Cheapest Chess Courses: Price Per Hour Compared

On listed full-video hours, the lowest figures we could calculate are about $3.13 an hour in dollars (ChessMood's WhiteMood Model Games, bought alone at $50) and about 3.74 euros an hour in euros (a single ChessBase FritzTrainer), but a low price per hour does not make a course cheap if you will not finish it, and the $3.13 course is model games for one repertoire, not a general curriculum. Among broader dollar-priced courses, Next Level Chess's Beginner Chess Mastery is lowest at about $7.19. The lowest cash outlay is a different question: free options first, then single courses from roughly $20 to $30. Chessable's base price is not a price for full video, so it is handled separately below.

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All prices are from seller pages read on 8 November 2026. Nobody at ChessCourseFinder has taken these courses, so this page compares price and listed length only, not quality. Confirm every price on the seller's page before paying. How we review explains the limits.

How the price per hour is worked out

Cost per hour is the price divided by the listed running time, calculated by us from the seller's own figures, and listed hours are not the time it takes to study them. Three rules keep it honest:

• Same currency only. Dollars are compared with dollars and euros with euros. We do not convert, because we have no sourced exchange rate.
• Full-video price over full-video hours. Chessable lists a base price that includes the training and only part of the video, plus a higher price with full video. We divide only the full-video price by the full-video hours, never the base price, and we say which price we used.
• Standalone or one-time price. For subscriptions we point to the pricing page instead.

A price per hour also rewards long courses, and says nothing about exercises, puzzles or repetition. For a calculator with your own numbers, use the price per hour calculator.

Dollar prices

Across the 25 Chessable courses in our catalogue with both a full-video price and hours, the figure runs from $7.41 to $23.13 an hour at list price. These numbers use list prices read on 8 November 2026; a different day may show a sale. Hours are shown to two decimals, but each rate is worked from the listed hours and minutes.

ChessMood's plan is a separate calculation

ChessMood's standalone prices are mostly high per hour, with WhiteMood Model Games the clear exception, and the same courses are inside the Essential plan at $948 a year. The page does not say whether Model Games assumes you already know the WhiteMood repertoire, so check that before treating $50 as a complete purchase. Our ChessMood pricing page shows the plan at $9.12, $6.08, $3.65 and $2.28 an hour for 2, 3, 5 and 8 hours a week. A 50-hour path of seven courses comes to about $18.96 an hour, as in the ChessMood review. So the cheapest ChessMood route depends on how many courses you will take, not on any one price.

What a Chessable base price does buy

Base prices run from $19.99 to $49.99 on the 28 courses in our catalogue, which looks cheap. The base includes the interactive training and some video, for example 1h 44m of 9h 16m in Giri's 1.e4 Part 1, so dividing it by full hours would flatter it. For puzzle-heavy courses the sensible unit is the puzzle: 1001 Chess Exercises For Club Players lists $24.99 for about 1,006 puzzles, about $0.025 each, and the puzzle count is approximate because it was derived from section counts. There is no video price and no hour figure, so it cannot be set against a video-hour price.

The same sum across other exercise-heavy courses shows how wide the range is. Chessable rows use base prices, as of 8 November 2026. ChessMood rows include all the video, so they are not like-for-like and are shown for scale.

Lichess puzzles cost nothing at all, so a per-puzzle price only matters if the paid set adds something you want, such as a fixed order, annotations or a level range.

Euro prices

ChessBase hours are as recorded in our catalogue from its shop pages, and we saw the Pähtz page state 13 hours in one place and "approximately 4-8 hours" in its delivery section, which looks like generic text: The flexible Panov, the lowest euro rate above, pairs 8 hours with the same line, and a 3h 14m Williams title carries it too. At 4 hours the Pähtz course would be 14.98 euros an hour and the Panov 7.48. Check the running time of any ChessBase title before relying on its rate. We left out series bundles whose hours we could not tie to the price. Modern Chess prices are for one part of a series, so check the whole set in the next section. Its terms say all sales are final once you have access, which makes a cheap-looking part more expensive if it turns out to be the wrong one. See Modern Chess in our review.

The cost of finishing the job

The price that matters is what the whole goal costs, and a series can make the first part look cheaper than the project is. These totals are calculated from listed prices on 8 November 2026.

Other costs sit outside these sums. Chessable said in January 2025 that tax would be added to US course purchases, ChessBase's 59.90 EUR Pähtz price is shown including EU VAT, and we could not tell whether Modern Chess prices include VAT. A Chessable PRO membership pays for itself through its 20% discount only at about $375 of course spending a year, as our PRO review works out.

The cheapest documented route by goal

Spend only when the free route has run out. Prices are as of 8 November 2026.

Sale prices and "from" prices

A discounted price tells you today's cost, not the course's worth. On 8 November 2026 we saw sale prices on Chessable for The Woodpecker Method ($29.99 base, $99.98 with video), Crawl, Walk, Checkmate! ($11.99 base, $29.98 with video) and Improve Your Chess Calculation ($20.99 base, $89.98 with video). At the video prices, that is about $4.17, $7.50 and $4.84 an hour against list-price figures of $8.34, $15.00 and $12.10. Sales change often, so the list-price table is the stable one. Chessable also says PRO members get an automatic discount of at least 20% on paid courses, and PRO's price is covered in the PRO review.

Other sellers show markdowns as well: a TheChessWorld listing seen in search results showed "Mastering the Caro-Kann Defense" at $17.99, down from $59.95, and the Remote Chess Academy page we read calls its course "already discounted by 50%". We could not open TheChessWorld pages and neither listing gives hours, so no per-hour figure is possible. See TheChessWorld, Remote Chess Academy and the TCW and RCA reviews for what is missing.

Where a stated level lets you compare by band

Only some courses name a level, and the figure is the seller's, not ours. Here is the same arithmetic cut by what the seller says.

What we could not price

• Chessly: no official price could be read.
• TheChessWorld and Remote Chess Academy: listings without hours.
• Udemy: its pages blocked automated reads, so we have no verified course prices.
• Chess King Learn: a 299 rouble price on a Russian-language page and a search-summary figure of $7.99 conflict by currency. Chess King's homepage, in its Russian display, also showed an all-courses package at 9,999 roubles, marked down to 8,499.15, and we do not convert roubles.
• Chess.com Courses: no price list read.

Who should skip buying the cheapest option

Skip a course that is cheap per hour if you will not finish it: a course you do not study costs its whole price. If you are unsure, a free tier costs nothing. Our guide to best chess courses for adults covers how long listed lengths take at different weekly hours.

The free resources that cover similar ground

Lichess Practice and Studies are free and cover checkmates, tactics and endgame basics, and Chessable's free community courses are listed in free Chessable courses. ChessMood's Basic plan opens the first section of each course. See also best chess courses, best chess subscriptions, money-back guarantees and how to choose a chess course. ChessMood links may become affiliate links.