Chess Variants Studio vs AI Chess
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side ā with what reviewers say about each.
Chess Variants Studio
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Play any of nine variants of chess with 8 levels, 1200-2100, against the custom Pulsar engine. Review games with variant engine analysis. Styles supported are Chess960, Crazyhouse, Atomic, Losers, Giveaway, Three Checks, Advanced Pawns, Reversed Pawns and Random Pieces. The rules are included in-app. No signup. Ad Free. Works Offline. The playing program is one i've designed and tested at different levels on internet chess servers in order to come up with the ratings on the board. Ratings range from 1200 to 2100 or 2200 depending on variant. Try the app for free. There's 10 free plays of pure variants like atomic, crazyhouse and loser's and 10 free plays of chessic variants like chess960 and 30 free views of played games with analysis. A single one-time purchase unlocks unlimited play and variant engine analysis. Played games are logged and can also be viewed/analyzed. When reviewing the player's games, users can override the moves and start making their own moves. Back up to main line to undo. If the user goes looks at the Moves while reviewing, the game can be copied to the clipboard. The app comes with two skin themes, a reddish wood and a teal. Also here are multiple board and piece choices to choose from in settings.
AI Chess
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Play chess against a real chess engine ā 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 ā 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 ā 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 ā 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 ā 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 ā 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 ā 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 ā 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
Verdict
Chess Variants Studio and AI Chess are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters ā price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them ā neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
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
Both are free to download. Chess Variants Studio sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and AI Chess sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
| Parameter | Chess Variants Studio | AI Chess |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | ā |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod ā better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 ā better | 16.0 |
| Further details ā not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 52 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Michael Adams | Mahesh Shinde |
In-app purchases
Chess Variants Studio
- Unlimited Plays and Views$3.99
AI Chess
- Monthly$9.991 Month
- Yearly$99.991 Year
Questions
Is Chess Variants Studio free?
Is AI Chess free?
Do Chess Variants Studio or AI Chess have ads?
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