Not sure if I want to make a judgement statement on one being better , they ' re just slightly different . With chinups your biceps are in a more efficient line of pull , meaning that they work your arms more and people can generally do more of them than pullups , which involve the arms less and emphasize the lats more . There ' s also a slight difference imo between the motion along the shoulder joint , with chinups being more toward shoulder extension like the opposite of a frontal raise and pullups being more towards downward rotation like the opposite of a lateral raise . Conventional wisdom is to try to work both into your routine if you can . Personally obviously this will be completely different for you depending on your preference and routine , but just for example I like to do either chinups or pullups at the end of every training session , alternating days for each . I know some people who just do a couple sets of each , or some who do one or the other on each of their pull days , it really depends .