Comparison

AI Chess vs ChessLab

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

Head to head
About

AI Chess

Features
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Play chess against a real chess engine โ€” 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 โ€ข Alpha-beta search with quiescence, transposition tables, null-move pruning, late move pruning, and reverse futility pruning โ€” the same family of techniques the strongest engines use, implemented and measured one at a time. โ€ข Andromida starts from a 72-position opening book and quietly learns which lines work against you, favouring them over time. โ€ข Twenty strength levels and five play styles, from Passive to Aggressive โ€” a fair fight whether you're learning the pieces or you're rated. โ€ข 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 โ€” Best, Good, Inaccuracy, Mistake, or Blunder. โ€ข On-board arrows show the move you should have played, and the reply your opponent was threatening. โ€ข Plain-English reasons: "Hangs your Knight." "Missed a forced checkmate." โ€ข Heads-up prompts before pivotal moves, so you get the chance to spot the tactic yourself. โ€ข Spoken coaching in four voices โ€” pick the coach whose pace and tone suit you. โ€ข 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 โ€ข Play White, play Black, pass-and-play with a friend, or move both sides yourself in Analysis mode. โ€ข Time controls from 1+0 Bullet to 30+20 Classical โ€” plus Custom and Unlimited for when you'd rather think than race. โ€ข Hints and live analysis, with evaluation and best-line arrows on the board. โ€ข Set up any position with the built-in editor. โ€ข Save, load, and e-mail your games as PGN. โ€ข 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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/

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 moveโ€ฆ), 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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 โ†’ Licenses).

Screenshots

AI Chess4 screens
ChessLab4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: ChessLab at none against AI Chess's 2. AI Chess's advantage is iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

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

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

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

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 4 level
AI Chess versus ChessLab: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAI ChessChessLab
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyโ€”Weekly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo โ€” better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.0 โ€” better18.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size52 MB169 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMahesh ShindeThierry Maeder

In-app purchases

2 purchases

AI Chess

Subscriptions2
  • Monthly$9.991 Month
  • Yearly$99.991 Year
None

ChessLab

No in-app purchases

Questions

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

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