Blackbox Chess vs Aimchess: Which One Tells You What to Fix?
Updated and checked on November 9, 2026. Plans and prices change, so check each site before you pay.
If you have ever come off a losing streak thinking "I know I keep messing up the same way, I just cannot see what it is," you are the exact person these tools are built for. Both Blackbox Chess and Aimchess take a pile of your real games and try to show you where you are losing points.
They go about it very differently, and the difference matters depending on what you want. Here is a straight comparison, with the strengths and the weak spots on both sides.
Where they overlap
Both start from the same idea: your own games are the best textbook you have. Both pull your history from Chess.com or Lichess, so you are not typing anything in by hand. And both try to replace "just study more" with something aimed at your specific weaknesses.
If you have only used the built-in game review on Chess.com or Lichess, which looks at one game at a time, either of these is a different kind of tool, because they look across many games and find the trend.
What Aimchess does
Aimchess connects to your Chess.com or Lichess account, pulls in your recent games, and grades you across six broad areas: opening play, tactics, converting winning positions, defending worse ones, endgames, and time management. It compares your numbers to other players at your rating and gives you training aimed at your weaker areas.
- Free: one 40-game report a month, a weekly study plan, and one daily training session plus a warm-up.
- Premium: $7.99 a month, or $57.99 a year. Unlimited reports covering up to your last 1,000 games, deeper analysis, unlimited daily training, a statistics page, and sharing with a coach.
If you like a daily habit (open the app, warm up, work through a weekly plan), that structure is where Aimchess is good. The six-area scorecard is a quick way to see that, for example, your endgames are what is dragging you down.
What Blackbox Chess does
Blackbox Chess takes a narrower angle. Instead of six wide areas, it runs the Stockfish engine across your recent games and looks for specific, repeating mistake types: named habits like "you leave your back rank weak" (your king stuck on the bottom row with no escape square) rather than "your tactics score is in the 40th percentile." It ranks those types by how often they happen and how much they cost, so the first thing you see is the mistake to work on first.
- Free: your last 10 games and your number one mistake type, named and explained, in about a minute. No account and no card.
- $10 one-off report: 100 games, every mistake type ranked, three of your own games where it happened with the moves shown, and a short fix course with drills from your own positions. Full refund within 7 days if it is not useful.
- $12 a month or $99 a year: every new game you play is analyzed each week, your mistakes become a training library that brings positions back on a schedule until you get them right, an endgame trainer, and one personalized opening video a week. You also see how often your number one mistake happens now compared with when you started.
Something only Blackbox Chess does
Blackbox Chess can make you a personalized opening video, from $5 on any report. It shows where you leave the known opening moves in your own games and talks you through the better move. Aimchess has no video product.
Who owns Aimchess
Aimchess is not independent anymore. Magnus Carlsen's Play Magnus Group bought it, and Chess.com bought Play Magnus Group in a deal that closed at the end of 2022. Some players have reported long stretches where the Aimchess site or app was down, in threads on the Chess.com forums. It still works for many people, but it is worth knowing before you pay for a year.
So which one should you pick?
Pick Aimchess if you want a daily training app, a broad six-area scorecard, and comparisons against players at your level.
Pick Blackbox Chess if you want a blunt, specific diagnosis of the exact mistakes repeating in your games, ranked so you know what to work on first, with training built from your own positions instead of a general library.
They are not really competing for the same job. Aimchess is a daily practice tool. Blackbox Chess starts with a diagnosis, and the subscription keeps training you on it. Some players happily use both.
Want to see yours? Find your number one recurring mistake now, free, across 10 of your games, with no account needed. Analyze your games free.