Best Chess Analysis App
How we compare
Criteria, sources, update policy, and how we deal with ranking our own product.
We publish this site as the team behind ChessHelper (chesshelper.ai). This page explains how we compare it with other analysis tools, so you can judge the rankings for yourself.
What we compare
The feature matrix on the home page uses seven criteria, chosen because they decide most real choices between analysis tools:
| Criterion | What we look for |
|---|---|
| Engine | Which engine runs, if the vendor says |
| Depth control | Settings for search time or depth, number of lines, strength |
| Cloud vs local | Where the analysis runs and where games are stored |
| Mobile | Whether the vendor lists a phone app with analysis |
| Game import | How your games get in: one click, PGN, database |
| Explanations | Labels, lines, graphs or plain-language text |
| Price model | Free tier limits and paid prices as listed |
Sources
Each fact about a product comes from the company's own website, help center or, for open-source projects, the public code repository. For example, the Lichess blunder thresholds come from Lichess's published source code, and Chess.com's move classifications come from its help center. We note the check date on every page. We do not use third-party review sites as sources for features or prices.
We compare published features and pricing. We have not run lab tests, timed benchmarks or user surveys, and we do not present any numbers as if we had.
Chess examples
Every move sequence is checked for legality with the chess.js library, and every evaluation is produced with the Stockfish engine at the depth stated next to it. Evaluations differ between engine versions and hardware, so a number you see in another app may differ by a few tenths.
How we handle owning ChessHelper
We rank ChessHelper first, and we are its makers. To keep that ranking useful we follow three rules. First, we rank it first only for the need it is built for, analysis at your own level with a history of your games, and we name a different winner for every other need. Second, ChessHelper gets the same treatment as everyone else: its features and prices come from its public website, and its gaps (no listed phone app, no opening explorer or tablebases, Chrome only) are stated on our review page. Third, the disclosure appears on every page, not just this one.
Updates
We review prices and features when vendors change them and at least every few months. When a fact changes we update the page and its date. Report anything outdated to [email protected].