What Lichess does
Lichess is a free, open-source chess server run by volunteers and funded by donations. You can play online games and tournaments, solve puzzles, study, and analyze games with Stockfish, with no ads or paid tiers.
Lichess is an online chess server where you can play against other people, against the computer, or with friends. Games cover bullet, blitz, rapid, classical, and correspondence time controls, plus chess variants. Arena tournaments, Swiss tournaments, and simultaneous exhibitions run all day, and the site says its users play more than five million games every day.
Beyond playing, Lichess has a large set of training and analysis tools. After a game you can request computer analysis with the Stockfish engine and compare your moves with a database of master games. Puzzles come with themes, a dashboard, and timed modes such as Puzzle Storm and Puzzle Racer. Studies let players share positions, annotated variations, and chat in real time, and there is a board editor, an opening explorer, and a section for chess basics and practice.
The site also works as a place to follow chess. Lichess TV and live broadcasts show top events, streamers and coaches have their own pages, and the community has teams, forums, and blogs.
Thibault Duplessis started Lichess in 2010 as a hobby project and made it open source. Today it is maintained by volunteer developers and staff, and paid for by patrons and donations. The code, written mostly in Scala, is on GitHub under the AGPL license. There are no ads, no trackers, and no features behind a paywall.
Lichess runs in any web browser, and an official mobile app for iPhone and Android offers online play, tournaments, broadcasts, puzzles, and game analysis in more than 100 languages. Developers can use the public API and the open game database, and several other open sites are built on the Lichess code.
Best for
Chess players of every level who want to play, train, and watch chess for free without ads, and developers who want an open chess API and game database.
Not for
People who want a paid chess service with premium video courses, or players who only want offline play against a local engine.
Questions and answers
Is Lichess really free?
Yes. Lichess is 100% free with no ads and no paywalled features. It is funded by donations from patrons.
Who runs Lichess?
Thibault Duplessis started Lichess in 2010. Today volunteer developers and an administrative team maintain it, and patrons pay for the servers.
Is Lichess open source?
Yes. The server, called lila, is open source and written mostly in Scala. The code is on GitHub.
Is there a mobile app?
Yes. The official Lichess app for iPhone and Android is free, has no ads or tracking, and supports online play, tournaments, broadcasts, puzzles, and analysis.
Can developers use Lichess data?
Yes. Lichess publishes an API and a game database, and other open-source sites are built on its code, API, or database.