MyChessPlan vs Aimchess: Free Archetype Report vs Six-Aspect Score (2026 Comparison)

Aimchess and MyChessPlan both promise to find your chess weaknesses by analyzing your games. They share roughly 70% of the use case (intermediate improver wants automated diagnosis) but they diverge meaningfully on the other 30%. This is an honest head-to-head — written by the team behind MyChessPlan, with the limitations and advantages of both spelled out plainly. If you want a broader 3-way comparison including chess.com Game Review, we have that here.

What each tool actually does

Aimchess (owned by Play Magnus, acquired by chess.com in 2022) gives you a “six core aspects” diagnostic — Tactics, Endgames, Time Management, Openings, Calculation, and Resourcefulness — each scored on a 0-100 scale based on your last 40-2000 games. It plugs into your chess.com or Lichess account, runs a Stockfish analysis pass, and produces dashboards plus daily training drills calibrated to your weak aspects.

MyChessPlan takes your last 100 chess.com games, runs Stockfish-based analysis with archetype classification on top, and gives you one of eight named weakness archetypes (Tilter, Blunderer, Bullet Addict, Lost Opener, Failed Converter, Impatient Attacker, Passive Solid, or Balanced) with a 7-day or 30-day plan calibrated to that archetype.

The core difference: Aimchess gives you six numerical scores, MyChessPlan gives you one named pattern. Both are diagnostics. They use the diagnosis differently.

Who each tool is built for

Aimchess’s product design assumes a daily-engaged improver who treats chess as a routine — open the app, see the dashboard, do the daily drill, track progress over weeks. The tool is at its best when used 4-6 times a week. Think of it as Duolingo for chess weakness training: streaks matter, daily check-ins matter, the dashboard rewards habitual use.

MyChessPlan’s product design assumes a quarterly-engaged improver who runs a diagnostic, takes a 30-day plan, executes it offline (chess.com games + drills + the printable PDF), and runs another diagnostic at the end. Think of it as a yearly physical: comprehensive snapshot, prescriptive output, you go off and do the work, come back for the next checkup. The tool isn’t designed for daily logins — it’s designed for monthly or quarterly diagnostic cycles.

Players who don’t think about which workflow fits them tend to be disappointed by whichever tool they pick. The fix is matching the tool to the rhythm: daily-app rhythm picks Aimchess, quarterly-diagnostic rhythm picks MyChessPlan.

Side-by-side feature comparison

Pricing model:

• Aimchess: free tier (40 games analyzed, limited drills), Pro at $7.99/month or $59.88/year billed annually. Free trial available.
• MyChessPlan: free archetype report on 100 games, no credit card. Optional $14.99 one-time PDF for a 30-day plan with daily drills, repertoire suggestions, and Day-30 re-test. No subscription.

What you get free:

• Aimchess free tier: dashboard with the six scores, limited drill access, sample of premium content. Cap on number of games analyzed.
• MyChessPlan free: full archetype identification on 100 games + 7-day starter plan + benchmark vs peer band. No drill cap.

Diagnosis approach:

• Aimchess: six independent dimensions, each with a numeric score. Better for “I want a granular dashboard.”
• MyChessPlan: one named pattern that integrates across dimensions. Better for “tell me the one thing to fix.”

Game volume:

• Aimchess: variable — can analyze hundreds or thousands of games on Pro.
• MyChessPlan: fixed at last 100. Trade-off: less data but faster (60 seconds vs Aimchess’s 5-15 minute initial sync) and tighter pattern detection.

Daily training:

• Aimchess: daily drills generated from your weak aspects, accessible in-app. Genuinely good if you’ll log in daily.
• MyChessPlan: drill list bundled in the 7-day or 30-day plan, format is paper/PDF rather than in-app. Better if you prefer a checklist over an app.

Integration:

• Aimchess: deep chess.com integration (browser extension, daily insights). Now owned by chess.com so the integration is the deepest in the market.
• MyChessPlan: chess.com username import, no extension required, no chess.com login needed.

Where Aimchess is genuinely better

Three places, plainly:

1. Longer history. Aimchess can pull thousands of games. If you want a 6-month trend on time management, Aimchess’s dashboard is built for it. MyChessPlan’s 100-game window is a snapshot, not a longitudinal view.
2. Granular dimensions. If you already know roughly what’s wrong and want to track six separate scores over time, the six-aspect dashboard is the right tool. MyChessPlan deliberately collapses to one pattern, which is the opposite design choice.
3. Daily-app workflow. Aimchess’s daily insights and drill flow is a habit-forming product. If you’d actually log in every day, the daily nudge is worth the $7.99/month for the right user.

If you’re a player who wants dashboards, longitudinal tracking, and a daily-use app, Aimchess is the better fit. We’d send you there.

Where MyChessPlan is genuinely better

Also three places, also plainly:

1. One named pattern beats six scores for action. Telling someone “your Calculation is 62 and your Resourcefulness is 71” is information; telling them “you’re an Impatient Attacker” is a directive. The named-archetype framing tends to produce more behavior change because it’s specific enough to act on.
2. No subscription tax. Free report with no card, $14.99 one-time for the 30-day plan. Aimchess Pro is $59.88/year billed annually. For an improver who runs the diagnostic quarterly rather than daily, the no-subscription model is materially cheaper.
3. 60 seconds, no signup. The friction-to-first-result is meaningfully lower. Drop your chess.com username, get an archetype, no email required. Only the upgrade requires email.

If you’re a player who wants a fast, specific, named diagnosis without committing to a recurring product, MyChessPlan is the better fit.

Where MyChessPlan has gaps (we’ll be honest)

We don’t yet have:

• Longitudinal tracking. Run the report twice and you can compare manually, but there’s no built-in trend dashboard.
• In-app daily drills. The drills come bundled in the report PDF, not as a daily-tap app experience.
• Lichess support. We’re chess.com-only for now (Lichess support is on the roadmap).
• Coach mode for clubs. Aimchess has a club/team mode; we don’t.

If any of those four are non-negotiable, Aimchess is the right pick.

The honest decision tree

Pick Aimchess if: you’ll log in daily, want longitudinal trends, prefer dashboards to one-pattern diagnoses, are coaching a team, or already pay for chess.com Diamond and want the deepest integration.

Pick MyChessPlan if: you want a fast specific diagnosis without subscription, prefer “the one thing to fix” over six scores, are running the diagnostic quarterly rather than daily, or want a 30-day printable plan.

Use both: some improvers use MyChessPlan for the named-archetype diagnosis and Aimchess for daily drill execution. The two tools don’t conflict — Aimchess gives you scores, MyChessPlan gives you a name. Reading them together is genuinely useful.

A note on chess.com ownership

Chess.com acquired Aimchess in 2022 (via the Play Magnus Group acquisition) and Chessable in 2021. This isn’t a knock — chess.com runs both as semi-independent products and they remain genuinely good — but if you want a tool with no commercial relationship to chess.com, MyChessPlan is one of the few independent options. Decode Chess and Sensei Chess are also independent. Knightly and Chessigma are independent. Aimchess is not.

We mention this because it occasionally matters to players who want their improvement diagnosis from a source separate from the platform they play on. Most players don’t care, and that’s reasonable.

Related reading

If you want the broader 3-way comparison (Aimchess vs DecodeChess vs Chess.com Game Review), we wrote that piece here. If you want the head-to-head against chess.com’s built-in Game Review specifically, the Chess.com Game Review comparison covers it. And if you want to understand the archetype framework that drives the MyChessPlan diagnosis, the archetype pillar is where to start. The full set of named archetypes lives on the archetypes page.

FAQ

Is Aimchess worth it?

For a daily-engaged improver who wants longitudinal tracking and dashboards: yes, $7.99/month is reasonable. For a quarterly-engaged improver who just wants a diagnosis: probably not — the free MyChessPlan report covers that use case.

Can I use both Aimchess and MyChessPlan?

Yes, and many players do. They serve overlapping but distinct purposes — Aimchess for ongoing dashboards, MyChessPlan for archetype-named diagnosis and 30-day plans.

Does MyChessPlan support Lichess?

Not yet. Chess.com only at the moment. Lichess support is on the roadmap but no firm date.

Is MyChessPlan free or paid?

The archetype report on 100 games is free, no credit card. The 30-day premium PDF plan is a $14.99 one-time purchase, no subscription, no recurring charge.

Which is more accurate?

Both use Stockfish-based analysis, so the underlying engine evaluation is the same. The difference is interpretation: Aimchess scores six dimensions, MyChessPlan classifies one archetype. Neither is “more accurate” — they answer different questions.

Does Aimchess work for Lichess players?

Yes. Aimchess supports both chess.com and Lichess. MyChessPlan currently supports chess.com only. If you primarily play on Lichess, Aimchess is the more practical choice today.

How often should I run a MyChessPlan archetype report?

Every 4-8 weeks for active improvers. The report needs roughly 100 fresh games to be representative — running it more often than once a month tends to surface the same archetype with marginal differences. Quarterly is also reasonable for slower-cadence players.

What if my archetype changes between reports?

That’s usually a sign of real improvement — the dominant pattern got addressed, and a different pattern surfaced. Most adult improvers cycle through 2-4 archetypes on the way from 1100 to 1700, with each transition representing roughly 100-200 rating points of progress. Tracking the archetype changes is itself a useful improvement marker.

Why named archetypes work (the behavioral case)

The reason MyChessPlan deliberately uses named archetypes instead of numerical scores is grounded in behavioral research on improvement. Daniel Kahneman’s work on cognitive ease (in Thinking, Fast and Slow) suggests that named categories produce stronger commitment and behavior change than numerical metrics. Saying “I’m a Failed Converter” is psychologically distinct from saying “my Resourcefulness score is 64.” The name carries an action — the score doesn’t.

Coaching literature reinforces this. GM Jacob Aagaard, in Excelling at Chess Calculation (2004), notes that improvement-stuck players almost always have a named bottleneck their coach identified. The naming is part of the fix. Aimchess’s six-score model is the more analytical tool; MyChessPlan’s named-archetype model is the more behavioral one. Different tradeoffs, both legitimate.

The “would I personally use both?” answer

Honestly, yes — for different reasons at different times. We’d use Aimchess if we were running a club training program (the dashboard works for that) or if we wanted longitudinal trend tracking on a specific dimension. We’d use MyChessPlan (full disclosure: we built it) for the diagnostic that produces a name and a directive plan, and for the no-subscription pricing.

The clear case for Aimchess Pro: you’ll log in daily and want a habit-forming app. The clear case for MyChessPlan: you want one report a month with a clear “do this for the next 30 days” answer. Most adult improvers fit one of these two profiles cleanly. A few fit both, in which case using both tools sequentially is fine.