Comparison

OpeningTree vs Chess School for Beginners

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
Currently charting
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 School for Beginners

Learn chess with an interactive course designed for beginners of all ages. It offers structured lessons, practice exercises with hints and explanations, and theoretical sections with interactive board play. Improve your game with over 500 examples and track your progress.

Highlights
  • Interactive chess rules lessons
  • Practice exercises with hints
  • Theoretical sections with board play
  • 500+ carefully chosen examples
  • Progress tracking (ELO rating)
  • Offline access
Features
Read full description

This friendly interactive course is intended for both children and adult beginners. It is divided into 2 main sections: Chess rules and Playing. 500 carefully chosen, and in many cases designed, examples to help a student. 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. Introduction 1.1. Chess board 1.2. Chess pieces 1.3. Starting position 2. Pieces' moves 2.1. Rook 2.2. Bishop 2.3. Queen 2.4. Knight 2.5. King 2.6. Pawn 3. Capture 4. Pawn promotion 5. The relative value of the pieces 6. Castling 7. The role of the king, Check and mate 7.1. Check and mate 7.2. Mate 7.3. Mate in one move 7.4. Stalemate 7.5. Perpetual check 8. Notation (How to read moves) 9. Elementary capture 9.1. Winning a knight 9.2. Winning a bishop 9.3. Winning a rook 9.4. Winning a queen 9.5. Win a piece 10. Simple defense 10.1. Retreat 10.2. Defending with another piece 10.3. Taking an attacking piece 10.4. Interception 10.5. Defending from mate 11. Chess skills development 12. The role of the king. Continuation 12.1. Mate in 1 12.2. Mate in 2 12.3. Discovered check 12.4. Double check 12.5. Perpetual check 12.6. Stalemate 13. King and queen against a king 14. King and rook against a king 15. King and minor piece or a pawn against a king 16. Etiquette during a game

Screenshots

OpeningTree4 screens
Chess School for Beginners4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Chess School for Beginners at Free against OpeningTree's $0.99. Chess School for Beginners also leads on ratings volume (647 vs 31) and rating (4.6 vs 4.4). OpeningTree's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and review sentiment (83% vs 59%). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Chess School for Beginners is free to download; OpeningTree costs $0.99 up front. Chess School for Beginners sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. OpeningTree asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Chess School for Beginners holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chess School for Beginners has 647 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 59% of Chess School for Beginners's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

OpeningTree ships an update every 2 months, Chess School for Beginners every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on November 8, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard9 real differences · 2 level
OpeningTree versus Chess School for Beginners: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterOpeningTreeChess School for Beginners
Price$0.99Free — better
Rating4.4 (31 ratings)4.6 (647 ratings) — better
Positive reviews83.3% of reviews — better58.8% of reviews
Number of ratings31647 — better
Update frequencyEvery 2 months — betterEvery 3 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
Best chart rank#73 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.68.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size52 MB64 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMichael AdamsChess King

Customer experience

OpeningTree

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

Chess School for Beginners

All ratings646 ratings
Positive91.6%
Neutral5.1%
Negative3.3%
Written reviews34 reviews
Positive58.8%
Neutral14.7%
Negative26.5%

In-app purchases

None

OpeningTree

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Chess School for Beginners

One-time1
  • Full course$7.99

Questions

Is OpeningTree free?
OpeningTree costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Chess School for Beginners free?
Chess School for Beginners is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, OpeningTree or Chess School for Beginners?
Chess School for Beginners is rated higher. OpeningTree averages 4.4 out of 5 from 31 ratings, while Chess School for Beginners averages 4.6 from 647 ratings.
Do OpeningTree or Chess School for Beginners have ads?
Neither OpeningTree nor Chess School for Beginners shows ads.
Which is updated more often, OpeningTree or Chess School for Beginners?
OpeningTree ships an update every 2 months, and Chess School for Beginners every 3 months. Most recently, OpeningTree was updated on November 8, 2026 and Chess School for Beginners on November 2, 2026.

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