Comparison

Chess Premium+ vs ChessLab

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

Head to head
About

Chess Premium+

Features
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Chess Premium+ is a modern, powerful, and completely free chess app designed for players of every skill level. Whether you're learning the basics, sharpening your tactics, or challenging one of the world's strongest chess engines, Chess Premium+ provides everything you need in one elegant experience. Powered by Stockfish 18, the app delivers fast, accurate, and reliable chess analysis while maintaining smooth performance and responsive gameplay. Play complete chess games, solve tactical puzzles, create custom positions, and improve your decision-making with advanced AI—all without subscriptions or advertisements. FEATURES • Play Against Stockfish 18 Challenge one of the world's strongest chess engines with adjustable AI strength suitable for beginners through advanced players. • Daily Chess Puzzles Improve tactical vision, calculation, pattern recognition, and checkmating skills with new chess challenges. • Advanced Game Analysis Review completed games, discover mistakes, analyze critical positions, and learn stronger continuations using Stockfish 18. • Position Editor Create any custom chess position, test opening ideas, practice endgames, or explore tactical scenarios with full engine support. • Multiple AI Opponents Play against balanced, aggressive, defensive, and positional AI personalities for a varied training experience. • Achievement System Unlock trophies, complete milestones, and track your progress as you improve your chess skills. • Optimized Performance Enjoy fast engine calculations, smooth animations, responsive controls, and a stable chess experience designed for long playing sessions. WHY CHESS PREMIUM+ • 100% Free • No Advertisements • No Subscription Required • Offline Gameplay • Stockfish 18 Engine • Daily Chess Puzzles • Position Editor • Game Analysis • Modern Premium Interface • Optimized Performance Whether you want to play chess, solve puzzles, analyze games, study openings, practice endgames, or simply improve your skills, Chess Premium+ provides a complete chess experience in one beautifully designed application. Download Chess Premium+ today and start mastering chess for free.

About

ChessLab

Features
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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

Chess Premium+4 screens
ChessLab4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Chess Premium+ at every 2 days against ChessLab's weekly. ChessLab's advantage is iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.2). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Chess Premium+ ships an update every 2 days, ChessLab weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 6, 2026 and October 2, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 4 level
Chess Premium+ versus ChessLab: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterChess Premium+ChessLab
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 days — betterWeekly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS26.218.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size133 MB169 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperYusuf OZCANThierry Maeder

In-app purchases

None

Chess Premium+

No in-app purchases

None

ChessLab

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Chess Premium+ free?
Chess Premium+ is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is ChessLab free?
ChessLab is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Chess Premium+ or ChessLab have ads?
Neither Chess Premium+ nor ChessLab shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Chess Premium+ or ChessLab?
Chess Premium+ ships an update every 2 days, and ChessLab weekly. Most recently, Chess Premium+ was updated on October 6, 2026 and ChessLab on October 2, 2026.

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