chess .com vs lichess

lichess is better free everything and inflated ratings

chess.com i keep losing like 3 out of 10 lichess about 4 out of 5

CR1nn THEN DONT PLAY YOUR FRIEND ON LICHESS THEN play against random people

yeah David is right guys. chess.com is rigged

Omg if you guys hate chess.com soooo much than you can just stop playing here 🤣

@381 I'm not sure what's going on there...lichess ratings are incredibly inflated...well chess.com too...but lichess is even more so...I guess it depends on your lichess rating...I've had a pretty smooth time beating 2300 rapid players on lichess as well as 2000 blitz which is crazy compared to my chess.com...so yeah I would say chess.com...i mean there are more cheaters but the rating system is a lot more realistic

We'll probably all drift back to HvC computer chess. At least it's 100% honest.

For me.... Well both

Lichess is better because free puzzles free studying and analyses my rapid is almost 2100 on lichess and 1839 on chess.com but i dont care about the rating that much its stupid internet points.

Yes, everything is free: insights, unlimited game reviews, puzzles.

The pool is about 1/2 the size of chess.com but skewed towards the higher end of the skill spectrum. For any fixed time control the n-th percentile player on Lichess is better than the n-th percentile player on chess.com. The effect is it's easier to get games at high ratings.

Having said that I don't agree with the Lichess stance on the Russian flag, chess.com got that right.

Not sure what you mean by "high ratings", as I don't trhink there's much wait on either site for anyone wanting a game at the most popular time controls.

I had thought it was the same, but re-reading https://lichess.org/@/lichess/blog/lichess-statement-on-the-war-in-ukraine/Yie1MhIA, I can see that it's actually:

Lichess will also not show any Russian or Belarusian flags or play their anthems in official broadcasts and media from official FIDE events.

So I guess they're still displaying it in user profiles. Interesting.

Just another, less neutral ChatGPT Comparison: Lichess vs Chess.com

• Design: Lichess has a minimalist design, while Chess.com offers a more polished and professional look.
• Business model: Although Lichess promotes itself as free, it relies heavily on donations to cover maintenance costs, which are reported at ~$1400 per day. While this helps keep the platform running, it may not be enough to fully sustain operations, especially when addressing complex issues like cheating. Chess.com’s for-profit model, supported by paid memberships, provides more financial stability.
• Player base: Chess.com has a larger, more mainstream player base, while Lichess caters to a smaller, dedicated community.
• Cheating prevention: Effective cheating prevention requires dedicated, paid staff. Chess.com employs a visible anti-cheating team and advanced algorithms, funded by its business model. In contrast, Lichess, with its reliance on donations, may not have the resources for a full-time team. Given that their $1400 daily costs cover all site operations, it’s unlikely enough to ensure a robust anti-cheating system with dedicated professionals.
• Features: Lichess offers free lessons and reviews, though some users find Chess.com’s paid features more comprehensive. While Lichess provides all of its tools for free, supporting the site through donations is essential for long-term sustainability. So it's not exactly "free."

"The pool is about 1/2 the size of chess.com"

Lichess classical pool is well under 20,000

So maybe 1000th the size

I like chess.com better just feels more smooth

Lichess, everything is free

Free chess.com is pretty much useless for any remotely serious study. Limited engine strength and opening database depth is just yuck. With subscription it's quite good, and has a lot of videos and lectures and really cool stuff. Youknow, content and pretty good content at that. Still I prefer lichess analysis tools, but that might be a bit subjective. On lichess the opening explorer is way better than on chess.com. You can customize the rating range and timecontrols of games you want to have included, or look at the master games. And it gives you example games from each position both from tournaments and high-rated online games.

Lichess has the user made studies that obviously vary in quality a lot, but people make a ton of them. And you can learn a lot from them, if you can be bothered to sift through the ones that are just regurgitating lines from some gothamchess video.

Chess.com spams annoying notifications. I disable them but they have turned back on on their own. I really don't like the gamification elements and extraneous animations and confetti popping on wins and uh... I prefer the minimalism of lichess. Chess.com trying so hard to be duolingo while I'm over here uninstalling duolingo because I hate the leagues and other extraneous crap.

On mobile both have some clunky ui, but on pc the chess.com site is just unforgivable. It has a ton of really cool stuff but you can never find anything in the mess of menus and billions of features. Lichess android app sucks, don't use it. They are working on a new one but you know... Some day. Meanwhile use the webpage and install it to homescreen to have pretty good "app-like" experience.

Puzzles I'd say are good on both, but I like analyzing them on lichess better. And again on chess.com you have to pay. Lichess gives you nice analytics so you can know all the things you suck at.

And chess.com gamereview is like... kind of a crime against learning. Ingenious feature and user experience, and I kinda admire them from coming up with it but... Once I learned how to analyze games properly I kinda started wishing I never would have touched it. It's completely backwards, you are supposed to analyze first on your own and then check it with the computer. And how come the explanations for moves became even more nonsensical after the generative a.i. revolution?? Back in 2020 they usually gave reasonings that were technically true but often irrelevant in the position. Now they just say some random crap that doesn't even describe the position. I like the graph and the summary tho, wish lichess had those.

tldr; both are good and have their perks but also issues. If you are serious about chess but don't want to pay go for lichess.

@mihqusta

try LucasChess (Tools -> PGN -> paste PGN, double-click on the game in the list, Alt+A (or Utilities -> Analysis), set time per move to 0.1 (enough), "Accept" - it does analysis, highlights good/bad moves, suggests best moves, gathers accuracy of each move, Elo graph and other statistics like exchange tendency. I think its stats are better than chess.com & lichess together. It only lacks those "coach" text lines. Not a big deal, they're often confusing anyway:

only things that are better on lichess are the database and studies (and the fact that everything is free)... otherwise their UI is horrible compared to chess.com

I'm not convinced chess.com cheat detection is better than Lichess. To answer this scientifically we need experiments: setting up new accounts on both sites, deliberately cheating in different ways and see which site bans the most accounts. Of course such an experiment is very much against the Tos of both sites!

Cheat detection is hard, a difficult issue to deal with for both sites.