A Chessable alternative built on the books you own
Chessable teaches through its own courses, more than a thousand by more than four hundred authors, with its MoveTrainer quizzing you at spaced intervals. GreyChess brings the same habit of spaced review to what you already have: the chess books on your shelf, your own games, and the openings you play.
Your own books become courses
Open a PDF or ePub chess book you own, and a chapter becomes positions to solve, answered by the book’s own moves. They join your flashcards ten a day, each coming back just before you would forget it.
A repertoire you can see and test
Your openings, kept by position, so a transposition is still in them.
- Built from your games: the moves you play most become your repertoire in one click, and you change it by hand.
- From a book or a file: add a book’s line from beside its diagram, or import a PGN, such as a study’s chapters, and export yours as PGN at any time.
- What it does not cover: the replies your opponents really played that it has no move for, the most common first.
- Practised with Pro: every position of it, each after the moves that reach it. Each game you review says where it left your repertoire.
When a move goes wrong
A wrong answer is where you learn most, so it is not left at a red cross.
- Why not my move? Ask, and the engine and the rules say what it walks into.
- A position from one of your games shows the moves that led to it first.
- Play it out: any position against the bot at your level, or an ending against Lichess’s tablebase.
- Your memory, counted: the cards you know, the hard ones to go over, and a rest day a week that keeps your streak.
Where Chessable may suit you better
Fair is fair. Chessable does some things GreyChess does not.
- A library of courses: more than a thousand, by authors from club coaches to former world champions, with video and text explanations. GreyChess has no course store: it works from the books you own.
- Apps from the stores: Chessable has iPhone and Android apps that work offline. GreyChess installs from the browser, and its puzzles work offline once installed.
- A classroom with video: Chessable’s classroom is a video call with a shared board, for up to 1,000 students. GreyChess’s live classes put the coach’s board beside every student’s own board, without a video call.
A note on sources
What this page says about Chessable comes from its own pages, as they read in September 2026, and may have changed since.
Questions
Can I bring a repertoire from another app?
Yes, as a PGN file. Import a PGN on the repertoire page adds its main lines and variations to the colour shown, and a study exported from Lichess works too.
Does GreyChess use spaced repetition?
Yes. Flashcards are scheduled with FSRS, a modern spaced-repetition method, so each comes back just before you would forget it.
Is GreyChess free?
You can start free, with daily limits. Pro raises them and adds a few things, such as practising your repertoire. The pricing page has the numbers.
More of what GreyChess does
Try it on the book you are reading
Start free. Sign in with Google, Lichess or your email.
Build your repertoire