Game Review Tools for Improvers: Aimchess, Chess.com Insights, Lichess

For many improvers the right first tool is free: Lichess computer analysis, or your Chess.com account's single daily game review. Paid tools earn their price only if you want your mistakes turned into a practice plan. This page is based on published documentation, pricing and reports, and one price in it is in conflict: Aimchess Premium is $7.99 a month on its own page and $9.99 in the US App Store, both seen on 8 November 2026.

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Test depth: Public information only. Nobody at ChessCourseFinder has used these tools or paid plans. This page uses vendor pages and listings read on 8 November 2026. How we review explains the limits. This page is part of our skills guides.

Disclosure that matters here: the Chess.com link on this page may become an affiliate link (see the notice above), and Chess.com appears as developer on the Aimchess App Store listing (see below). Read the Chess.com and Aimchess comparisons with that in mind.

What a game review tool should do

Review tools do two different jobs. One flags where you went wrong in a game; the other turns your recurring mistakes into practice. Ones that only show an engine score do the first job. Aimchess and DecodeChess go further, according to their own pages. Mistake patterns that repeat (for example hanging pieces) lead to blunder prevention work; recurring tactical misses lead to trainers.

What each tool actually flags

The useful comparison is what you get back after a game, not the name of the plan. "Not confirmed" means the pages we could read did not state it, not that the feature is absent.

Sources: Lichess Accuracy page, Lichess Puzzle Themes, Chess.com membership comparison, Aimchess, DecodeChess pricing. On Lichess we read that Insights exists and shows, for example, accuracy by opening family and tactical awareness by game phase, but its page did not load for us in plain text, so we cannot describe it further.

How to read an accuracy score

Accuracy percentages are not grades, and two sites can give the same game different numbers. Lichess says so directly: its Accuracy page says "there is no universally accepted way to compute accuracy percentages", that different sites use different formulas, engines and depths, and that lopsided positions can give a high score even when the conversion was poor.

Its published formula shows why position matters. Lichess converts an evaluation in centipawns into a winning chance, then scores a move by how much that chance fell. Calculated from those formulas:

The same size of error is a game-changing blunder in one case and close to irrelevant in the other, which is the point Lichess makes about raw centipawns. Lichess uses these figures to label inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders, so its labels depend on the stakes. Chess.com's labels, as shown in search listings on 8 November 2026 (we could not open its support page), use an "Expected Points Model" and do not match the centipawn cutoffs quoted on third-party blogs. Compare your own scores over time on one site, if at all, and never against a friend on another.

A review routine that works with any tool

The tool matters less than the order you use it in. This is conventional coaching advice rather than a measured method, and these are named opinions:

1. Think first. Chess Gaja, which sells coaching, says not to turn the engine on right away: analyse by hand, note turning points, then verify. Blogger Nick Vasquez marks decisive moments himself, then looks at the evaluation before the lines.
2. Find the first big swing, the point where the evaluation changed for good, and ignore small inaccuracies at first.
3. Ask why, in words. Write the thought that produced the move ("I did not see the knight could go to g5").
4. Tag it, using a short fixed list such as hung piece, missed tactic, opening, endgame, clock.
5. Save one position to repeat later.

Chess Gaja says logging a game takes about 10 minutes and suggests doing 30 games over six weeks. On that figure, 30 games is about five hours of work, which is the real thing a paid report saves you. A report spares you the sorting; it does not give you the insight of having gone through the games yourself, and Aimchess's own FAQ frames its value as seeing games "in aggregate".

What to use, by level

These bands are our judgement, not measured thresholds.

• Under about 1200: a free review of your own losses, and write down what you thought before opening the engine. That is conventional coaching advice, not a tested method.
• About 1200 to 1800: free Lichess analysis is enough to find mistakes; a paid tool is optional.
• Above about 1800: a tool that groups your mistakes across many games becomes more useful, because patterns across 30 games can be harder to see by hand.

The options

Sources: Lichess FAQ and Patron page; Chess.com membership comparison and membership page; Aimchess; DecodeChess pricing; ChessMood pricing.

Aimchess: the price conflict

• Vendor page, read 8 November 2026: Premium "$7.99, billed monthly, cancel anytime"; Annual Premium $4.85 per month, "$57.99 annual billing". No currency code is named. We saw no refund or trial text.
• US App Store listing, seen 8 November 2026 (secondary): Premium $9.99 monthly and $71.99 annually. App Store prices commonly differ from a vendor's own page, but we have not confirmed why here.
• The free tier also differs by source. The vendor page lists one daily training session; the App Store listing says 15 lessons a day. Check inside your account.

Confirm the price in the place where you will pay. Free Standard gives one 40-game report a month; Premium analyses the last 1,000 online games per the vendor page, and its FAQ says the free reports are lower-depth. Calculated from the vendor page, annual billing costs $57.99 against $95.88 for twelve monthly payments, about 40% less.

Aimchess also makes a research claim. Its page says its personalised puzzles "increase your rating 31% faster than standard tactics puzzles", citing "a 12 week randomized field experiment conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia". We searched for the study on 8 November 2026 and did not find a published paper, sample size or method, so treat this as a seller's claim we could not check. Downsides: reports are only as useful as the number of games behind them, and the six skill scores are Aimchess's own measures.

Chess.com Game Review and Insights

Basic includes one full game review a day, unlimited review begins at Platinum, and Insights (stats on your games) is listed under Diamond (membership comparison). Official prices were not visible to us; the iOS listing shows in-app amounts without labelling monthly or annual, so we do not map them. The page's own table uses icons, so check your plan on the site. See our Chess.com Premium review and Aimchess vs Chess.com Insights.

Lichess analysis

Free, with no paid tier described (Patron page); the FAQ says its computer analysis is powered by Stockfish, and the Accuracy page explains how it scores moves. Lichess also lists puzzles generated from your own games ("Player games" on Puzzle Themes), which covers part of what paid tools sell. Chessify, which sells a rival cloud-analysis product, called it best for beginners and casual players in October 2025 and recommended its own service for deeper work. Downside: the engine tells you what was better, not why you missed it, so the "ask why" step above is yours to do.

DecodeChess and ChessMood Basic

DecodeChess lists Threats, Good Moves, Plans, Functionality and Concepts tabs, a 7-day money-back guarantee on Unlimited plans only, and credit packs ($15 for 60 credits, $25 for 120, both valid 12 months) (DecodeChess pricing). ChessMood's free Basic includes AI game analysis and a study plan (pricing).

What the seller's pages do not tell you

• Aimchess ownership. The App Store listing names Chess.com, LLC as developer, with copyright "Aimchess by PMG"; the Aimchess page we read did not discuss it. If you are comparing Aimchess with Chess.com Insights, remember that this means they may not be independent rivals. We did not confirm the corporate relationship from a primary source.
• What is in the free tier of each tool. Aimchess lists one daily session free, but which of its visualization or blindfold features are free is not stated.
• No refund or trial text on the Aimchess page that we could see.
• The Chess.com Diamond price, which sat behind a page we could not load.
• Whether any tool changes results. Aimchess cites an experiment we could not find; the other pages we read show no measured evidence.
• How a tool's accuracy maps to anything outside it. Of the pages we could read, only Lichess's publishes a formula, and it warns against reading the number like a test score.

Who should skip this

Skip a paid tool if you have not yet reviewed a single game by hand, if you play fewer than about 30 games a month (our judgement: a report may have too few games to show a pattern), or if you mainly need a puzzle trainer (trainers page).

The free resource that covers the same ground

Lichess analysis, plus a notebook of your last ten losses. If you play on Chess.com, the free daily review covers about 30 games a month, which is more than the review routine above needs. See our Lichess guide, the Chess.com Premium vs Lichess comparison, and how to choose a chess course. If you want to look at Chess.com's plans, Chess.com membership is the place; confirm prices there.

Full Aimchess details are on our Aimchess review.