open-source models that run fully on-device • Ranked matches move your champion up an authentic Elo ladder, from Bronze to Grandmaster • Tournaments field opponents that scale to your champion's strength • Prefer to play? Take on the AI yourself in manual mode, or team up with your champion in coached games A BASELINE AND ITS CHALLENGERS Every match is a fair experiment. Apple's built-in foundation model plays as the house opponent, completely untuned — the scientific baseline. Your champions are different: each open-source model carries a custom LoRA adapter we train specifically for chess judgment, downloaded automatically alongside the model. Watching a tuned challenger climb past the stock baseline is the whole point — you're seeing, live, how much specialized training moves the needle on identical hardware. A REAL BENCHMARK UNDERNEATH Every game doubles as a hardware benchmark. Agentic Chess measures how fast, how smoothly, and how efficiently each model runs on your exact device — speed, latency, memory, and thermal behavior — and turns it into a performance report you can browse anytime. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account, no email, no login. You're recognized only by a random ID stored on your device, your score and leaderboard position stay private to your installation, and you can download or erase your data at any time from Settings. Models download on first run (about 0.3–1.5 GB each) — Wi-Fi recommended. Additional models fetch quietly in the background while your first game plays.

Screenshots

dotChess4 screens
AGENTIC CHESS4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: dotChess at every 5 days against AGENTIC CHESS's every 3 weeks. dotChess also leads on iOS requirement (15.1 vs 26.0). AGENTIC CHESS's advantage is ratings volume (10 vs 2). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for dotChess against 5.0 for AGENTIC CHESS. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: AGENTIC CHESS has 10 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

dotChess ships an update every 5 days, AGENTIC CHESS every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 29, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
dotChess versus AGENTIC CHESS: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterdotChessAGENTIC CHESS
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (2 ratings)5.0 (10 ratings)
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings210 — better
Update frequencyEvery 5 days — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.1 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size193 MB69 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperThomas BaricMission Peak, LLC

Customer experience

dotChess

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

AGENTIC CHESS

All ratings10 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews5 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

dotChess

No in-app purchases

None

AGENTIC CHESS

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is dotChess free?
dotChess is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is AGENTIC CHESS free?
AGENTIC CHESS is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, dotChess or AGENTIC CHESS?
dotChess and AGENTIC CHESS are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 2 and 10 ratings respectively.
Do dotChess or AGENTIC CHESS have ads?
Neither dotChess nor AGENTIC CHESS shows ads.
Which is updated more often, dotChess or AGENTIC CHESS?
dotChess ships an update every 5 days, and AGENTIC CHESS every 3 weeks. Most recently, dotChess was updated on September 29, 2026 and AGENTIC CHESS on October 4, 2026.

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