ChessRoller is available today for Mac and Windows. It's a desktop chess workbench: play a game and save it to your library, annotate it move by move, study the moments that mattered, and practice what you missed until it sticks.
Why we built it
The software serious players rely on hasn't kept pace with how people play and study chess today. If you're on a Mac, much of it isn't available at all. We wanted a workbench we'd actually reach for every day: fast, modern, built for both Mac and Windows, and designed around games that arrive from Lichess and Chess.com rather than from a database you buy once a year.
What's in the box
Bring your library with you. PGN, ChessBase (.cbh and .cbv), and SCID files import directly, with variations, comments, and colored arrows intact. Follow your own Lichess and Chess.com accounts, or your next opponent's, and new games sync into your database automatically. Export to PGN whenever you like.
Analyze with the engine you prefer. Add and configure your favorite UCI engines for analysis and play. Get a quick overview of a game when you open it, and run batch analysis when you want to go deeper.
Search what happened, not just who played. Stack rules for position, material, pawn structure, ordered move sequences, and tactical motifs like pins and skewers. Results come back immediately, with no index to build first.
Scout your next opponent. For any player in your database, see which openings they lean on, how they score with white and black, and who they've faced.
Turn review into practice. Review a game for mistakes and missed mates, generate an opening repertoire from your own games, and practice both with spaced repetition. Your blunders become your curriculum.
Yours to keep
ChessRoller is a one-time purchase. There is one edition with everything in it, no tiers, no add-ons, and no account required to use it. Your games and databases live on your own machine.
For the launch period it costs $69 instead of $129. The introductory price is applied automatically at checkout and ends December 31, 2026. One license covers macOS and Windows with two activations you can move between machines. Updates to version 27 are free.
There's a free 7-day trial with every feature included, and if you buy and change your mind, email us within 14 days of purchase for a full refund.
It runs on an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 and later) or Windows 11 on x64 or ARM. Intel Macs are not supported.
Just the start
This release is the product of several years of work, and it wouldn't exist without the team and the early testers who put it through its paces, reported what broke, and told us what they actually wanted from a chess app. Thank you.
It's also a starting point. We want to build the chess software people genuinely want to use, and the fastest way to get there is hearing from you. Tell us what you run into, what's missing, and what you'd change: hello@chessroller.com.