CLIMB vs ChessScroll
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
CLIMB
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Climb a mountain while you focus. Every minute of focus moves your climber up the trail. Camp when you need a break. Plant your flag at the summit. CLIMB turns the time you spend studying, reading, learning, or working deep into a real, illustrated climb. Set a goal, hit start, and watch your climber move up the mountain in real time. The longer you focus, the higher you go. Whether you're prepping for finals, finishing a thesis, learning a language, or just trying to read for an hour without picking up your phone, CLIMB makes the time you put in visible. HOW IT WORKS Set a goal anywhere from 30 minutes to a full afternoon. Start the climb. Your climber moves up the trail in real time as the minutes pass. Need a break? Tap Camp. Your timer pauses, your progress saves, and the climber waits for you at the campsite. When you reach the summit, plant your flag and the mountain joins your history. FEATURES • An illustrated mountain for every climb • Live climber animation that ticks with every minute • Camp anytime. Breaks never count against your study time • Mountain history with summit passport cards • Tasks with sub-tasks, labels, and priorities • Link tasks to climbs so your study sessions are intentional • Streaks that grow the more days you climb in a row • Badges for summits, no-break climbs, time milestones, and rare achievements • Collectible climber avatars • Daily and streak-at-risk reminders • Sign in with Apple, Google, or email CLIMB WITH FRIENDS • Invite friends with a private code or QR. No public discovery, no follower games • See which friends are climbing right now • Leave a stone on a friend's summit to cheer them on • Daily, weekly, monthly, and all-time leaderboards • Ghost Mode for climbing privately whenever you want LIVE ACTIVITIES ON iPHONE Your climb ticks on the lock screen and inside the Dynamic Island. Glance at your progress without unlocking, even when the app is closed. PREMIUM CLIMB is free to use, with no ads and no third-party tracking. Premium unlocks: • Unlimited active climbs (free accounts can have up to 3 going at once) • Full access to your climb archive • Available as yearly, or monthly BUILT FOR • Students prepping for exams • Readers working through long books • Language learners building daily habits • Coders, writers, designers, and anyone who works deep • Anyone trying to stop scrolling and start finishing Stop scrolling. Start climbing. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://ikidevs.com/climb/privacy/
ChessScroll
This app locks distracting applications behind chess puzzles. Solve a puzzle to earn minutes of screen time for your chosen apps. It aims to reduce screen time by integrating practice into existing habits.
- App locking with chess puzzles
- Customizable scroll time per puzzle
- Offline puzzle functionality
- Personalized puzzle difficulty
- Privacy-focused, no account needed
- Reduces screen time through habit integration
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Your feed costs a move now. ChessScroll seals the apps that eat your evenings — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, whichever you choose — behind a chess puzzle at your level. Solve it and you earn minutes of scroll. Fail it and the position waits. That's the whole app. That's the whole deal. THE DEAL 1 puzzle = minutes of scroll. You set the exchange rate. HOW IT WORKS 1. Seal your apps. Pick the ones that eat you. 2. Reach for one, and a puzzle appears instead. 3. Solve it. The app opens and your clock starts running. 4. Minutes run out mid-scroll? In chess we call that flagging. Solve another. WHY IT WORKS You already reach for your phone dozens of times a day. ChessScroll doesn't fight that urge — it reroutes it. Every reach becomes one tactic at your level: twenty to forty seconds, and a real fight. It's the training every coach prescribes and nobody actually does, attached to a habit you already have. TWO NUMBERS, FACING EACH OTHER — Your puzzle rating, climbing. — Your daily screen time, falling. Everything else is supporting cast. REAL PUZZLES, AT YOUR LEVEL Nearly fourteen thousand positions from real games, each one rated by the players who tried it before you, and served at your rating rather than under it, so the rating you build is earned. Works fully offline. From 400 to 2700, the puzzle fits. THE CLIMB Fourteen chapters, one for each master: Morphy, Anderssen, Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Nezhmetdinov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov. Every six puzzles you solve lays a stone on their road, and the one you solved at midnight to get into Instagram counts the same as the one you chose to play. The road stops at twenty-eight of their own games, and every one you solve goes into your album as a card. You never have to open the tab for it to move. NO NEW ADDICTION Training sessions end by design. No infinite puzzle feed, no guilt notifications, no nagging. Paul Morphy said in 1859 that chess should never engross the mind. We're inclined to agree. PRIVACY Your app choices and screen-time data never leave your device — Apple's Screen Time framework enforces that by design. No account needed. MEMBERSHIP ChessScroll requires a membership: yearly with a 7-day free trial, or monthly. Subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled in Settings. Terms: https://chessscroll.com/terms — Privacy: https://chessscroll.com/privacy Earn your scroll.
Screenshots
Verdict
CLIMB and ChessScroll are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
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. CLIMB sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and ChessScroll sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $7.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
CLIMB ships an update monthly, ChessScroll fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 21, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CLIMB | ChessScroll |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 3.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 2 — better |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | — | Subscription |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 16.2 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 100 MB | 100 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Emre Aydin | MICHAŁ ROSTKOWSKI |
In-app purchases
CLIMB
- Climb Premium Monthly$4.991 Month
- Climb Premium Annual7 Days trial$29.991 Year
ChessScroll
- Monthly Membership$7.991 Month
- Annual Membership3 Days trial$39.991 Year









