OpeningTree vs Chess Opening Lab (1400
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
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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.
Chess Opening Lab (1400
This app offers a comprehensive chess opening manual with theoretical reviews and instructive games from grandmasters. It features detailed classifications, evaluations, and characteristics of key moves, along with interactive lessons and over 350 training exercises.
- Theoretical review of all chess openings
- Instructive games with detailed annotations
- Interactive theoretical lessons
- 350+ training exercises
- Evaluations and characteristics of key moves
- History and current status of variations
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This is a perfect opening manual. It features a theoretical review of all the chess openings, which are illustrated by instructive games of the greatest chess players. This compact opening manual contains a detailed classification, which makes it useful to players of any level - beginners, intermediate and advanced players. Each opening variation is supplied with evaluations and characteristics of key moves. The history of the variations' development is described, as well as their current status. The theoretic material is nicely illustrated by classic games with detailed annotations that demonstrate the principal ideas and plans of each variation for White and Black. There is also a special training section with more than 350 exercises of various difficulty on more than 40 openings. This course is in the series Chess King Learn, which is an unprecedented chess teaching method. In the series are included courses in tactics, strategy, openings, middle game, and endgame, split by levels from beginners to experienced players, and even professional players. With the help of this course, you can improve your chess knowledge, learn new tactical tricks and combinations, and consolidate the acquired knowledge into practice. The program acts as a coach who gives tasks to solve and helps to solve them if you get stuck. It will give you hints, explanations and show you even striking refutation of the mistakes you might make. The program also contains a theoretical section, which explains the methods of the game in a certain stage of the game, based on actual examples. The theory is presented in an interactive way, which means you can not only read the text of the lessons, but also to make moves on the board and work out unclear moves on the board. Advantages of the program: • High quality examples, all double-checked for correctness • You need to enter all key moves, required by the teacher • Different levels of complexity of the tasks • Various goals, which need to be reached in the problems • The program gives hint if an error is made • For typical mistaken moves, the refutation is shown • You can play out any position of the tasks against the computer • Interactive theoretical lessons • Structured table of contents • The program monitors the change in the rating (ELO) of the player during the learning process • Test mode with flexible settings • Possibility to bookmark favorite exercises • The application is adapted to the bigger screen of a tablet • The application does not require an internet connection The course includes a free part, in which you can test the program. Lessons offered in the free version is fully functional. They allow you to test the application in real world conditions before releasing the following topics: 1. Rare variations 1.1. 1. g3, 1. b4, .. 1.2. 1. b3 1.3. 1. d4 1.4. 1. d4 Nf6 1.5. 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 2. Alekhine's defense 3. Benoni defense 4. Bird's opening 5. Bishop's opening 6. Blumenfeld counter-gambit 7. Bogo-Indian defense 8. Budapest gambit 9. Caro-Kann 10. Catalan system 11. Center gambit 12. Dutch defense 12.1. Dutch defense 12.2. Ilyin-Genevsky system 12.3. Leningrad system 12.4. Staunton gambit 12.5. Stonewall variation 13. English opening 14. Evans gambit 15. Four knights' game 16. French defense 16.1. French defense 17. Grünfeld defense 18. Italian game & Hungarian defense 19. King's Indian defense 20. Latvian gambit 21. Nimzo-Indian defense 22. Nimzowitsch defense 23. Old Indian defense 24. Philidor's defense 25. Pirc-Robatsch defense 26. Queen's gambit 27. Queen's Indian defense 28. Queen's pawn game 29. Reti opening 30. Petrov's defense 31. Ruy Lopez 32. Scandinavian defense 33. Scotch gambit & Ponziani's opening 34. Scotch game 35. Sicilian defense 36. Three knights' game 37. Two knights' defense 38. Vienna game 39. Volga-Benko gambit 40. The complete course of openings
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Chess Opening Lab (1400 at Free against OpeningTree's $0.99. Chess Opening Lab (1400 also leads on rating (4.7 vs 4.4) and ratings volume (593 vs 31). OpeningTree's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and review sentiment (83% vs 66%). On ads 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
Chess Opening Lab (1400 is free to download; OpeningTree costs $0.99 up front. Chess Opening Lab (1400 sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. OpeningTree asks for nothing beyond the download.
Chess Opening Lab (1400 holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chess Opening Lab (1400 has 593 ratings behind it against 31, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 83% of OpeningTree's written reviews are positive against 66% of Chess Opening Lab (1400's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
OpeningTree ships an update every 2 months, Chess Opening Lab (1400 every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | OpeningTree | Chess Opening Lab (1400 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.4 (31 ratings) | 4.7 (593 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 83.3% of reviews — better | 65.5% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 31 | 593 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free with in-app purchases — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 | 8.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 52 MB | 45 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Michael Adams | Chess King |
Customer experience
OpeningTree
Chess Opening Lab (1400
Bugs and requests
OpeningTree
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
Chess Opening Lab (1400
Reported bugs
9 issues- Recorded moves not highlighted or disappear
- White spot instead of recorded move
- Have to buy full course multiple times
- App forgets purchase
- Animation speed doesn't decrease
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- Cannot skip or save variations
- Too many variations distract from main line
- Cannot replay exercise from beginning
- App deletes and asks for repurchase
Requested features
9 requests- More exercises for different openings
- More examples of opening systems
- Give 20 or more examples of different openings
- Explanations in French
- Reference books
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- Translation to Spanish
- Translation to Turkish
- Show colorful lines in animation
- Include lines for Sicilian defense gambits
In-app purchases
OpeningTree
No in-app purchases
Chess Opening Lab (1400
- Full course$12.99
Questions
Is OpeningTree free?
Is Chess Opening Lab (1400 free?
Which has better reviews, OpeningTree or Chess Opening Lab (1400?
Do OpeningTree or Chess Opening Lab (1400 have ads?
Which is updated more often, OpeningTree or Chess Opening Lab (1400?
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