Coach Ada plays you at your own level, grades every move and tells you what was better and why. She lives on the tablet itself: no cloud, no account, no subscription, nothing to log in to.
Coach Ada · your move
!!Nxf7 — brilliant! A fork on the queen and the rook. This sacrifice has a follow-up — that is what makes it a sacrifice and not a blunder.
Meet Coach Ada
Not a chatbot — a coach on every move. Ada plays at your rating; each move you make gets a grade on the square and a one-line reason beside the board, and each move she makes comes with a warning about what it threatens. All of it on the device, with no connection.
Every move is checked by a full-strength engine, then turned into a sentence you can act on: what it defends, what it attacks, what it develops, and what was better. Not a number — a reason.
Brilliant, great, best, good, book, inaccuracy, mistake, miss, blunder — the same vocabulary strong players use, with a colour and a symbol so a six-year-old understands it too.
Ada collects the positions where you went wrong and hands them back as a personal puzzle set. You do not practise generic tactics — you fix the things you actually get wrong.
From a beginner who has just learned the rules to a 1900 master — and three legends up to 2200. Bo grabs everything. Gus gives away pawns for an attack. Greta trades into endgames she knows by heart. Hover or tap any face to meet them.
Beat a bot and the next one unlocks. Your wins, losses and rematches are tracked for every bot, so you always know who is next.
Bots greet you, react to captures, own up to blunders and congratulate you when you win. Every line is written by hand — friendly, funny, never unkind. Chatter can be turned off.
Tani, Magnus and Garry play with their real style and openings drawn from their own games — tuned to a level you can genuinely beat.
Eight players, three knockout rounds and a crown for the winner, all on the device. Four cups, from the Meadow Cup for beginners to the Tower Cup for masters. Win your quarter-final, your semi and the final — or fight for bronze if you slip — and the medal goes straight into your trophy cabinet.
Max700
Nigel850
Zoe900
Captain Castle1050
Rook Rex750
Gambit Gus1150
Queenie950Zoe900Captain Castle1050Gambit Gus1150Gambit Gus1150Eight players within about 200 points of you. The classic — a fair fight every time.
Beginner bots, 250–700. Pip, Bo, Lulu, Bella and friends. A great first tournament.
Club bots, 700–1050. Max, Rook Rex, Nigel, Zoe, Queenie, the Captain and Stockfish 2–3.
Masters, 1050+. Gus, the Professor, Betty, Greta, Tom, the Maestro and Stockfish 4–6.
Every lesson is a scene, not a page of text: the bot of each land talks you through the idea while arrows, dots and highlights appear under the pieces, then hands the board to you to try it. The voices are bundled with the app, so it all works in airplane mode.
Every frame here is the real video, playing on the real board — captured straight out of the app.
Every land is hosted by a bot who narrates its videos and lessons — then you beat them to claim the land.
Tap the speaker and the video pauses on each line until the narration has finished, so nothing runs ahead of a young reader.
After the explanation the board is yours: tap the squares, find the move, and Ada checks it. The same brilliant / best / blunder badges from your own games appear here too.
Screens are hard on children's eyes, especially in the evening. NIA CHESS has its own warm-light and brightness controls built into the app, a black-and-white mode for e-ink tablets and calmer reading, and a night theme for the sofa. Try them here — this is the real home screen.
Tap a set and every board on this page changes with it — the same sets you can pick inside the app, from the classic Staunton look to bold, high-contrast pieces for small screens and young eyes. Boards come in walnut, maple, birch, olive, icy sea and more.
Showing Staunty on walnut. Piece sets are from the open-source Lichess project.
From how the pieces move all the way to real strategy. Finish the lessons in a land, beat the bot who lives there, claim the land. Every lesson position is engine-checked, and Coach Ada walks you through each step.
Sign in once and play real people from the same board, with your Lichess rating on the line. The player sees only a rating and a country flag — never a username. No chat, no profile, no friend list, no feed. The rating change lands on the result screen, ready for Ada to review.
Built by parents who wanted a real alternative for their children — and then kept using it themselves.
Most chess apps rent you their features by the month. NIA CHESS is the other kind: try it free for as long as you like, then pay once and own the whole thing — every bot, every puzzle, every lesson, for every profile on the tablet.
A real app, not a countdown. Keep it free for as long as you like.
One in-app purchase turns the free app into the whole academy — and it stays unlocked for every profile on the device.
Bought once through Google Play or the App Store; restores on a new tablet.
A single payment that costs about what one month of a typical chess membership does — and then it is yours. No renewal, no price rise, no “your plan has expired”.
Brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents — every profile on the tablet gets the full app. No family plan, no per-seat pricing, no sharing a login.
No hints to top up, no coins, no boosters, no “premium” bots. Future lessons, videos and puzzles arrive in updates and are included in the $19.99.
We like all three of these — Lichess especially, and we build on it. But they are all online services, and that is the one thing we set out not to be.
 NIA CHESS |
Chess.com | ChessKid | Lichess | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works in airplane mode | Everything, always | Needs a connection | Needs a connection | Needs a connection |
| Content stored on the device | Engine, puzzles, lessons, master games, studies | Streamed from the server | Streamed from the server | Streamed from the server |
| Price | Free to download · $19.99 unlocks everything, once | Free tier plus monthly or yearly membership | Free tier plus monthly or yearly membership | Free — donation funded, open source |
| Account or sign-up | None required | Required | Required | Required for most features |
| Chat with other people | None at all, by design | Yes | Moderated, child-safe | Yes |
| Social feed, profiles, follows | None | Yes | Limited, moderated | Yes |
| Ads | Never | On the free tier | None | None |
| Coach who explains each move in words | Built in, live and after the game | Game Review, on paid plans | Yes, at a child's level | Engine analysis, no spoken coach |
| Multiple profiles on one tablet | Included | Separate accounts | Separate accounts | Separate accounts |
| Designed for | All ages — absolute beginner to 1900+ | All ages, online-first | Children | All ages, online-first |
Comparison compiled from publicly available information in September 2026 and describes each product's standard offering. Features, tiers and pricing change often — please check each site for the current details. Chess.com, ChessKid and Lichess are trademarks of their respective owners and are not affiliated with NIA CHESS. Lichess is free and open source, and NIA CHESS uses its public API for optional online play.
Something we did not answer? Write to hello@niachess.com.
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