Chess Pangolin vs TacticForge
A coached game review whose explanations are board-checked - and that says so when it has no answer. Puzzles cut from your own Lichess and Chess.com games, tagged by motif and brought back until they stick.
| Â | Chess Pangolin | TacticForge |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free · from £2.99/mo | Free · from $5/mo |
| Platforms | Web | Web, iOS |
| Audience | beginner, intermediate, advanced | beginner, intermediate, advanced |
| Languages | EN | EN |
| Features | ||
| Play online | ||
| Play bots | ||
| Local pass-and-play | ||
| Tactics puzzles | ||
| Opening trainer | ||
| Endgame trainer | ||
| Spaced repetition | ||
| Video lessons | ||
| Live coaching | ||
| Engine analysis | ||
| Board scanner (OCR) | ||
| Opening repertoire | ||
| Cloud sync | ||
| Offline mode | ||
| Kid-safe | ||
| Tournaments | ||
| Rating system | ||
| Correspondence chess | ||
| Chess variants | ||
| Study & share | ||
| AI coach | ||
| Streaming-ready | ||
| Game database | ||
Pick Chess Pangolin if…
- The coach abstains: when none of its board checks fires it prints "has not found the cause" rather than dressing up the engine's line as an explanation - the opposite of what LLM-written review copy does
- Every claim carries a button that plays the line on the board, so no sentence has to be taken on trust
- The publisher's /honesty page is dated, versioned and willing to lose ground: when the September rebuild could not reproduce a comparable grade, it withdrew its own headline score and its "zero wrong" claim rather than keep quoting numbers it could no longer stand behind
- Genuinely usable without an account or a card: engine analysis, full Game Review coaching, standard puzzles and coached games against bots are all unlimited on the free tier, with games kept in the browser rather than on a server
Pick TacticForge if…
- Every puzzle comes from a position you actually reached and got wrong - the training set is your own blind spots, not a generic pool
- Motif tagging across all your games answers the useful question - "which pattern keeps costing me?" - instead of reviewing one game at a time the way Lichess's "Learn from your mistakes" does
- Spaced repetition on your own mistakes, which neither Lichess nor Chess.com offers
- Works with Lichess and Chess.com at once, linked by username with no third-party login
FAQ
- Is Chess Pangolin better than TacticForge?
- Neither is strictly "better" - they serve different priorities. Chess Pangolin excels at: The coach abstains: when none of its board checks fires it prints "has not found the cause" rather than dressing up the engine's line as an explanation - the opposite of what LLM-written review copy does. TacticForge excels at: Every puzzle comes from a position you actually reached and got wrong - the training set is your own blind spots, not a generic pool. Pick based on the job you want done.
- Is Chess Pangolin free?
- Chess Pangolin has a free tier, and paid plans start at £2.99/mo. The free tier needs no account or card and is no longer metered: unlimited engine analysis, complete Game Review coaching, unlimited standard puzzles and unlimited coached Pit games, plus the introductory lesson of every Skills course and two full Geometry Gym samples. All Access adds the authored teaching library and personalised practice. Paddle is the merchant of record. Prices in GBP as published on 14 September 2026, when the earlier £4.99/£59 tiers and the £39 Founding 500 offer were retired.
- Is TacticForge free?
- TacticForge has a free tier, and paid plans start at $5/mo. The free tier analyses 2 games a day and includes the personalised puzzles, every training mode, unlimited practice and the play-style profile; the opening book shows only the first 4 moves. Premium raises the cap to 10 analyses a day and unlocks the full opening book with drills and editing. No annual plan as of 2 October 2026.
- On what platforms are Chess Pangolin and TacticForge available?
- Chess Pangolin runs on Web. TacticForge runs on Web, iOS.
- Who should use Chess Pangolin vs TacticForge?
- Chess Pangolin is aimed at beginner, intermediate, advanced. TacticForge targets beginner, intermediate, advanced. The tiebreaker is which of those two descriptions fits how you actually play.