What's the highest rating that you can get on chess.com?

infinite 

ya if you are way too high you start earning 0 rating

I think that the highest you will be able to get is around 5200 just because you won't be able to earn anymore rating

if you have the biggest rating possible then you will get +0 every time you win

highest rating for what? blitz?

yes

There is a mathematical solution to this. Assume x as the players in chess.com. Assume that the threshold for no rating change is 500 points. This means that if someone 500 points above someone else won, the person wouldn't gain anything. Remember that this solution only involves the player that is expected to win. Now, the lowest rating value is 100. Then, you can multiply x - 1 times 500 to get the max rating. Every player on chess.com has a 500 point difference, and if every player is expected to play at exactly their rating level at all times, then anyone who is 500 points higher than someone else will win all the times. However, they wouldn't gain any rating, and the person who lost wouldn't lose any rating. Remember this is a hypothetical situation where every player is playing always at their rating level. Now, let's assume the amount of players on chess.com is 36 million. Then, the max rating in this hypothetical situation would be eighteen billion. However, their are many variables which we do not have info of. This hypothetical situation yields x - 1 times 500. If I dig a bit deeper, I think I can find a more convincing solution. Remember that this is a hypothetical situation and has a lot of flaws because of the amount of unknown variables.

bump

I think 10000000000000e

Pretty sure this math is wrong because even if the threshold is 500 points, then you don't multiply 500 with x-1. The rating only matters for your opponent in any given game - not how many opponents may exist at a certain rating. 

Take the highest rated chess.com member. We can estimate 3000 for simplicity (less than 20 players are 3000+ chess.com rating, but @Hikaru is probably the most well known example). Now add 500 (estimated point where rating can't be gained from). And voila...excluding engines, there are not enough high rated opponents to play, so "perfect" chess play would probably be in the ballpark of 3500-4000 rating. Don't have to overthink things with that much math - just step back and use common sense reasoning

Remember, I am assuming there is no "perfect play" and the skill cap is infinite. Lets say 3500 is the max rating. Then, that would mean that the person who is 3500 cannot gain any rating. That means that everyone else is simply lower than 3000. The thing is, you can get someone to 3000, and then get someone to 2500, and then keep on doing that until the person can't increase by  any rating. The flaw with your argument is that only one person can be really high rated. Someone could get to 3200, and then that 3500 would play him and gain points until 3700.

Of course, but the key here was assuming "the skill cap is infinite." Another consideration is the pragmatic versus the theoretical. If we got two players at an unimaginable rating like 17 billion and 17 billion and 500 (500 gap and certainly on route to your proposed 18 billion rating), then don't you think the chance of a draw is far more likely? Even if chess isn't drawn with perfect play, it is really hard to think 500 points at that insanely high number would mean much (if even possible). 

In short, perhaps your math would theoretically work for "no skill cap", but this isn't even close to anything humanly possible. Not even saying close to happening - just not even close to possible in a practical sense, but naturally this is merely my intuition on the matter.

I know it's probably against the site rules, but you could just farm points off of alt accounts. Make 2 accounts with 1200 rating (at least I think you can instantly snap to that rating), grind one account to 1700, make another 2 and repeat the process so you have 2 accounts with 1700 rating. Grind one of those accounts to 2200, etc.

Ultimately, you'll need 72 million accounts to reach 18 billion rating if you farm this way (math below). Obviously we're not mentioning the part where the losing party also loses points, making the 500 rating gap happen faster. Since I don't exactly know how that ratio works, I'm just leaving it out.

18 billion / 500 (rating gap) * 2 (accounts) = 72 mil accounts to have 1 account at 18 billion.

So, basically, the 'cap' is tied to the amount of accounts that are able to be made, a nice example equation to sum it up:

If 500 million accounts are the maximum amount of accounts able to be made:
500 mil accounts = X / 500 * 2
250 mil = X / 500
125 bil = X
125 bil = Maximum possible rating.

It's theoretically infinite, but technically, there should be a maximum rating on chess.com, one where you can't gain anymore rating because ur too high rated 

Yes, you are right. My method is more of something a computer would do (computers don't have intuition). However, even if someone is one point higher than someone, in my method they would win. There is no drawing in my method, as I said (I'm pretty sure I said it). I think it would be higher than 3500 though. Making a humanely estimate, I would think around 4000 is the cap. This does not mean calculating every line to the end, all the way to checkmate. It's obviously not possible, since the amount of chess games possible is unimaginable. I think a 4000 should basically be an upgraded version of alphazero.

I'm pretty sure the highest you can start an account with is 2000.

I think if you beat every single player on chess.com and claimed the rating points, the number would be pretty high. Maybe around 5000?

In a theoretical world, one's rating could reach enormous heights. However, we are in reality, and that means that the highest rating that can be reached as of now is 3500-3600. 

The highest live match rating I have seen is Hikaru's bullet peak at 3570