Zenmate vs AGENTIC CHESS
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Zenmate
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Zenmate is a calm, beautifully designed chess app built for focused play. Play a quiet game against the AI, start a match with friends through Game Center, or pass-and-play on one device. Zenmate keeps the interface simple and refined so the board stays central and every move has room to breathe. Features: - Play vs AI with multiple difficulty levels - Play with friends using Game Center - Local 2-player pass-and-play - Light and dark mode - Optional board coordinates - Flip board support - Clean timers and move-focused gameplay A quiet game of kings. Designed to slow you down, one move at a time.
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.
- 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
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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
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: AGENTIC CHESS at every 3 weeks against Zenmate's every 6 weeks. Zenmate's advantage is iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Zenmate ships an update every 6 weeks, AGENTIC CHESS every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | Zenmate | AGENTIC CHESS |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (10 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 10 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 69 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Timothy Nice | Mission Peak, LLC |
In-app purchases
Zenmate
No in-app purchases
AGENTIC CHESS
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Zenmate free?
Is AGENTIC CHESS free?
Do Zenmate or AGENTIC CHESS have ads?
Which is updated more often, Zenmate or AGENTIC CHESS?
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