Which are better for the endgame: knights or bishops?

Hello. I was wondering which piece is better in the endgame, knights or bishops? I have a friend who says bishops are better than knights but I don`t know about that. They have the same point value and th ey both seem to serve different roles but have the same strength. I was wondering which one is better for getting checkmate with the queen included. Also, which piece is better for defending attacks in the endgame?]

The bishop is considered stronger than the knight in the endgame. If you have King, Bishop and Pawns vs King, Knight and Pawns then the bishop is preferable because it can influence more of the board, protecting your own pawn on one side and stopping the enemy pawn from advancing on the other simultaneously, for example. Both pieces when used together with a queen can create powerful threats. For defending an endgame say a pawn down I would again prefer the bishop generally. 

Thank you Strangemover for the tips

The bishop, as it can defend and travel faster around the board than the knight.

Generally, bishops are preferred if there are pawns on both sides of the board. The knight is very slow, but can control both colors. The bishop is fixed on one color.

Depends on the position, but as a general principle the bishop is stronger. I prefer knights over bishops but that’s my opinion!

On a related note, according to millions of chess games, the bishop has an average of a 0.15 point advantage over the knight.

I think an average of millions of game is a good indicator.

Something I realized in a game recently.  If you are using a knight to protect a pawn (or piece), attacking the knight and forcing it to move means it no longer protects the pawn.  A bishop on the other hand, can move to a different square on the same diagonal, avoiding the attack yet still protecting the pawn.  

Thank you everyone for the suggestions

I don't have own experiences, but maybe this "Knigh against Bishop" book willl help. 

"In this book we will study the main differences between a knight and a bishop to understand what makes a knight strong and when the bishop is the better minor piece.
First of all, the main difference between a knight and a bishop is their scope. A knight is a short range piece, therefore it needs manoeuvring (what we call tempo in chess) to reach a desired square. Instead, the bishop can easily control squares on 2 sides of the board at the same time, which makes it a good piece to attack and defend at the same time In this sense a bishop has an edge over the knight.
From a controlling point of view, the knight has an advantage over the bishop. It can control both the white and dark squares, whereas the bishop is always doomed to one colour only.
This is very important whenever pawns are blocked, as they can become an easy target for the knight."
The value given to a bishop is normally a bit higher than the knight. If a knight is worth 3 points (1 being the value of a pawn) the value of a bishop would be between 3 and 3.25.

Hrm. Where have I heard this before?!

Have you seen a forum with the same question? Our did you make a forum with the same question?

This is the most common chess question!

I would say the bishop is generally more powerful in the endgame simply because there are less pawns. In the very beginning of the game, and in closed middle games, the knight is a bit stronger because it can hop over pawns and eventually hit every square.  The knight can actually support more pieces because it has no 'shadow'—i.e., the squares behind the first piece obscuring the bishop's diagonal. The relative value of each piece of of course situtational, yet the bishop is certainly better when there are just a few passed pawns on each side. When the few pawns remaining are locked, however, the answer may lie in the color of the bishop's squares. 

With a lot of stuff in the way, knights can still get around.  They can also post up, like with pawn supports to make enemy rooks curse the ground they walk on.  And knights can reach right into tight-cranny, sore-spots.  No doubt, a knight can be your best friend when you really need a friend.

For open-space endings, a pair of bishops can shred you like a pair of scissors.
(damn, they can be annoying)  Remember, though, bishops cannot protect one another.

But unleash the long reaching range of bishops, and no one is safe anywhere on the board. Like pincers… their damage potential is unfathomable:  skewers that show no mercy whatsoever.  (And they have no faces… they're just all "business".)  Even rooks fear their uncanny reach, especially when they're side-by-side, and most unfriendly-like.

Get good with all of it.

There is nothing like the feeling of getting your pieces into their ideal places, when suddenly their powers are unleashed to their fullest.  That's a really good feeling in a hard, tough-fought game!

In general the Bishop is considered sttonger than the Knight in open positions and the Knights are often better in closed positions.

Here's a game where my opponent's Bishop was virtually useless and my Knight began picking off enemy Pawns. The B vs N endgame begins after move 35:

Depends on the distance between pawns and what color of pawns on the board. ( e.g , "a" and "h" pawns). 

Programmers have " hard coded evaluation value" in engines, but my guess is that bishop is better when distance between pawns are more than "5" coloums.

A kt can be as useless as a pawn just to control a passed pawn. Or more powerful than bishops when bishop player has bad color bishop.

Regarding your second question, which piece best checkmates with the queen, the knight is definitely the right piece. It covers a lot of squares the queen doesn't. It's more difficult to checkmate with a bishop and a queen

There is no answer to this question- until you start planting some pawns on the board.

Philidor has said "pawns are the soul of chess" and this is still 100% true, some 260 years after.

As players have pointed out time and time again, bishops are generally easier to deal with.

As IM @pfren has pointed out, it all depends on the pawns, the pieces, and the position.

If you're going to enter the endgame with a knight then make sure it's a knight's game, not a bishop's. And of course vice versa for a bishop endgame. Knights are at most misunderstood, or at least undervalued under many circumstances. This of course is of a reasonable reason. Reasonable, anyway. Try telling somebody that they should trade their queen for two rooks, or that they should bring their king out into the battle in the midgame and chances are they'll reject that idea. But of course this is perfectly fine and winning. The culprit is in the way we play the game. Before Bobby Fischer became world champion if you went to Europe and told them you don't have to strangle your opponents to death to win you might not have left intact.

If you depend most on opinions to sculpt your game then that's what you'll get. If you ask me which is better - rice or pizza? I'll tell you that is unfair and the word pizza implies a good serving of toppings not to mention the cheese 😊.