OpeningTree vs Play960
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.
Play960
Generate random Chess960 positions for over-the-board play. You can view positions by number, reverse lookup using a piece keyboard, and customize the display. Easily copy FEN notation to other apps.
- Generate random Chess960 positions
- View positions by number
- Reverse lookup with piece keyboard
- Customizable display options
- Copy/paste FEN notation
- Full-screen mode
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This is a Chess960 (Freestyle Chess, a.k.a. Fischer Random) position generator for over-the-board (OTB) play. With this app you can: • Generate a random Chess960 position. • Show position as white, black, or FEN. • Find a Chess960 position by entering a number between 0 and 959. • Reverse Lookup: Use a piece keyboard to obtain the position number. Select each piece, or use the "1" or fast-forward button to randomize either the next square or remainder of the position. • Full Screen Mode: Show the position for both white and black in setup or board view. • Configure the display: Auto full-screen, square colors, figurines or letters, FEN castling symbols. • Copy/paste the position or FEN into another app.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Play960 at Free against OpeningTree's $0.99. Play960 also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.4). OpeningTree's advantage is ratings volume (31 vs 1). On update cadence, ads, 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
Play960 is free to download; OpeningTree costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Play960 holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: OpeningTree has 31 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
OpeningTree ships an update every 2 months, Play960 every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 15, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | OpeningTree | Play960 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.4 (31 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 83.3% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 31 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 52 MB | 14 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Michael Adams | Claude Banta |
Customer experience
OpeningTree
Play960
In-app purchases
OpeningTree
No in-app purchases
Play960
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is OpeningTree free?
Is Play960 free?
Which has better reviews, OpeningTree or Play960?
Do OpeningTree or Play960 have ads?
Which is updated more often, OpeningTree or Play960?
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