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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Maia, a human-like neural network chess engine

We're thrilled to announce that www.maiachess.com is now in open beta, meaning everyone can access it! Maia is the most human-like chess AI, and is an ongoing research project at the University of Toronto developing fun, useful, and novel human-AI collaboration in chess. Please give it a try and let us know what you think. We're still rapidly improving and iterating on it. * Play Maia-2: Play the (updated) most human-like chess engine, tailored to your skill level * Analyze your games: See how you (or the pros!) stack up with both Maia’s human-based predictions and classic Stockfish…

Maia is a chess engine built on neural networks that mimics human playing style rather than pursuing optimal moves. Launched in 2020, it was developed to understand how people actually play chess, making it useful for… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. Maia, a human-like neural network chess engine launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    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 →

  2. 2CA
  3. 3
    MAIA▲93

    Bring the power of AI to your browser

    2023 · chromeaiextn.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4IT

    I built 1e4.ai - a chess web app where you play against neural networks trained to mimic human Lichess players at specific Elo ranges. There's a separate model for each 100-point rating bucket from ~800 to 2200+, and the bots not only choose human-like moves but also burn clock time, play worse under time pressure, and blunder in human-like ways. Live demo: https://1e4.ai Code: https://github.com/thomasj02/1e4_ai A few things that might be interesting: - Trained on almost a full year of Lichess blitz games, around 1B total games - Architecture is an a small…

    May 2026 · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Automate your work by describing what you need.

    2025 · maia.is · its alternatives →

  6. 6
    Maia▲113

    Relationship AI for couples, advice, date ideas, and more

    2023 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Maia▲104

    Relationship AI for couples. advice, date ideas & more

    2023 · ourmaia.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
  9. 9

    Transform Your Chess Skills with AI-Powered Training

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

  10. 10

    Creator here. I built Agent Arena to answer a question that kept bugging me: when AI agents browse the web autonomously, how easily can they be manipulated by hidden instructions? How it works: 1. Send your AI agent to ref.jock.pl/modern-web (looks like a harmless web dev cheat sheet) 2. Ask it to summarize the page 3. Paste its response into the scorecard at wiz.jock.pl/experiments/agent-arena/ The page is loaded with 10 hidden prompt injection attacks -- HTML comments, white-on-white text, zero-width Unicode, data attributes, etc. Most agents fall for at least a few.…

    Jun 2026 · arena42.ai · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    A 60-second game about LLM permission fatigue. Claude Code needs your approval — but are you really reading the commands?

    May 2026 · llmgame.scalex.dev · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    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 →

  13. 13

    A neuroevolution game experiment. Contribute to victorqribeiro/aimAndShoot development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14AS

    2018 · deepmind.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    A ranked ladder for small neural networks that play strategy games. Train a model, write an adapter, upload two files, and get measured into a weight class from 8 KiB up.

    Sep 2026 · tinybrains.dev · its alternatives →

  16. 16
    Fabraix▲196

    We built Adversarial Cost to Exploit (ACE), a benchmark that measures the token expenditure an autonomous adversary must invest to breach an LLM agent. Instead of binary pass/fail, ACE quantifies adversarial effort in dollars, enabling game-theoretic analysis of when an attack is economically rational. We tested six budget-tier models (Gemini Flash-Lite, DeepSeek v3.2, Mistral Small 4, Grok 4.1 Fast, GPT-5.4 Nano, Claude Haiku 4.5) with identical agent configs and an autonomous red-teaming attacker. Haiku 4.5 was an order of magnitude harder to break than every other model; $10.21 mean…

    May 2026 · fabraix.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17
  18. 18
    Aimchess▲129

    Learn chess your way with AI tools and data driven approach.

    2020 · aimchess.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Play BangBang against a Neural Network. Contribute to victorqribeiro/bangBang development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20CG

    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 →

  21. 21

    AI relationship app that keeps couples together.

    2024 · ourmaia.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22
  23. 23
    Olivia▲98

    Your new best friend built with an artificial neural network

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24CE

    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 →

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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 →