Comparison

OpeningTree vs Chess Opening Trainer

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

Head to head
About

OpeningTree

Explore chess openings with an extensive opening book and engine analysis. Analyze your games, create custom lines, and study moves from high-rated players. Accessible for visually impaired users.

Highlights
  • Extensive opening book
  • Crafty engine analysis
  • Load and analyze PGN games
  • Create custom move lines
  • Accessible for visually impaired
  • Mark moves with colors
  • Save board to PGN
Features
Read full description

OpeningTree is a chess openings book based on high rated over the board games that lets one explore the tree of openings and engine analysis is available. Chess game files can be shared with the app to check against the book or to just view. Users can make their own side line moves and back up to return to main line. Also includes ten classic game collections and users can import their own games into the app. Game list are also searchable by tags. The updated opening book is compiled from 640,000 high rated games from recent years with both players rated 2300 and over. Just touch moves in the list or make moves on the board to see what the response is. The numbers next to moves indicate how many games resulted in wins-draws-losses. The idea comes from computer opening books as if we can open up the book and see what those moves are that people play in response to opening positions. Users do not pick an opening to study but start with the full tree. The analyze button on bottom right of board is to flip between viewing the openings move table or seeing Crafty engine analysis. +1.00 score means white is ahead a pawn. -1.00 score means black is ahead a pawn. There is a move now button to make the engine play the current best move if the users wants to try playing a position out against the engine. OpeningTree's board is accessible to the blind and visually impaired using Voice Over. With Voice Over enabled in device settings, tap on a square for info, double tap to select. Or choose from three move methods. When going forward in a loaded PGN game, moves will be announced on each tap of the forward button. Moves can be marked with colors(red, green, yellow) and colorizing a move at the end of a line will extend the line i.e. add move so it shows later. There is also an option to make a note on a position using the control bar. In the Actions menu if the user has imported a chess games file to the App, for example by opening a PGN file with OpeningTree from a mail attachment or download(long touch on the attachment/download for this option), a game from a PGN file can be loaded and checked against the book. If a user makes a new move, back up to the main line to return to the game. To ensure speed, it will only read/load a max of 5000 games. With bigger files users will only see first 5000 games. There is a Save Board to PGN option on the Actions menu. It saves the current moves to openings-user-games.pgn, a file OpeningTree will create on first save. Games are saved with opening name as white and black name to spot the lines in each game. This allows the users to export data out of the App such as favorite lines with the mail games option when looking at a game list. The App comes with six PGN game files that can be optionally installed when no PGN files have yet been opened by the App or the user has deleted their PGN files previously opened and likewise has none to access. If this is the case, this option shows when going to Actions -> load PGN. The files contain a mix of famous classical games, collections of former world champions Gary Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen's games and more recent games from two top ranked international tournaments. PGN stands for portable game notation. It's a file extension that can be used with text files that contain chess games in the PGN format. PGN files can be read by apps to display the games in them. If a game is loaded in the App one can then go to 'Actions -> show game data' to view the raw PGN text.

About

Chess Opening Trainer

Learn chess openings with a simplified interface that analyzes millions of games. Moves are scored and ordered by popularity, making study straightforward. Test your knowledge with built-in quizzes.

Highlights
  • Simplified interface
  • Move scoring based on popularity
  • Analysis of over 2 million games
  • Straightforward study approach
  • Opening knowledge testing
Features
Read full description

Chess opening is very important for a chess game. There are lots of apps to help one study chess openings. But most of them are too complicate. There are way too many numbers associated with a move. Users will easily be overwhelmed and will lose interests in studying too. Chess Opening Trainer tries to provied an easy and simple interface to study openings. It studied over 2 million games and generated one score for each move. All the moves for each situation are ordered by its popularity. The interface is easy and straight forward. Chess Opening Trainer also provides a way for the user to test his opening knowledge.

Screenshots

OpeningTree4 screens
Chess Opening Trainer2 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: OpeningTree at 83% against Chess Opening Trainer's 14%. OpeningTree also leads on rating (4.4 vs 1.4) and ads (none vs shown). Chess Opening Trainer's advantage is price (Free vs $0.99) and iOS requirement (9.0 vs 15.6). On 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

Chess Opening Trainer is free to download; OpeningTree costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

OpeningTree holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 1.4. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 31 and 7 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 83% of OpeningTree's written reviews are positive against 14% of Chess Opening Trainer's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

OpeningTree ships an update every 2 months, Chess Opening Trainer every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard8 real differences · 2 level
OpeningTree versus Chess Opening Trainer: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterOpeningTreeChess Opening Trainer
Price$0.99Free — better
Rating4.4 (31 ratings) — better1.4 (7 ratings)
Positive reviews83.3% of reviews — better14.3% of reviews
Number of ratings31 — better7
Update frequencyEvery 2 months — betterEvery 4 months
AdsNo — betterYes
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidAd-supported — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.69.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size52 MB33 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMichael AdamsPropersh LLC

Customer experience

OpeningTree

All ratings31 ratings
Positive83.9%
Neutral6.5%
Negative9.7%
Written reviews24 reviews
Positive83.3%
Neutral4.2%
Negative12.5%

Chess Opening Trainer

All ratings7 ratings
Positive14.3%
Neutral0.0%
Negative85.7%
Written reviews7 reviews
Positive14.3%
Neutral14.3%
Negative71.4%

In-app purchases

None

OpeningTree

No in-app purchases

None

Chess Opening Trainer

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is OpeningTree free?
OpeningTree costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Chess Opening Trainer free?
Chess Opening Trainer is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, OpeningTree or Chess Opening Trainer?
OpeningTree is rated higher. OpeningTree averages 4.4 out of 5 from 31 ratings, while Chess Opening Trainer averages 1.4 from 7 ratings.
Do OpeningTree or Chess Opening Trainer have ads?
Chess Opening Trainer shows ads; OpeningTree does not.
Which is updated more often, OpeningTree or Chess Opening Trainer?
OpeningTree ships an update every 2 months, and Chess Opening Trainer every 4 months. Most recently, OpeningTree was updated on November 1, 2026 and Chess Opening Trainer on November 2, 2026.

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