The Complete Guide To Chess.com Features
[Note: This article presents our current membership plans. Old premium members might have slightly different plans as we updated our prices and plans on September 1.]
There are many ways to have a good time with chess. You can play it, study it, read about it, watch your favorite streamers playing, and so much more! There is certainly no singular "correct" way to appreciate this sublime game, but no matter how you want to do it Chess.com has a feature that will help you.
We realize that there are so many ways for you to use our site that it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of everything you can do here. That's why we've created this article detailing all of Chess.com's features, including what's available on our free plan and on our Gold (
), Platinum (
), and Diamond (
) premium memberships.
- Play
- Game Analysis
- Classroom
- Puzzles
- Lessons
- Analytics
- Events
- Variants
- Tournaments
- Clubs
- Customization
- Explorer
- Practice
- Library
- CCC
- Miscellaneous
- Apps
- Pricing
- Features Summary
Play
If there's one thing we all love to do, it is playing chess. Chess.com is the largest chess site in the world, with over 90 million users and over 10 million games played every day. In 2021 alone, our members played more than 4.6 billion games on our servers—that's more than 500,000 games an hour. With such an active community of players, you never have to wait to get paired and enjoy a nice chess game.
- Play Chess: Play rated or unrated games against millions of opponents from all around the world at any time control.
- Odds Chess: Play against someone with a different rating than yours and have Chess.com auto-balance the game with material odds or pick your own odds for a new challenge.
- Leagues: Level up in leagues while playing bullet, blitz, and rapid games. Advance from the Wood League to the Legends League.
- Bots: Play more than 100 computer personalities with unique skills, playing styles, and witty comments about the game.
- Daily Chess: Play on your own schedule with daily games with at least one move per day.
- Simuls: Play games against multiple opponents at the same time.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Chess | ||||
| Odds Chess | ||||
| Leagues | ||||
| Bots | 25 | 110+ | 110+ | 110+ |
| Daily Chess | 2 vacation days per month | 3 vacation days | 5 vacation days | 5 vacation days |
| Simuls | x |
Game Analysis
Whether you want to improve or relive your brilliant moments, analyzing your games is the best tool for you. Chess.com's state-of-the-art Game Review provides members with a sophisticated and unparalleled analysis experience that helps you to understand your game on a deeper level than you ever thought you could.
- Game Review: Get the best post-game analysis experience in chess. See your accuracy, move classifications, key moments of a game, retry your mistakes, and much more.
- Move Explanations: Receive explanations from Chess.com's virtual coach so you can truly understand your games and the engine's recommendations.
- Self Analysis: Use the latest versions of Stockfish and Komodo to review your game and add comments, annotations, highlights, arrows, and more.
- 7-Piece Tablebases: Get the tablebase's perfect assessment of the position and see which moves win, lose, and draw when seven or fewer pieces are on the board.
- Cloud Analysis: Use cloud analysis to analyze positions in great detail.
| Feature |
Free | |
|
|
| Game Review | 1 per day | 1 per day | ||
| Move Explanations | 1 per day | 1 per day | 1 per day | |
| Self Analysis | ||||
| 7-Piece Tablebases | ||||
| Cloud Analysis | x | x | x |
Classroom
Whether you're in the mood of showing one of your games to your friends or you're learning new things with a chess coach, Chess.com gives you the best tool to do it!
- Classroom: Share a board with other players and easily add video and audio feed to seamlessly enjoy small group or seminar training sessions and game reviews.
| Feature |
Free | |
|
|
| Classroom | 2 members | 2 members | 2 members | Unlimited members |
Puzzles
Chess is 99% tactics, and tactics are 99% puzzles! Become a tactical machine with Chess.com's Puzzles and have fun trying to increase your puzzles rating, beating your friends, breaking your high scores, or running against the clock.
- Daily Puzzles: Solve specially selected puzzles and enjoy access to more than 10 years of archived puzzles. See which ones you've solved, and build a streak by solving them every day.
- Rated Puzzles: Solve hundreds of thousands of puzzles from our database targeted to your skill level.
- Puzzle Rush: Compete in three-minute, five-minute, and survival mode. Puzzles get more difficult as you solve them; miss three puzzles, and the rush ends.
- Puzzle Battles: Compete directly against another opponent in three-minute battles to see who can solve more puzzles before the time runs out. But be careful—miss three puzzles and the Battle is over.
- Custom Puzzles: Solve puzzles of any skill level or theme in an unrated training mode. You can even solve only puzzles you've previously missed.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Daily Puzzles | Explanation videos | Explanation videos | Explanation videos | |
| Rated Puzzles | 3 per day | |||
| Puzzle Rush | 1 per day | |||
| Puzzle Battles | 1 per day | |||
| Custom Puzzles | 3 per day |
Lessons
If you want to get better at chess, there's no place like Chess.com. With a wide range of interactive lessons, videos, and articles, there's always something to learn on our site—whether you're a master or just starting. Check out all the educational material created by masters that you can find on our site.
- Lessons: Learn with Chess.com's massive lesson library with dozens of courses on numerous topics for any level. After each video or text lesson, solve challenges to test your knowledge before you continue.
- Videos: Watch thousands of videos on any chess topic with players and coaches like GMs Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, and Hikaru Nakamura.
- Articles: Read new articles continually published or explore our archive with lessons by GM Daniel Naroditsky, GM Gregory Serper, IM Jeremy Silman, and more.
- Openings: Explore chess openings and learn the fundamental ideas behind the most prominent openings.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Lessons | New To Chess + 1 per week | |||
| Videos | x | |||
| Articles | ||||
| Openings |
Analytics
Numbers don't lie. Take full advantage of all the data Chess.com gathers to improve your game, see how you match up against your friends and other players, or find out who the best players in the world are.
- Insights: Dive deep into the data behind your games and learn when you play your best chess, which type of game is your strongest, which tactics and patterns you are best and worst at, compare yourself to similar players, and much, much more.
- Stats: Review statistics on your games in all time controls and formats and see your accuracy, peak ratings, performance with certain openings, performance with White and Black, and more.
- Leaderboards: See the top players on Chess.com and compete with them, your friends, players from your home country, and clubmates to move up on the leaderboards in every time control and format.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Insights | x | x | x | |
| Stats | ||||
| Leaderboards |
Events
Whether you want to watch events like PogChamps and the Speed Chess Championship, enjoy the best commentary for major tournaments like the FIDE World Championship, or read the latest chess news, Chess.com is the right place to do it.
- Broadcasts: Watch live broadcasts on Chess.com/TV, Twitch.tv/Chess, and YouTube.com/ChesscomLive to follow Chess.com's own events and the best coverage of the most important chess events in the world.
- Live Games: Follow live games from the biggest chess events at Chess.com/Events with cloud analysis using the latest version of Stockfish, vote on results, track standings and results, and enjoy expert commentary by top players.
- News: Read Chess.com's coverage of the biggest chess events and happenings in the world with grandmaster analysis, photo coverage, and more.
- Players: Access Chess.com's biographies of top players with images, selected games, social media links, pronunciations, and more.
- Ratings: Track the movement at the top of the world at Chess.com/Ratings with updated FIDE ratings for top male and female players.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Broadcasts | ||||
| Live Games | ||||
| News | ||||
| Players | ||||
| Ratings |
Variants
Do you want to play chess in exciting, different ways? Then you will definitely enjoy playing a few chess variants! From the most well-known like Bughouse, Chess960, and Four Player Chess to the less-explored but equally fun Fog of War, Chess.com has a great variant for every taste.
- Duck Chess: The wild variant that went viral after streamers like IM Eric Rosen, GM Hikaru Nakamura, WFM Anna Cramling, and many others started playing it.
- Chess960: Forget traditional opening theory and mix it up with Chess960's popular shuffled pieces setup.
- 4 Player Chess: Try playing with four players, if two are not enough, in either a free-for-all or team format.
- Bughouse: Explore a team variant where captured pieces are added back to the board in possibly the most popular variant.
- Crazyhouse: Capture a piece and get the option to add it to your army on your move.
- Many more variants: Play King of the Hill, Blindfold, 3 Check, Atomic, Fog of War, Horde, Giveaway, Capture Anything, No Castling, Chaturanga, Chaturaji, and much more.
- Custom Variants: Mix and match rules and new pieces to create your own chess variant and play it with your friends.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Duck Chess | ||||
| Chess960 | ||||
| 4 Player Chess | ||||
| Bughouse | ||||
| Crazyhouse | ||||
| Many more variants | ||||
| Custom Variants |
Tournaments
Enjoy the thrill of competing in online tournaments at any time or day of the week. With many events starting every five minutes, it's easy to join a tournament on any time control you wish.
- Swiss Tournaments: Compete in Swiss system tournaments, the "fairest" tournament format there is. Compete against other players with the same score to claim as many points as you can in a fixed number of rounds.
- Arenas: Compete in arena tournaments, the most popular online tournament format that pairs you again as soon as a game ends. Rack up as many points as you can in a fixed time limit.
- Daily Chess: Register for daily chess tournaments to challenge yourself every day. Play in round-robin groups, and finish atop your group to escape elimination and advance to the next round.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Swiss Tournaments | ||||
| Arenas | ||||
| Daily Chess |
Clubs
All our members love chess, but they also have many interests beyond the royal game. With Clubs, you can play, study, and talk chess with like-minded people who share similar interests or even live in the same area as you.
- Create Club: Create a club to host events, share forums and news, and compete with other clubs.
- Tournaments: Create Swiss system, arena, and daily chess tournaments open exclusively to your club members as they compete for club championships.
- Club Arenas: Compete in arenas with other clubs as your clubmates try to rack up more points than the opposing club members in a fixed time.
- Vote Chess: Vote with your clubmates on moves and strategize against an opposing club that concurrently votes on moves for its side.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Create Club | ||||
| Tournaments | ||||
| Club Arenas | ||||
| Vote Chess |
Customization
Chess.com is your online chess home, and we want you to feel comfortable here. That's why, just like at your house, you can customize the site to express yourself and your own personality.
- Themes: Choose your board, pieces, background image, sounds, and piece animations. Mix and match to create your own style.
- Flair: Add a small flair next to your name.
- Emotes: Access special chess-related emotes featuring chess themes, players, logos, and more.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Themes | ||||
| Flair | x | |||
| Emotes | Default set | Default set | Default set | Complete set |
Explorer
Do you want to know how the best players in the world play your favorite opening? Or maybe you want to study classic games in a specific opening or go over the games you have played in a particular opening. On Chess.com you can explore that and much more.
- Opening Explorer: Review popular opening moves with Chess.com's Opening Explorer. See what masters and world champions love to play, get opening descriptions, and see how the popularity of openings has trended.
- Master Games: Review master games from Chess.com's database covering millions of games, accessing games from GMs Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov, Bobby Fischer, and more. Master Games feature the most recent updates from Chess.com/Events.
- Archive: Review your games and the games of other Chess.com players. All games played on Chess.com are publicly available and easily searchable.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Opening Explorer | Up to 4 moves | Infinite moves | Infinite moves | Infinite moves |
| Game Explorer | ||||
| Archive |
Practice
Practice makes perfect, and here you find the best tools to practice all areas of the game. Master the opening, perfect your endgame, and play through classic games to become unstoppable.
- Master Games: Try to beat the chess engine in positions from classic games. Play like Jose Raul Capablanca, Paul Morphy, and GM Magnus Carlsen.
- Endgames: Test yourself in theoretical endgame positions against Stockfish. If you can win or draw against the machine, no human will ever challenge you.
- Openings: Play chess engines in your favorite opening positions, testing your knowledge and ability to adapt on the fly to new moves from the engine.
- Custom Positions: Play chess engines in any position you want. Try to break down a tough defense or resist a precise attack.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Master Games | ||||
| Endgames | x | |||
| Openings | ||||
| Custom Positions | x | x | x |
Library
Going over a set of games is always fun, but it can be hard to do when you have to struggle to find them. That's when Library comes to the rescue.
- Library: Create collections of your games, master games, puzzles, and studies. Share them publicly with friends or keep them private, and peruse amazing collections from other Chess.com members.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Library | Up to 1,000 games | Up to 1,000 games | Up to 1,000 games | Up to 100,000 games |
CCC
Since 1997, computer dominance over humans has been evident, particularly after IBM's Deep Blue defeated former world champion, GM Garry Kasparov. On Chess.com, you can watch in awe as chess engines battle each other in numerous chess tournaments—at any second, on any day.
- Computer Chess Championship: Watch the strongest versions of Stockfish, Leela, Dragon, and more battle in elite chess engine tournaments 24/7.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Computer Chess Championship |
Miscellaneous
As if all the features mentioned above are not enough, here are quite a few others that can help you enjoy chess even more.
- Forums: Peruse Chess.com's forums for all sorts of interesting discussions, start original topics, and answer questions to contribute to the community.
- Blogs: Create a blog using Chess.com's editor and special chess blogging tools and check out other great blogs from the community.
- Vision Training: Practice your chess vision with our vision trainer that tests your knowledge of the chessboard and chess notation.
- Achievements: Get awards for your amazing accomplishments—such as winning a tournament, solving all daily puzzles in a month, checkmating with a pawn, and more. You can track all of your achievements at Chess.com/Awards.
- Solo Chess: Practice capturing pieces with solo chess puzzles.
- Messages: Message friends and other Chess.com members with your messaging inbox.
- Chat: Open chat with other Chess.com members to carry on fast-paced conversations.
- Coaches: Find an excellent coach at Chess.com/Coaches and level up your game.
- Streamers: Watch amazing chess streamers at Chess.com/Streamers and be a part of their chess journeys.
- Terms: Check out our glossary of chess terms and learn their meanings when you heard them for the first time.
| Feature | Free | |
|
|
| Forums | ||||
| Blogs | ||||
| Vision Training | ||||
| Achievements | ||||
| Solo Chess | ||||
| Messages | ||||
| Chat | ||||
| Coaches | ||||
| Streamers |
Apps
If you enjoy chess, why not carry it in your pocket? Chess.com has many different apps that can help you enjoy the game wherever you are and whenever you want.
- Chess.com: Take Chess.com wherever you go and enjoy the great features whenever you want.
- ChessKid: Have your kid learn and play chess on the number one chess site for kids in the world.
- Chess Adventure for Kids: Let your kid learn and play chess in a world full of adventures, quests, and magic creatures!
- Learn Chess with Dr. Wolf: Play chess and get better with help of your own personal virtual coach, Dr. Wolf.
- Chess Clock: A digital chess clock with all the functions you need to play an over-the-board game.
- Champion Chess: Play against virtual opponents and climb up the rankings to become the next World Champion.
| App | iOS | Android | Free | In-app Purchases |
| Chess.com | ||||
| ChessKid | ||||
| ChessKid Adventure | ||||
| Dr. Wolf | ||||
| Chess Clock | no | |||
| Champion Chess |
Pricing
Chess.com offers different membership tiers to best fit your needs. Check out our membership plans here.
Features Summary
| Play | Free |  |
 |
 |
| Chess | ||||
| Odds Chess | ||||
| Leagues | ||||
| Bots | 25 | 110+ | 110+ | 110+ |
| Daily Chess | 2 vacation days | 3 vacation days | 5 vacation days | 5 vacation days |
| Simuls | x | |||
| Analysis | Free | |
|
|
| Game Review | 1 per day | 1 per day | ||
| Move Explanations | 1 per day | 1 per day | 1 per day | |
| Self Analysis | ||||
| 7-Piece Tablebases | ||||
| Cloud Analysis | x | x | x | |
| Classroom | Free | |
|
|
| Classroom | Up to 2 | Up to 2 | Up to 2 | Unlimited |
| Puzzles | Free | |
|
|
| Daily Puzzles | Explanation videos | Explanation videos | Explanation videos | |
| Rated Puzzles | 3 per day | |||
| Puzzle Rush | 1 per day | |||
| Puzzle Battles | 1 per day | |||
| Custom Puzzles | 3 per day | |||
| Lessons | Free | |
|
|
| Lessons | New To Chess + 1 per week | |||
| Videos | x | |||
| Articles | ||||
| Analytics | Free | |
|
|
| Insights | x | x | x | |
| Stats | ||||
| Leaderboards | ||||
| Events | Free | |
|
|
| Broadcasts | ||||
| Live Games | ||||
| News | ||||
| Players | ||||
| Ratings | ||||
| Variants | Free | |
|
|
| Chess960 | ||||
| 4 Player Chess | ||||
| Bughouse | ||||
| Crazyhouse | ||||
| Many more variants | ||||
| Custom variants | ||||
| Tournaments | Free | |
|
|
| Swisses | ||||
| Arenas | ||||
| Daily Chess | ||||
| Clubs | Free | |
|
|
| Create Club | ||||
| Tournaments | ||||
| Club Arenas | ||||
| Vote Chess | ||||
| Customization | Free | |
|
|
| Themes | ||||
| Flair | x | |||
| Emotes | Default set | Default set | Default set | Complete set |
| Explorer | Free | |
|
|
| Opening Explorer | Up to 4 moves | Infinite moves | Infinite moves | Infinite moves |
| Game Explorer | ||||
| Archive | ||||
| Practice | Free | |
|
|
| Master Games | ||||
| Endgames | x | |||
| Openings | ||||
| Custom Positions | x | x | x | |
| Library | Free | |
|
|
| Library | Up to 1,000 games | Up to 1,000 games | Up to 1,000 games | Up to 100,000 games |
| CCC | Free | |
|
|
| CCC | ||||
| Miscellaneous | Free | |
|
|
| Forums | ||||
| Blogs | ||||
| Vision Training | ||||
| Achievements | ||||
| Solo Chess | ||||
| Messages | ||||
| Chat | ||||
| Coaches | ||||
| Streamers |
Pedro Pinhata is the Writing Lead for Chess.com. He writes articles, feature announcements, event pages, and more. He has been playing chess since 2019 and lives in Brazil.
