I think lichess.org is far superior in that it has a super-polished UX in ways that are not immediately obvious. After I made the switch from chess.com in 2014 (I had the paid features), it was always extremely annoying to come back. Also lichess.org gives you most of what chess.com tries to upsell you on, for free. As it happens I've re-validated this over the last few days with dozens of games on chess.com.<p>A single example, and a counter-point to the article: Drawing knight-moves as "L"-shaped arrows is actually super annoying, because the likelihood that moves between different pairs of squares partially overlap is quite high.<p>And in general, the lichess.org app is miles ahead on visual clarity, giving feedback on your actions, and indicating your turn (seems trivial I know, but it's not). Chess.com on the other hand offers chess content, such as courses tournament coverage, blogs, etc. that lichess does not.
If you've been following these two products for the last few years it's definitely clear to see that Lichess is slowly eating chess.com's lunch ... They're not fast at development, but slowly and surely improving and innovating on the space via being open source.<p>For example, Lichess puzzles aren't quite of the same quality yet and their puzzle games are new (BUT) they've built and are improving the tech to create new puzzles from games played on their system which is ever increasing, with the benefit of being REAL positions reached in games.<p>It feels like when Lichess make a move (eg into puzzle games) its sudden and of high quality. ++ Their growth is amazing especially considering they aren't paying chess influencers to use their platform.
I spent a lot of time on chess.com (including paying for membership) but recently switched to lichess, because simply it feels a better, more polished, product. Love the fact it does not have ads (<a href="https://lichess.org/blog/YF-ZORQAACAA89PI/why-lichess-will-always-be-free" rel="nofollow">https://lichess.org/blog/YF-ZORQAACAA89PI/why-lichess-will-a...</a>. ) unlike chess.com which is ad-infested.<p>Lichess is very customizable. Love the everyday tournaments and the community there as well. Would pay for it.<p>The in-game analysis in lichess is fantastic (too bad my favorite WebKit browser doesn't support WASM SIMD, looking at you Bug #222382 <a href="https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222382" rel="nofollow">https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222382</a> ) so I don't get the full Stockfish NNUE. That is the only thing I miss really.
It's worth noting many of these points are subjective, and I disagree with all of the bullets in favor of chess.com. I'm 2100 Elo on Lichess for what it's worth.<p>1. I prefer the way Lichess handles right clicks, knight movement tracking, and tracking arrows.<p>2. 4-player chess: The author mentions that it's their favorite variant to watch. I can't say I've heard that opinion before. Personally I tend to stick to vanilla chess, but it's worth noting that Lichess has many different variants available.<p>3. Games start faster: I've found games start faster on Lichess for me.<p>4. Varied playing sounds: Lichess also has different sounds for captures. Personally I turn the sounds off for slow chess since they're annoying, but I can't find my rhythm without them when playing bullet.<p>5. Multiple premoves: Actually it's much easier to win endgames on Lichess when you have 1 second left, since Lichess does not deduct time from your clock when you make premoves.<p>6. Social media: I've never seen any content from either on social media.<p>This comment is admittedly just a massive diss of chess.com, but it's not all bad. I think the main reason many people prefer chess.com is that it's familiar from the streams of the likes of Nakamura and Rozman. This is simply because chess.com pays streamers with the money they receive from premium users, whereas Lichess is free.
A feature I was surprised not to see in the "Cleaner page UI during chess games" section: Lichess has a zen mode that maximally simplifies the UI.<p>It removes the chat, navigation menu, move history notation.
You're left with the board, clocks, resign/draw/takeback actions, and move replay.<p>You can activate it by pressing "Z" during a game, and there's a menu option too.
One thing not mentioned here is the players. Chess.com is much more beginner heavy. I'm a pretty bad player, and while on lichess I'm slightly below the median, on chess.com I'm around 80th percentile. It also feels like the common or average playing style is a bit different, more basic and aggressive on chess.com. Here we go, another Fried Liver!
I’ve written extensively on the rampant cheating happening on chess.com:<p><a href="https://travelhead.medium.com/rampant-cheating-on-chess-com-9d29a7a625d8" rel="nofollow">https://travelhead.medium.com/rampant-cheating-on-chess-com-...</a><p>LiChess on the other hand has incredible cheat detection algorithms, and I’ve only reported one cheater in the dozens of games I’ve played since quitting Chess.com and moving to Lichess.<p>(I’m approximately 2350 on LiChess).
If you have some server sitting idle you could consider contributing cycles to the fishnet: <a href="https://lichess.org/get-fishnet" rel="nofollow">https://lichess.org/get-fishnet</a>
For chess analysis, I recommend SCID vs PC.<p>It turns out that chess-playing programs have standardized upon UCI (Universal Chess Interface), meaning any chess-playing program, (IE: Stockfish and Leela Chess) can interface with any UCI program (in this case, SCID vs PC).<p>SCID vs PC can then be tuned to whatever you think is appropriate for review. Add the tablebases if you want perfect endgame analysis, or favor faster reviews with less analysis (if you're going for speed). Or you can run analysis overnight, if you want the computer to spend 20+ minutes per position.<p>--------<p>With an actual analysis program like SCID vs PC, you can try variations and deeper studies than what either chess.com or lichess.org can offer. There's no replacement to just running these calculations on your own very capable computers... rather than leveraging the limited compute abilities of a shared server with a thousand players on it. (Or in the case of lichess, I think its a Javascript program instead of a proper x86-assembly tuned high-speed analysis bot).<p>Stockfish in particular has a nifty quirk: most of its analysis is done in a giant hash table of positions. Meaning variations / transpositions are very quick for Stockfish to analyze (or more like, Stockfish probably has a variation already partially-analyzed before you even decided to think about it yourself. The hash table stores this partial analysis, and allows Stockfish to have a leg-up on analyzing the position when you decide upon exploring that variation).<p>--------<p>The equivalent for Go is Lizzie, which is easier since Lizzie comes with LeelaZero and KataGo already. (KataGo is the superior analysis engine IMO. Both are superhuman, but KataGo's score-based analysis is more useful for finding endgame mistakes).
This comes up so often it’s a bit lady doth protest too much. they have strengths and weaknesses.<p>As a 1200 elo. I prefer the analysis and game review on chess.com. I like the auto playback of alternative lines. Game review is more useful because I actually use it every time. Lichess game review might be more powerful, I don’t know but I find I use it less. Other little things chess has. The charts showing deviation from best move over the game. I like the video lessons. I prefer the square highlighting. I prefer the knight arrows on chess.com too.
I think it deserves a separate mention: lichess has so much better clock UI. Their clock is big and very clearly visible both on desktop and mobile. It also goes red when you are low on time. Chess.com's clock is tiny and I saw some GM complaining on his stream about losing on time because he was unable to track his clock because of that.
I've played on both (currently on Lichess). Few other distinguishing features:<p>* Chess.com has many excellent user blogs if you're into analysis and chess history.<p>* As a commercial platform, Chess.com can do a lot more to support professional players (Pro Chess League, etc.).<p>* The Lichess studies feature is really good and I don't think there's a comparable feature on Chess.com?
I would love to see XiangQi on Lichess or a suggestion for a good one. I suck at Chinese chess, but after learning it I was demolishing my friends from the headspace it gave me, the complexity really seemed to help me be a better chess player. I feel like I was an amateur "take as many pieces as you can and overwhelm the king" before and Chinese Chess turned me into a "sacrifice your pieces to position yourself better, value the pieces differently at different points of the game, and kill the king ASAP with pressure" player.<p>In Chinese Chess, I try playing against others and I know I probably lost in the first 5 moves often, I really suck at it, and in 10 moves I usually can tell I lost, I have never won once against a player online.
Lichess is a bit sluggish in navigation, but it's almost purely community driven and you can feel that! I do support them and I really like their transparent philosophy, they even show you WHERE do they spend EVERY received $! Yes, there are some flaws, but me with other guys are actually making the website just better every day. Chess.com sure has their own philosophy, better moderation, better news articles (sometimes written by professional journalists), but hey, it's almost like a comparison of good paid service with good opensource community driven thing. Like... Windows vs Linux. Both do have their downsides, but the core philosophies are different and you just follow them or not.
If you get a paid subscription to chess.com it evens out. No ads, etc. You have a lot of control over your view of the chess game - it doesn't need to be cluttered. I appreciate that lichess is free and opensource, but I think chess.com has done a lot for the chess world with all the money they made during the lockdown. Especially during the pandemic, when there were no OTB tournaments chess.com put money into a lot of tournaments.
You can invite a friend to play on lichess, because it's free. This is a good direction for the tech world to go. I'm very glad there are people like ornicar, creating the world they want to see and live in.
This is one area where I think the cosmetics for purchase model makes sense. It could be seen as a way to support a creator in a built in way as part of an app. For many free projects it can be easy to overlook the fact that someone has poured their time and effort into it to make it happen, especially if they don't have "ads" that are asking directly for donations.
I also recently switched to Lichess after using Chess.com for years. What tipped it for me was that I switched to an iPhone, and for some reason the Chess.com app on the iPhone absolutely obliterated my battery. I'm not sure what the issue was and maybe it's been fixed, but for a while it was just eating up battery life while playing like nothing else.<p>The servers for Lichess I find a little less reliable, but it's mostly fine. I also like the free-ness and ad-free business model of Lichess. I ended up donating $10. Overall Lichess is a better experience. Chess.com is perfectly usable without paying, but the constant nagging to sign up for a subscription is annoying.
I prefer Lichess simply because it handles connections far better than Chess.com which has a long-standing history of dropping them mid-game and denying its a problem at their end.<p>Other than that, I find Chess.com's interface more polished, but Lichess ultimately more personal, I guess as it is less corporate.
A smidge off topic, but I'm curious; is there a place where you can upload (say) a chess bot you designed and play against other uploaded chess bots? (or any move base game, even as simple as 'paper rock scissors')?
Multiple premoves is not really a pro for chess.com. Premoves function differently on the two websites. On chess.com, each premove takes 0.1 seconds from your clock when it executes, while on Lichess, they do not take any time at all. Given that difference, having multiple premoves would be too strong. Given the way premoves behave differently, I wouldn't say either one is superior to the other.
I started playing on chess.com in 2015 and my main issue was: they UI felt clunky and it seems to be deducting to much time from my clock even with premoves!!!<p>Switched to lichess in 2017 or so and it's just way superior when it comes to UI/UX and performance specifically!<p>I ran site performance tests for both a while ago and they numbers confirmed my subjective experience.
I'm not really concerned about the design, UI/UX or the algorithms as I just play pretty much at random to beat boredom, anxiety, and time-fillers. I don't make "friends" nor do I train, puzzles, or anything but just want to play with another human on the other end. I approach game plays on the experience and mistakes, and tries a more heuristic approach. I know I should try to learn the tactics.<p>As of today (on chess.com since Jul 8, 2007), I have played 15,472 and done 1 puzzle and 1 lesson. 1415 rating in Blitz, and I play either 3min or 5min max.<p>I have played 79 games on Lichess since joining in May 10, 2015. 1716 in Blitz.<p>I always land up on chess.com because there are enough people that I open a challenge, I get a player on the other end within seconds. Not so on Lichess - I have waited for 30+ minutes on most occasions.
It's amazing to me that an open source product can be better than a paid product.<p>I think OGS is quite good vs fox except that fox has alot more players in the go world
Related, but slightly offtopic:<p>Does anybody know sort of an open source/DIY alternative to digital chessboards like DGT boards? Would love to use something like that for input, but real DGT boards are very expensive, unfortunately.
Decent analysis and I agree with all the points. I think if chess.com didn't have the streamer network behind it and Gotham/Hikaru etc moved to lichess that people would entirely forget about chess.com.
I was just about to open lichess for some blitz games but thought I'd read hacker news first.<p>I used to play chess.com but it just feels spammy in comparison.
It has been a few years since I looked at any of the major chess sites, but it used to be that chess.com had way more teaching and training material than lichess.<p>Where do they stand nowadays in that regard?<p>I also see that ChessCube.com is gone. Too bad. They had an interesting tournament format whose name I forget that was wild and fun. Instead of having a fixed number of games like normal tournaments, these ran for a fixed time. As soon as you finished a game you could go back into the pool to be paired for another game. So someone who is fast and good had a better chance of winning the tournament than someone who is good but not as fast, because they could play more games.
The chess.com UI was just so unpleasant I never even used it enough to get a feel for the site overall. I like that they fund a lot of the GM streamers on youtube but even in those videos it's unpleasant just to look at.
The author is mentioning "multiple premoves" as a reason Chesscom is better, which makes the mistanken assumption that more is somehow better. In my (and most strong Bullet players I've talked to) opinion, it changes the Bullet meta for the worse, because it adds more noise. I'm rated 2600 in Bullet on both sites, for what it's worth.<p>"One premove" could just as well be a reason why a site is better than the other than "Multiple premoves". I also think that the chessboard and playing UI is much smoother on Lichess, as opposed to the author - it's a matter of opinion.
For most of course it's not important, but Lichess has "blind mode" - this enables blind people to play chess online. Implementing this feature of course wouldn't pay off for Chess.com.
Regarding interactive training resources, there are other good resources which are partially free (or limited) and partially payable content:<p>- <a href="https://chesstempo.com/" rel="nofollow">https://chesstempo.com/</a> has a great collection of chess puzzles<p>- <a href="https://www.chessable.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.chessable.com</a> is specialized on interactive training. They have may free courses and combine what a classical book (text plus moves) would have done with memorization tools (for openings, tactics etc)
A lot of people have an emotional and philosophical attachment to lichess, which is understandable. It's surprisingly (almost inexplicably...) free, clean, pleasant, awesome, and featureful. However, chess.com does have its advantages as well as unique features. And it is much quicker to find a match. I like both, but chess.com design is too busy for my taste. I'd use lichess a lot more if it didn't take so long to find a match, specially in certain times of the day.
I wonder how much general agreement there is with these opinions. Personally I agreed with most of the UI opinions except the preference for L-shaped knight move arrows.
My only online gaming is playing endgames: <a href="https://lichess.org/training" rel="nofollow">https://lichess.org/training</a>
Glad to see Lichess mentioned here. I have been trying without success to log in or password reset using a Gmail account. Messages from Lichess never seem to be delivered to Gmail, even to the Spam folder. Short of creating a throwaway account to access the forums, is there any alternate way to contact Lichess admins to ask if this is a known issue?
started off with chess.com and moved over to lichess years ago. Haven’t looked back since. Yeah sometimes it takes a while to join a game if you are trying to just play casual, but all in all I like it better. Can’t believe it’s mostly ran by one guy. Thought they had a team of devs, makes me appreciate the product even more now.
I haven't seen much mention of the fact that Chess.com looks good, and Lichess looks bad. The graphics are prettier on Chess.com, and the sounds are better. Fortunately, this should be a very easy problem for Lichess to fix. Lichess just needs a bit more game juice, and it will feel as good as Chess.com.
Also recently switched to Lichess from Chess.com. The biggest benefit so far is the community. I don't know if Lichess just has better mods or if the two sites just attract vastly different crowds.<p>Some players on Chess.com were downright rude (win or lose) and even had a racial slur tossed at me.<p>So far so good on Lichess.
Here’s an advantage of chess.com that I haven’t heard discussed yet. When playing against the computer I can request hints when I’m stumped. If lichess supports this then I haven’t found it yet. As a mediocre player I find it very instructive.
chess.com has always been more laggy when moving pieces around than lichess, which is perfectly lag free animation for me. Not sure what is causing it, but I have the feeling, that it affects my blitz performance a lot, especially in time trouble.
I personally find the Lichess board cleaner and more beautiful. Using circles to highlight squares is clearer, and drawing knight moves as straight lines is clearer, as well. I also just prefer the pieces and the board colour.
Lichess is far superior to other chess sites in the interface, quality of play, and quality of the community.<p>Chess.com does have some excellent pay-extra-to-use content.
Lichess is so much better. It's free. chess.com thinks its facebook and it looks really childish (they probably copied things from chesskid). They have like a billion developers (why? its chess.. and already done). Lichess is like 1 guy (who I think used to work for chesscom until the ceo was a dick or something)