Comparison

Zenmate vs AI Chess

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

Head to head
About

Zenmate

Features
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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.

About

AI Chess

Features
Read full description

Play chess against a real chess engine — one built from scratch, running entirely on your iPhone. No account. No internet required. No ads. AI Chess is powered by Andromida, our own engine written from the ground up in Swift. It isn't a wrapper around someone else's engine: the search, the evaluation, and the opening book are all ours, tuned through hundreds of measured self-play matches. A REAL ENGINE, NOT A TOY • Alpha-beta search with quiescence, transposition tables, null-move pruning, late move pruning, and reverse futility pruning — the same family of techniques the strongest engines use, implemented and measured one at a time. • Andromida starts from a 72-position opening book and quietly learns which lines work against you, favouring them over time. • Twenty strength levels and five play styles, from Passive to Aggressive — a fair fight whether you're learning the pieces or you're rated. • Two engine flavours, classic and bitboard, if you like to tinker. YOUR OWN CHESS COACH Turn on Coach Mode and every move you play is rated the moment you make it — Best, Good, Inaccuracy, Mistake, or Blunder. • On-board arrows show the move you should have played, and the reply your opponent was threatening. • Plain-English reasons: "Hangs your Knight." "Missed a forced checkmate." • Heads-up prompts before pivotal moves, so you get the chance to spot the tactic yourself. • Spoken coaching in four voices — pick the coach whose pace and tone suit you. • Every mistake is remembered. The Practice screen groups your recurring patterns and drops you back into the exact position to try again. PLAY HOW YOU LIKE • Play White, play Black, pass-and-play with a friend, or move both sides yourself in Analysis mode. • Time controls from 1+0 Bullet to 30+20 Classical — plus Custom and Unlimited for when you'd rather think than race. • Hints and live analysis, with evaluation and best-line arrows on the board. • Set up any position with the built-in editor. • Save, load, and e-mail your games as PGN. • Board themes, coordinates, figurine notation, legal-move dots, take-back and step-forward. OPTIONAL AI OPPONENTS Would you rather play a large language model LLMs? Bring your own API key (BYOK) and face Claude, GPT, Grok, Gemini and other providers — or download an on-device model and play a neural opponent with no internet at all. Your key is kept in your device's Keychain and used only to talk to the provider you picked. PRIVACY BY DEFAULT No account. No sign-up. No analytics, no tracking, no data collection. Your games, your settings, and your AI Provider API keys stay on your device. FREE AND PRO The on-device AI opponent is free to play, indefinitely. An optional AI Chess Pro subscription unlocks the Andromida engines, Hint, Analysis, and Coach Mode. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial — cancel any time before it ends and you won't be charged. Subscriptions ; users still pay their AI provider directly for model usage. This apps is offering following auto-renewable subscriptions. 1. AIChess- Pro - Yearly Subscription - Title of auto-renewing subscription : Yearly - Length of subscription - Yearly auto renewal subscription - Price of subscription - $99.99 USD / Year - App privacy policy - https://aidigiapps.com/aichess/privacy.html and - Terms of Use (EULA) - https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ 2. AIChess- Pro - Monthly Subscription - Title of auto-renewing subscription : Monthly - Length of subscription - Monthly auto renewal subscription - Price of subscription - $9.99 USD / month - App privacy policy - https://aidigiapps.com/aichess/privacy.html and - Terms of Use (EULA) - https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Zenmate4 screens
AI Chess4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Zenmate at none against AI Chess's 2. On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. AI Chess sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month. Zenmate asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard1 real difference Ā· 5 level
Zenmate versus AI Chess: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterZenmateAI Chess
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 6 weeks—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.016.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size4 MB52 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperTimothy NiceMahesh Shinde

In-app purchases

None

Zenmate

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

AI Chess

Subscriptions2
  • Monthly$9.991 Month
  • Yearly$99.991 Year

Questions

Is Zenmate free?
Zenmate is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is AI Chess free?
AI Chess is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Zenmate or AI Chess have ads?
Neither Zenmate nor AI Chess shows ads.

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