NATIVE MAC · LOCAL-FIRST · OPEN PGN

Chess analysis
built for Mac.

The ChessBase alternative Mac users have been waiting for.
Powered by TWIC — the world's largest free chess game database,
updated every week with thousands of real OTB tournament games.
No proprietary .cbv. No lock-in. Just open PGN.

🎉 7-day free trial · from $29/year No auto-renewal, no card on file. Your price is locked at what you paid.
Download · Apple SiliconDownload · Intel

Apple Silicon (M1–M4) — macOS 13 or later
Intel (2013 and later) — macOS 11 or later: covers every Intel Mac that can run Big Sur

MOST POPULAR

macBase Pro

from $29 / year
  • ✅ 7-day free trial — no card required
  • ✅ Full TWIC archive, 1,600+ issues
  • ✅ Stockfish analysis and opening insights
  • ✅ Lichess blindspot report — your win rate by opening
  • ✅ Open PGN — your data, any tool
  • ◷ Command line for AI agents (Q4 2026, included)
  • ✅ Apple notarized, 1-click install
  • ✅ Every update included while your licence is active
Download · Apple Silicon Download · Intel

Early supporter pricing: first 50 at $29, next 100 at $49, next 150 at $69, then $89. Annual licence, 7-day trial included. Version upgrades are never charged separately. How the pricing ladder works →

01

Command Center

Your chess mission control.

Import games from TWIC — the world's largest free chess game archive — with a single click. New issues appear weekly with thousands of real FIDE-rated OTB games. Track your database size, monitor imports, and stay current with the latest tournaments.

  • One-click TWIC import — new issues every week
  • Real OTB tournament games, not online blitz
  • Database grows as you import — unlimited, stored locally
  • All data lives on your Mac — no cloud, no account
macbase Dashboard — TWIC issues and major events
macbase Dashboard — database health and manual import
02

Intelligence Database

Filter. Search. Study any game.

Browse your entire game collection. Filter by player name, ELO range, ECO code, event, or TWIC issue. Toggle "Annotated" to find games with your comments, or "My Study" to see games you've analyzed. Click any row to open it in the analysis board.

  • Filter by player, rating, opening (ECO), event
  • Opening family filters — Sicilian, Ruy Lopez, Queen's Gambit, etc.
  • Standard open PGN format — no proprietary database lock-in
  • Unlimited games — your database grows as you import
macbase Database — MY STUDY toggle and analyzed games list
macbase Database — filters: player, ELO, ECO, event
macbase Database — ECO opening code search with full names
03

Deep Analysis Board

Annotate like a grandmaster.

Full Stockfish engine analysis with multi-PV top 3 lines and evaluation bar. Draw green arrows, pink arrows, and yellow circles on the board. Add text notes to any position — they're embedded in standard PGN so you can export your annotated game anytime.

  • Stockfish engine — top 3 lines with centipawn evaluation
  • Draw arrows and highlight squares (right-click / shift+click)
  • Inline text annotations
  • Download annotated PGN — your analysis is never locked in
  • Save to repertoire folders or clip as flashcard
macbase Analysis — drawing arrows and yellow squares
macbase Analysis — Stockfish engine evaluation and top lines
macbase Analysis — inline text annotations and PGN export
04

Repertoire & Flashcards

Build your opening prep system.

Organize analyzed games into custom folders. Found a critical position? Clip it as a flashcard — the position is saved with your arrows, annotations, and tags. Review your flashcard collection later to drill key positions. Export entire folders as PGN to share or back up.

  • Custom folders — organize by opening, opponent, theme
  • Flashcard clips — save positions with arrows and notes
  • Mini chessboard previews for each saved position
  • Import/export folders as PGN — always portable
macbase Repertoire — flashcard clips and positions
macbase Repertoire — folders and organization
05

OTB Tournament Prep

Know what's trending at your rating.

Lichess and Chess.com keep OTB master games online, but neither gives you a local, searchable file of real FIDE OTB tournaments with win rates by rating band. macBase does. See which openings actually score at your ELO bracket. Track popularity trends across recent TWIC issues.

Bridge the online-OTB gap: You're 2000 on Lichess but have no idea what FIDE ELO that maps to? Compare your games to 1700, 1800, 1900 FIDE-rated games — see what openings they play and how your prep stacks up before you sit down at the board.

  • Win rates by ELO — filter 1700-2000, 2000-2200, 2200-2500, 2500+
  • Best openings as White (1.e4 / 1.d4) and as Black
  • Popularity trends — which openings are rising or falling
  • Data from real FIDE-rated OTB games, not online ratings
macbase Insights — opening win rates by ELO
macbase Insights — opening popularity trends
06

AI Native PLANNED · Q4 2026

Your database, every AI agent.

Shipping before the end of 2026: MacBase will install a command line tool. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Antigravity — if it can run a shell command, it will query the full TWIC archive — seven million games, imported as you go — and drive your local Stockfish. No plugin, no protocol, nothing to adapt per editor.

Buy a licence now and it is included when it ships. Early licences lock in every update released during the year.

  • macBase search — by player, opening, ECO
  • macBase analyze — Stockfish on any FEN
  • macBase export — Obsidian-ready notes
  • Every command speaks --json

One menu item installs it and copies the instructions to your clipboard. Paste once into an agent; it knows what to do.

PREVIEW
you: Using macBase, find three games where Carlsen played the Sicilian as Black.
RAN 1 COMMAND
$ macBase search --player Carlsen \
    --opening Sicilian --limit 3 --json
◆ Three games found. In all three he trades the centre for long-term dark-square pressure.
WHAT IT WILL LOOK LIKE

A menu item — Connect AI Agent… — will copy this to your clipboard. Paste it into any agent once. Planned for Q4 2026, included in every licence. 

This machine has `macBase`, a command line tool over a local chess database.

  macBase search --player <name> --opening <opening> --limit <N> [--json]
  macBase analyze --fen "<FEN>" --depth <10-25> [--json]
  macBase export --game <ID> --format md [--json]
  macBase folders [--json]

Use --json for structured output. Nothing leaves this machine.
WHY TWIC?

Free database. Updated weekly.
Included in your licence.

ChessBase sells you the program for €249.90+, then charges €229.90 every year for the current Mega Database (11.7 million games) — or €49.90/yr for online-only access. Its database lives in a proprietary .cbv format. macBase uses The Week in Chess (TWIC) — the world's most comprehensive free chess game collection. Every week, thousands of real FIDE-rated OTB tournament games are added in standard PGN format. Your database is unlimited — it grows as you import, and everything is stored locally on your Mac.

  • 📦 Unlimited & growing — import as many issues as you want, stored on your Mac
  • 🏆 Real OTB games — from FIDE tournaments worldwide, not online blitz
  • 📄 Standard PGN format — no vendor lock-in, no proprietary formats
  • 🆓 No data fees — TWIC is free to import; we never charge per database or per download
  • ⚡ One-click import — download any TWIC issue directly in macBase

TWIC has provided free chess games to the community since 1994. If macBase helps your chess, consider supporting them:

♟️ Support TWIC
COMPARISON

macBase vs the rest

Feature macBase ChessBase Lichess
Price $29–$89 / year
locked at the price you paid		 €249.90+ one-time
Starter → Premium package		 Free
Runs on Mac ✅ Native ❌ Windows only ✅ Browser
Database format ✅ Open PGN ❌ Proprietary .cbv N/A
Database updates ✅ Free (TWIC weekly) €229.90/yr
new Mega Database		 ⚠️ Online only
Database size ✅ Unlimited (local) ✅ Large (paid) ⚠️ Cloud only
OTB FIDE games ✅ Full TWIC archive ✅ ❌ Online games only
Local-first ✅ SQLite on disk ✅ ❌ Cloud
Stockfish engine ✅ Built-in ✅ Add-on ✅ Cloud
Draw arrows & circles ✅ Green, pink, yellow ✅ ✅
Text annotations in PGN ✅ Inline comments ✅ ⚠️ Limited
Export annotated PGN ✅ ✅ ⚠️ Limited
Flashcard positions ✅ Clip & review ❌ ❌
Win rates by FIDE ELO ✅ OTB data ✅ ⚠️ Online ELO only
Export to Markdown ◷ planned · Q4 2026 ❌ ❌
AI agent access ◷ CLI + JSON
planned · Q4 2026		 ❌ ❌
Privacy ✅ Local Database ✅ Local Database ❌ Cloud
OPEN BY DEFAULT

A closed format is a subscription
you cannot cancel.

ChessBase stores your work in .cbv — a proprietary format that needs ChessBase, or a converter, to open. Your analysis, your repertoire, your twenty years of notes all live inside one company's file type. That is the real lock-in, and no price change will ever be worse than it.

PGN — AVAILABLE NOW

The chess world's plain text

Every game imports and exports as standard PGN. Open it in Lichess, Scid, ChessBase, a text editor, or a script you wrote yourself. Nothing to decode.

SQLITE — AVAILABLE NOW

A database you can query

The library is one SQLite file. Any SQL client, any notebook, any script can read it — including the AI agents we are wiring up in 2026.

MARKDOWN — PLANNED Q4 2026

Notes your tools can read

Export a game — arrows, comments, PGN — as an Obsidian-ready Markdown note. Frontmatter, wiki-links, and a machine-readable arrow table. Included in every licence when it ships.

Your work outlives the app. If you cancel, the PGN, the SQLite file and the Markdown notes stay exactly where they are.

THE REAL COST

What staying on Windows
actually costs.

ChessBase is a Windows program. On a Mac that means a virtual machine before you can open a single game — and the database you pay for every year is either online-only or a file you re-buy each edition.

CHESSBASE ON A MAC MACBASE
To start Windows licence + Parallels + €249.90 package Drag it into Applications
Every year after €229.90 for the new Mega database
or €49.90/yr for online-only access		 $29–$89, and TWIC updates are free
Where the data lives Cloud account, or a proprietary .cbv file SQLite + open PGN, on your own disk
Offline Online features need the account Works with the network off
NO WINDOWS

Native Apple Silicon. No VM, no Parallels subscription, no Windows licence, no reboot to study a game.

NO €250 DOOR FEE

Start at $29. There is no package to buy before the software works, and no upgrade price when a new major version ships.

YOUR DISK

Everything is a SQLite file and PGN on your Mac. Open it with any tool, back it up, keep it after the licence ends.

PRICING

One price that never changes
after you buy.

An annual licence. The price steps up as more supporters join, so the people who take the earliest risk pay the least.

SUPPORTERS PRICE / YEAR WHO
1 – 50 $29 Super early birds
51 – 150 $49 Early adopters
151 – 300 $69 Growth phase
301+ $89 Standard price

Your licence stays at the price you paid. Buy at $29 and you renew at $29 — the ladder only affects people who buy later.

Every update released during your licence is included — there is no “version 2.0, pay again”. The annual fee pays for weekly database integration, new analysis tools, engine and macOS maintenance, and one person answering the email. Read the full explanation →

Ready to analyze?

Download macBase and start studying real OTB chess games on your Mac.
7 days free, then from $29/year — the price steps up as supporters join.
Open PGN, plain files, nothing locked away.

Download · Apple Silicon Download · Intel