The perception of cheating levels is orders of magnitude more than the actual amount. The vast majority of games and players are clean.
https://support.chess.com/article/648-what-do-i-need-to-know-about-fair-play-on-chess-com
https://www.chess.com/article/view/online-chess-cheating
https://www.chess.com/article/view/chesscom-update-march-2025#FairPlay
The site closed more than 100,000 accounts in February for fair play violations and has a full team of staff working on reports along with some automated systems for detection.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/fair-play
That said, discussions of cheating, potential cheating, or cheat detection are not allowed in the general forums. If you want to discuss join the following club https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum
Hello!
My rapid rating used to be about 1500. It has been falling drastically during last weeks. Now I am around 1350. While looking for a reason I noticed that about 50% of my opponents play way above their rating. Here are accuracy and game-review-rating of my opponents in the last 10 notable games I played recently:
78% (1650)
73% (1350)
64% (1100)
75% (1500)
96% (2150)
81% (1850)
61% (1050)
83% (1900)
82% (1850)
As you can see, 50% of players play like pros. It has been like that during last 6-8 weeks. Simply no blunders, may be 1-2 mistakes and very accurate moves overall comparing to the standards of the 1300-1400 players. I've been playing on this site for years and I have never faced this kind of issue. Most games I lost due to timeout. I just can't find the right moves because I am simply being outclassed.