The Best Chess Apps, Sorted by What You Actually Need

There is no best chess app. There is a best chess app for playing on a flight, a best one for someone who learned the moves last week, a best one for drilling tactics every morning, and a best one when the budget is zero. Lists that ignore the situation end up recommending the same five apps in the same order. This page does the opposite: one pick per situation, the honest runner-up, and a link to the full guide for each.

Why most "best chess app" lists are useless

Search the phrase and twenty sites return Chess.com, Lichess, Chessable, Chess Tempo and ChessKid, usually in that order, usually with the same App Store screenshots. Three things are missing from nearly all of them. They do not say who the list is for, so a parent of a seven-year-old and a 1700-rated club player read the same ranking. They do not say what was tested, so "works offline" means whatever the store description claimed. And they do not say what the total bill looks like when a reader follows the list literally and ends up with four subscriptions.

ChessDir is a directory run by a 2250 Lichess player. Every app below is installed and used before it is listed, the criteria are the same for every listing, and the ranking is not for sale. The rest of this page is organised by situation, because that is the only variable that actually changes the answer.

If you play without internet

This is the situation that most lists get wrong, because the store pages lie by omission. An app "works offline" only if the thing you want to do works offline: play a decent opponent, analyse a game, drill something. Most chess apps are thin clients for a server.

Pick: Lichess. The mobile app plays against Stockfish with no signal at a calibrated bot ladder, and puzzles that were loaded before take-off keep working. Free, no ads. Runner-up: Stockfish for pure engine analysis on a phone, and Chessable for opening or tactics courses downloaded in advance. Chess.com plays its bots offline and not much else; lessons, puzzles and game review all need a connection.

The tested detail, what was downloaded beforehand, what broke in airplane mode and which desktop tools still matter, is in the guide to chess apps that work offline.

If you are starting from zero

A beginner app has one job: get the player through the first 300 rating points without quitting. That means explanations in words, not engine lines, an opponent that loses on purpose at the right moments, and no rated-game anxiety on day one.

Pick: Dr. Wolf to be coached through the first games, paired with Lichess for the playing habit once the pieces move without thinking. For children under 13: ChessKid, which is the safe, moderated version of Chess.com with lessons built for that age. Honest note: Magnus Trainer and Dr. Wolf are outgrown within months. That is fine; they are on-ramps, not homes.

A sample first week, what to skip, and when paying starts to make sense are in the beginner chess apps guide.

If you want to train, not just play

Past the beginner stage, the right app depends on the phase of the game being trained. Under 1800, that answer is almost always tactics, whatever the player would prefer it to be.

Tactics: Chess Tempo has the best-calibrated puzzles on the market and statistics deep enough to find a real weakness. Lichess Puzzles is the free alternative for the daily fifteen minutes. Endgames: Chess Tempo again, or Lichess Endgame Practice for free, structured drilling. Endgames are the cheapest 100 points above 1500 because opponents do not know them either. Openings: Chessable, whose MoveTrainer is best in class for drilling variations, with the caveat that under 1500 losses are not opening losses.

One app for everything: Chess.com. The largest matchmaking pool, Game Review that explains mistakes in plain English, lessons and puzzles in one place. The free tier covers most needs; Diamond is the right tier when a rapid game gets reviewed every day.

Which app fits which phase, how a three-app stack is assembled, and the budget scenarios from $0 to $40 a month are in the guide to picking a chess app for the training you need, which then goes deeper on tactics, endgame and opening apps one by one.

If you refuse to pay

Pick: Lichess, and nothing else is needed. Play, puzzles, studies, opening explorer, engine analysis, endgame drills, all free, no ads, no paid tier, funded by donations. Reaching 1800 on Lichess alone is a well-trodden path. What it lacks is polished video lessons and a coach that talks; those cost money everywhere.

On desktop, SCID vs PC adds a free database and engine workbench that titled players still keep installed. Chess.com's free tier is usable but rationed: limited puzzles, limited Game Review, ads. For a free setup that also survives a flight, the offline chess apps guide doubles as the zero-budget guide, since every pick in it is free.

Best chess app for Android and iPhone

The phone barely changes the answer. Every pick on this page ships a native app on both stores, with one exception: DecodeChess has an Android app and runs in the browser on iPhone. So the choice is still made by situation and budget, not by operating system. The table lists where each one actually runs, checked against the store listings.

Android: Chess.com for a single app that plays, teaches and reviews games, or Lichess when the budget is zero. Android is also the one platform where DecodeChess has a native app, for players who want engine lines turned into sentences. iPhone: the same two, with Chessable the strongest iPhone-native way to drill a course on a commute. The gaps run both ways: DecodeChess has no iPhone app, and TacticForge, which turns a player's own games into puzzles, is on the App Store and the web but not on Google Play.

What not to install

Three kinds of app fail the same way regardless of situation. The "AI chess coach" released after 2024 whose coach is a language model with a board attached: it narrates confidently and hallucinates evaluations, and nothing works without a connection. The database suite sold to club players who are not preparing for tournaments: ChessBase is a professional tool and is overkill under 2000. And the fourth subscription. Following a list literally produces Chess.com Diamond plus Chessable Pro plus Aimchess plus Magnus Trainer at over $40 a month for work two apps cover. One home base, one specialist for the weakest phase, and free analysis is the whole stack.

How this list is made

Every app in the directory is installed and used before it is listed; the listing carries the date it was last reviewed, and anything older than six months is flagged for a re-check. Pros and cons are written to be specific, prices come from the official page at review time, and the order on this page follows the situation, not the affiliate rate. Some outbound links earn ChessDir a commission; they never change which app is picked.

Disclosure: four apps in this directory are built by ChessDir's editor: ChessAtlas (openings), ChessEndings (endgames), ChessTactics (tactics) and DarkSquares (visualization). They are left out of the picks on this page on purpose. Each listing is reviewed on the same criteria as every other app, cons included. The full catalogue, with filters for price, platform and offline use, is at the chess apps directory.