portablechess vs Chess
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
portablechess
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PortableChess is a clean, touch-first chess app built for real play on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Designed for small and large screens alike, the board stays front and center so moves are easy, fast, and accurate. Key features: • Full chess rules, including castling, en passant, promotion, checkmate, stalemate, threefold repetition, and 50-move draw rule. • Large, readable board layout optimized for direct touch control. • Smart legal-move highlighting and capture indicators. • Hint Mode powered by built-in analysis for practical move suggestions. • Play against AI with 4 difficulty levels, or play locally in pass-and-play style. • Undo support and SAN move history for easy review. • Multiple board themes and board orientation options. • Apple Watch focused controls, including long-press quick menu access. • Built-in opening lessons on Apple Watch based on classic game lines. PortableChess is made for fast daily games, focused practice, and comfortable chess play anywhere. No account required.
Chess
Engage in chess matches with a unique AI opponent that converses with you, offering commentary and personality. This offline game features a powerful local LLM for dynamic interactions and a robust chess engine with adjustable difficulty.
- AI opponent with personality
- Local LLM for chat
- Stockfish chess engine
- Adjustable difficulty levels
- Offline play
- Full chess rules
- Animated reactions
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Chess-Buddy is a chess game where your computer opponent also talks with you using a powerful local LLM, Qwen 3 trained at 1.7 Billion parameters. This Chat system has been wrapped and designed to conform to this game giving a dynamic personality to the gameplay that feels alive and rich with a friendly buddy to play with. I like playing chess on my phone but I really like playing with a person. This isn't quite as nice as playing casual chess with a friend but it's pretty nice. Play chess against a real engine (the chess side of the AI is running on stockfish, the leading open source chess engine that everyone agrees is really great, with also selectable difficulty levels). After almost every move, Buddy reacts — with a short line, a funny face might happen, and occasionally a little shade. You can chat freely between moves too. Buddy will respond. It's less like playing against a computer and more like playing against a friend who happens to be very good at chess but awkward at conversation, Not to say it is a bad chat LLM it's just not set up to work like a personal assistant anymore, the conversation is with a LLM that is essentially now Chess-Buddy. Everything runs on your phone. No internet required. No account. No ads. No subscription. The chess engine and Buddy's brain are built in. --- CHESS • Full rules: all legal moves, castling, en passant, pawn promotion with a piece picker • Four difficulty levels — Friendly (800), Casual (1200), Competitive (1600), Expert (2200) • Undo moves and reset anytime • Game saves automatically — pick up exactly where you left off BUDDY • Reacts to the game with short, personality-driven commentary • 11 animated face states — Buddy goes mindblown when something wild happens • Chat freely: ask for help, vent about your last move, just hang out • Runs entirely on-device with a local AI model — no data leaves your phone DESIGN • Bright, friendly, cartoon — not a dark chess robot • Tap or drag pieces, whichever feels natural • Haptic feedback for captures, check, and checkmate • One screen. No menus to get lost in. ChessBuddy is made by Adrondak LLC. Chess engine: Stockfish (GPL v3) — stockfishchess.org Personality model: Qwen3-1.7B (Apache 2.0) — Qwen Team / Alibaba Cloud Inference runtime: llama.cpp (MIT) — Georgi Gerganov
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: portablechess at 3 against Chess's 1. Chess's advantage is iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.2). On price, 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | portablechess | Chess |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 2 — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 26.2 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 1.3 GB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | INKWANG KIM | Adrondak LLC |
In-app purchases
portablechess
No in-app purchases
Chess
No in-app purchases









