AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Chessterm – Rust-based terminal chess engine for chess notation

Hi HN! I just built chessterm, a Rust-powered TUI chess engine to practice chess notation (PGN) for an upcoming chess competition. This was also a way for me to learn Rust more deeply, particularly bitboards for move generation and terminal UI development with ratatui Unlike typical chess UIs that wrap around Stockfish, this is built completely from scratch, with: - PGN-only input (no AI, just human vs human) - Bitboard-based move generation (u64, precomputed attack masks) - Built with ratatui for a smooth terminal experience Would love to hear your feedback!

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1CA
   ChessCoach – A neural chess engine that comments on each player's moves▲506

   2021 · chrisbutner.github.io · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating▲134

   I built over the last two years a human-like neural network chess engine that tries to predict your rating from a single game. It automatically adapts to your play and tries to play like a human at your level would play, giving you a balanced game. At the core I’m using an AlphaZero / Leela Chess Zero style neural network that I have trained on 1 billion human games from the lichess.org open database. Around this network I have built a chess engine in Rust with algorithms that use the outputs from the NN to produce human-like moves at a given rating from beginner to world champion, as…

   2022 · noctie.ai · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Termichess – Play chess in your terminal▲50

   Hey everyone, I have been trying to build a terminal based app for sometime now and this is an attempt at trying to build a chess app that one can play right inside terminal. I was inspired by `chess-tui`[1] which is a rust based project and was looking to build something similar using python. Luckily I stumbled upon textual[2] recently and it made my task of building this far more easier than I thought. [1] https://github.com/thomas-mauran/chess-tui [2] https://github.com/textualize/textual

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   R-cade, a simple arcade game engine for Racket▲205

   Retro Game Engine for Racket. Contribute to massung/r-cade development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Chessmaster AI▲232

   Transform Your Chess Skills with AI-Powered Training

   Jan 2026 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Chess-TUI Play Lichess games in your terminal (Rust)▲5

   Hi HN, I’ve released a new version of chess-tui, a Rust terminal UI for playing live games against Lichess opponents. The update includes a cleaner TUI, better performance, improved keybindings, and smoother real-time integration with the Lichess API. It’s designed as a simple, fast way to play chess without leaving the terminal. Repo:https://github.com/thomas-mauran/chess-tui Feedback and bug reports are welcome. Happy to answer questions!

   Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   RatatuiRuby wraps Rust Ratatui as a RubyGem – TUIs with the joy of Ruby▲152

   Terminal user interfaces in Ruby. RatatuiRuby wraps Rust

   Jan 2026 · ratatui-ruby.dev · its alternatives →

8. 8
   A Claude Code skill to analyze your chess games▲75

   Claude Code skills for chess post-mortems: Stockfish-backed annotated PGN, HTML viewer, narrated video - brumar/chess-postmortem-skills

   27d ago · github.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   A Implementation of Alpha Zero for Chess in MLX▲71

   A chess engine implementation inspired by AlphaZero, using MLX for neural network computations and Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) for move selection.

   2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    Pretty-print your chess games using Prettier▲103

    Hi, As an enthusiast chess player, I like to manage my games and my opening repertoire as a set of PGN files stored in a Git repository (PGN is a text file format for recording chess games). So I wanted a way to pretty-print PGN files using a CLI and integrating in my editor. Today, it looks like most people use GUI-based software. So I decided to create a Prettier plugin that formats PGN files. Prettier is a well-known pretty-printer in the Node.js ecosystem, used to ensure consistent source code formatting in software projects. One upside of implementing this PGN formatter as a Prettier…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

11. 11CE
    ChessBoss – enhancing physical chessboards with computer vision▲83

    We built ChessBoss at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon this week. It didn’t make the top 10 but I thought Hacker News might think it’s pretty cool. https://devpost.com/software/chess-boss There are these really cool smart chessboards that can suggest moves and track your games... but they’re $400 and weigh 19 pounds. And of course there are apps that can analyze games but tracking and inputting games by hand is a huge pain. Or fully-digital chess apps... but board games are way more fun in real life! We wondered: “why can’t you just do that in software and bring the best…

    2019 · devpost.com · its alternatives →

12. 12CG
    Chessdream – Generate realistic chess positions with AI▲45

    For no specific reason, I trained a neural network to generate random chess positions that look similar to positions from actual games (from lichess db). I also made it so you can condition it on some fixed pieces, and adjust the number of pieces. It turned out to be quite effective and I find it surprisingly fun and instructive to generate e.g. endgame positions with a certain pawn structure (set low temperature, place some pawns and position the kings, adjust number of pieces to get an endgame), and then figure out how to win vs. the computer in those positions. I hooked it up so that you…

    2024 · chessdream.ai · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Chess Master▲76

    A real-time move calculator for online Chess

    2020 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →

14. 14
    ChessEye▲82

    2D chessboard scanner & analyzer to calculate the best moves

    2021 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Spicy Chess▲76

    Hello! I created SpicyChess(https://spicychess.com) because I wanted a tactics training app that would have the following features: - Spaced Repetition. - Countdown time to simulate blitz Chess where you have to find the best move quickly. - The ability to save puzzles for later review. I'd love to hear any feedback that you may have !

    2023 · spicychess.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    Chess Twist▲29

    I continue my experiment of transposing classic games onto an irregular grid. I've previously released variants of minesweeper and checkers. And now I'd like to share my variant of Chess. Chess can be a pretty punishing game, but I thought this was nevertheless a way to make it even more challenging by making it trickier to anticipate your opponent, even though both players still have the same information. From the playtests I've done, that challenge is pretty compelling. It also seems to be more fun at 2 people, where both players keep surprising one another.

    2024 · polyreplay.com · its alternatives →

17. 17
    Chess Move Expert▲7

    Free chess analyzer to find blunders and master your game

    Jan 2026 · chessmoveexpert.com · its alternatives →

18. 18
    Cicada, a hobby chess engine written in Rust▲10

    ♟♕♞♔ engine. Contribute to mkyl/cicada development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

19. 19
    Play Chess Without Moving Pieces▲36

    Guess AI Engine Tournament Position, Fun Stury Tool. Play Chess Without Moving Pieces. Crazy Chess is a Variant of Random Fisher and Really Bad Chess. Because of the rearranged pieces, players cannot use typical chess opening moves. study tool to understand chess, and learning how to read the board.

    2017 · ba.net · its alternatives →

20. 20
    Unicode Chess Generator ♞▲12

    Create plain text chess puzzles

    2019 · its alternatives →

21. 21
    Printing Chess Boards in a Terminal▲7

    I'm doing some fun chess-related programing during my sabbatical, and taking the opportunity to dive down rabbit holes I'd avoid for in a work setting. Found out interesting stuff from old ANSI DEC escape sequences to sixel graphics that are useful today.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    A Chrome extension that gives you chess tactics on new tab pages▲5

    Hello, This is something I've wanted to build for awhile (first bought the domain in 2020 (then lost it for a year+)). It's a tactics solver on each new tab page. There are 5 modes of play: Easy (<1200 elo) Medium (1200-1800) Hard (1800-2400) Expert (2400+) Speedrun (solve as many puzzles as possible in 60 seconds). I'm having a ton of fun with it, and definitely noticing improvements with actual games (definitely solved the most puzzles in my life while developing this extension). If you check it out, please let me know what you think. Any feedback is good!

    Apr 2026 · leetchess.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    Chess Online Stockfish▲7

    Play against Stockfish engine, get best hints.

    2025 · play-chess-stockfish.vercel.app · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Chess Next Move Predictor▲8

    Ruin their weekend. One move at a time 😉.

    Apr 2026 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →