Lichess give you a chess platform with no ads, no tracking, and no paywall.
What is Lichess
Lichess is a free, open source chess app and website for playing, studying, and analyzing chess. Works on phones, tablets, and desktop. No subscription. No premium tier. Everything is available to everyone from the first click.
You do not sign up for a trial. You do not hit a paywall after thirty puzzles. You just open the app and play. That is the whole model. Free forever, funded by donations from people who believe chess tools should not be locked behind monthly payments.
The platform handles everything. Real time games against strangers. Correspondence matches that last days. Bots at every skill level. Puzzles that train your pattern recognition. Analysis tools that show you exactly where you messed up. And every single one of those features is available to a brand new user the same as a grandmaster.
Lichess Main Features That Matter
Not a feature dump. Just the ones you will actually use.
Real time and correspondence chess. Want a three minute bullet game? Done. Want to make one move per day for two weeks? Also done.
Arena tournaments and Swiss tournaments. Jump into a scheduled event with hundreds of other players. Climb the leaderboard in real time.
Play against online bots at different difficulty levels. New to chess? Start with the easiest bot. Beat it consistently? Move up. The bots have names and personalities, but the real value is practicing without rating pressure.
Chess puzzles with multiple themes, available offline. Fork. Pin. Skewer. Back rank mate. Pick a theme and drill it until the pattern is automatic.
Puzzle Storm and Puzzle Racer for speed training. How many puzzles can you solve in three minutes? That is Puzzle Storm. Puzzle Racer is a head to head race. Both train your brain to see tactics faster.
Game analysis using Stockfish, local or server side. Stockfish is the strongest open source chess engine in the world. Lichess gives it to you for free. After every game, you can see which moves lost and which moves won.
Board editor to set up any position. Studying a tricky endgame? Set it up on the board. Analyzing a position from a book? Put the pieces exactly where they belong.
Studies for long term analysis and sharing. This is Lichess’s killer feature. Create a study, add chapters, write notes, share the link. Coaches use this. Streamers use this. Serious amateur players use this to build their opening repertoire over months.
Global opening explorer to see what works at each level. Type in a move and see how often it wins at 1200 rating versus 2000 rating. That data changes how you prepare.
PGN import and export. Bring games from other platforms into Lichess. Send your Lichess games to a coach. No lock in.
Light and dark themes, custom boards and pieces. Make it look how you want. Dark mode for night sessions. Wood boards for the classic feel. High contrast pieces if your eyes need help.
100 plus languages supported. Wherever you are, the interface speaks your language.
Lichess Design: Looks and Feels
Clean and minimal. The chessboard stays central. No flashing buttons or distracting animations. Readability and speed are the priorities. When you have five seconds left on your clock, you do not need a glowing banner selling you something. You need to see the board clearly and make a move.
Custom boards, dark mode, and landscape orientation give you flexibility. The layout is uncluttered once you learn where each tool lives. New users sometimes feel lost because there are so many options. But that is a good problem. Too many features beats too few.
Lichess User Reviews :
The honest take. Strongly positive overall. People praise free access, fast matchmaking, and the depth of learning tools. The ability to download and review games comes up again and again in user reviews. On Trustpilot, the sentiment is clear. This is one of the best chess platforms because of what it gives you for nothing.
Criticism focuses on cheating in online play and occasional interface confusion for new users. Cheating happens on every chess platform. Lichess has detection systems, but no system is perfect. The interface criticism is fair. There is a lot here. It takes time to find everything.
But the general sentiment is clear. Lichess is one of the best chess platforms because of what it gives you for nothing.
As of April 2026, the Lichess app holds a 4.3 star rating on the App Store from tens of thousands of reviews. The app size is roughly 129 MB depending on your device. Age range is listed as 4 and up, though chess is complex enough that most players start around 8 or older.
Looking for something similar? Try Chess Tempo. It focuses more on puzzles and less on live play, but the training tools are excellent.
So here is a question. How many “free” apps have you downloaded that asked for money within five minutes? Lichess never does. What does that tell you?
Lichess Tips That Actually Help
No filler. Just what works.
Use Puzzle Storm to sharpen tactical speed. Five minutes a day changes how you see the board. Set a timer. Solve as many as you can. Do this before playing rated games as a warmup.
Review your Lichess game analysis after every loss. Find one mistake and learn from it. Not ten mistakes. One. Fix that one thing next time. Then find another.
Try studies to organize opening ideas and endgame notes. One study per opening is enough. Put the main line in chapter one. Put your most common sideline in chapter two. Add comments explaining why certain moves work.
Use the opening explorer before games to learn common lines at your rating level. Type in your first move. See what opponents at your rating usually play against it. Prepare one response for the most popular defense.
Play correspondence games if you want more time to think. One move per day. No pressure. Open the app on your lunch break, look at the position, calculate for five minutes, make a move. That slow pace builds calculation habits that help in faster games too.
Customize the board and pieces for longer sessions. Reduce eye strain. Improve focus. Brown board with solid black pieces works for most people. Avoid busy patterns or neon colors. Your brain processes contrast faster than decoration.
Practice with bots before jumping into rated play if you are new. The bots on Lichess range from 800 to 2500 rating. Play ten games against a bot rated 200 points below your target. Learn the patterns. Then play a real person.
Those Lichess tips separate players who stay stuck from players who climb two hundred rating points in a month.
Platforms Like Lichess
Quick comparison. No long paragraphs.
Chess.com: online chess play, puzzles, analysis. Larger community. Some features behind a paywall. Better for social features. Worse for free access.
Chessify: chess study and engine assisted analysis. More specialized. Less social. Good for serious self learners who already have a coach.
Chess24: competitive chess platform and learning tools. Good for following professional events. The video library is strong. The playing experience is secondary.
Chess Tempo: tactical puzzles and game study. Focused on training, not playing. The puzzle quality is excellent. The interface is older.
DecodeChess: chess analysis and learning support. Explains engine suggestions in plain language. Good for beginners who find Stockfish evaluations confusing.
If you are searching for Lichess similar games, start with Chess Tempo. Same commitment to free access. Same focus on improvement over flash.
Lichess Community and Social Culture
Strong community layer through tournaments, forums, studies, game sharing, challenges, and player follow features. Correspondence games and public analysis tools let players learn from each other.
You can follow stronger players and watch their games. You can share a study link on Reddit and get feedback from titled players. You can join a tournament with 500 other people and see how you stack up.
Because the platform is open source and community supported, the culture leans toward shared improvement rather than pure competition. That makes it attractive for learners who want to study alongside others. The forums have threads where people post their worst losses and ask for help. The responses are usually kind and detailed.
One thing to know. There are no Lichess codes for free premium features. There is no premium tier. Everything is already free. Any website claiming to offer Lichess codes for coins or memberships is fake. The real Lichess game experience has no shortcuts because it has no paywalls.
Conclusion
Every other chess app wants your credit card. Lichess wants nothing.
What does that say about what they value?
FAQ
Where can I get the Lichess download for my phone?
Download Lichess from App Store
Is there an official Lichess website I can use on my computer?
Yes. The full platform works in any browser at lichess.org. [Insert official website link here]. You do not need to download anything on desktop. The website has every feature the app has, plus a few extras for power users.
I have a question about my account or a bug to report. Who do I contact?
Lichess is open source and run by a small team. For account issues, bug reports, or feature questions, visit: lichess.org/contact#help-root Include your username and a clear description of the problem. The team responds when they can. For urgent issues, check the forums first. Someone else may have already solved it.
Where can I find the Lichess wiki with detailed feature explanations?
The community wiki and FAQ pages cover most questions. Find them at: Lichess Wiki. The wiki explains how ratings work, how tournaments are structured, and how to use studies. It also has guides for Puzzle Storm, opening explorer, and board editor.
Is Lichess really free forever? No catch?
No catch. The platform runs on donations from players who believe in open source chess. Zero ads. Zero tracking. Zero premium features locked behind a paywall. Every puzzle, every analysis, every tournament is available to everyone from the first click. That includes correspondence games, bot matches, and the full Stockfish engine.