Home › Blog › The 4 Chess Apps Every Player Needs (You Have 3)
Chess.com to play online, Lichess to analyze, Chessable to learn. Those three cover everything that happens on a screen. The fourth is for the game across the table.
Check the phone of anyone who plays chess and you'll find the same three icons. They play on the first, pick apart their losses on the second, and study on the third.
Then they sit down at a café or a club night, across from a person, with a wooden board between them. All three apps go quiet.
Nothing times the game or records who won. The rating built over thousands of online blitz games stays on the server.
That's the gap the fourth one fills. I build it, so read that section with that in mind. The other three have earned their place, and I'd point any chess player to them exactly as they are.
Already have the first three? The fourth is free on iOS and Android.
| The job | Where it happens | Standout feature | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chess.com | Play online | On a screen | 250 million members, a game in seconds | Free, Premium for unlimited tools |
| Lichess | Analyze | On a screen | Unlimited engine analysis and studies | Free, every feature |
| Chessable | Learn | On a screen | MoveTrainer with spaced repetition | Free and paid courses, Pro |
| Checkmate IRL | Play offline | On a real board | A clock that logs and rates the game | Free clock and game tracking |
Chess.com is the biggest chess room ever built. More than 250 million people have signed up, so an opponent at your level is a few seconds away at any hour, in any time control.
That pool is the product. The same account works for bullet on the train and a slow daily game that runs all week.
Around the play sit puzzles, lessons, bots, and Game Review, which walks through a finished game and marks the moments that decided it. Playing is free and unlimited. Those extras are capped on the free tier, and Premium removes the caps and the ads.
How the site got this big is its own story: AI Didn't Kill Chess.
Use it for: playing. Rated games on demand, against people everywhere.
It's the largest chess club in history, and it never closes.
Lichess is free, open source, and funded by donations. It runs no ads and has no paid tier. Its features page says it in one line: "All features are free for everybody, forever!"
That matters most when the game is over. The analysis board runs Stockfish in your browser for as long as you like, and a full computer analysis of any game you played is one click away, with the mistakes marked move by move.
The opening explorer shows what happened in billions of other games from the same position. Once you've worked it out, save the lines as a study and send the link to a friend or a coach.
You can play there too, and plenty of people do: more than 5 million games a day. The split in the headline is about where each one is strongest. If you only install one of the first two, either will find you a game.
Use it for: understanding the game you just played, online or over the board. Type in the moves from your scoresheet and the analysis works the same.
The strongest free tool in chess runs on donations.
Playing more games only gets you so far. At some point you have to learn an opening properly or finally fix your rook endgames. Chessable is built for that part.
A Chessable course works like a book that quizzes you. Its MoveTrainer makes you find each move on the board, then brings the line back for review on a schedule: a day later, then a few days, then a few weeks.
That's spaced repetition, the method language apps use for vocabulary. It's why a line you drilled in March is still there in June.
The library runs past 1,000 courses, many written by grandmasters, across openings, tactics, strategy, and endgames. Plenty are free, the bigger ones are sold one by one, and a Pro subscription adds extras like offline training.
Chessable has been part of the Chess.com family since the Play Magnus Group deal in 2022.
Use it for: anything you need to remember. Openings first, then endgames.
Watching a video feels like learning. Being quizzed a week later is how you find out.
The first three have one thing in common: the chess happens on their servers. When the game is on a physical board, between two people in the same room, there's nothing for them to connect to.
Checkmate IRL starts there, and it starts as a chess clock. Bullet to classical, custom time controls, and it runs without internet, because parks don't come with wifi.
When the game ends, the result is logged and your opponent confirms it. Rated games update your offline Elo, which runs on Glicko-1, from the same family of rating systems Chess.com and Lichess use. New players start from the rating they enter when they sign up (650 if they skip it), and after three rated games the rating is established.
Play enough and you end up with what online players take for granted and over-the-board players have never had: a game history, a rating that moves, and a head-to-head record against each friend and rival.
The other half is finding the game in the first place. The clock comes with a map of 4,600+ places to play across 100+ countries, from cafés and bars to clubs and park tables, and it shows the players near you. Flag that you're down to play at a venue and see who else is up for a game.
Online play and engine analysis are missing on purpose. Those jobs are taken.
The clock and game tracking are free on iOS and Android.
Use it for: any game with a board between you. Café blitz, club nights, the long rivalry with a friend.
One ordinary week.
Monday, you play 10 minutes of blitz on Chess.com on the way home and lose a game you should have won. The next evening you run it through the Lichess analysis board and find the move where it turned.
It came out of an opening you've never studied. So you spend 10 minutes a day on a Chessable course until the line sticks.
Thursday there's a chess night at a bar across town. You start the clock in Checkmate IRL, play the opening against a person for the first time, and the result goes on your record.
Three of these apps live on your screen. The fourth one gets you off it.
There are good chess apps beyond these four. A dedicated tactics trainer, a database program, or an app for kids can each earn a spot on your phone. They're upgrades to jobs the first three already do.
Rated tournaments are the one place a phone won't help. FIDE and national federation events require an approved physical clock and restrict phones at the board. The chess clock comparison covers which one to buy.
If you've never played over the board at all, start with How to Start Playing Chess in Real Life.
For a specific city, the guides go deep on where the games happen: Chess in London, Chess in New York, and Chess in Berlin. There's also a directory of social chess clubs and a list of upcoming chess events.
I built Checkmate IRL because I wanted it myself. I played plenty online and kept thinking there should be an easy way to take that into real life. The first version was a clock that remembered the score against my dad.
Online chess gave the game to hundreds of millions of people. The cafés, the park tables, and the club nights were already there. What was missing was a way to find them, and a record of what happened once you sat down.
What apps do chess players need? Four cover almost everything. Chess.com to play online, Lichess to analyze your games, Chessable to study openings and endgames, and Checkmate IRL for over-the-board chess, with a clock, game tracking, an offline rating, and a map of places to play.
Is Chess.com or Lichess better? They're strong at different things. Chess.com has the largest player pool, with more than 250 million members, plus lessons and Game Review. Lichess is free and open source, with unlimited analysis and no ads. Many players keep both.
Is Lichess completely free? Yes. Lichess is open source and funded by donations, with no ads and no paid tier. Every feature, including computer analysis, studies, and the opening explorer, is free for all users.
What is Chessable used for? Chessable is for studying chess, mainly openings and endgames. Its MoveTrainer has you play the moves of a course on a board and then schedules reviews with spaced repetition, so the lines stay in memory.
Is there an app for over-the-board chess? Yes. Checkmate IRL is built for chess on a physical board. It works as a chess clock, logs each game with a result your opponent confirms, keeps an offline Elo rating, and maps chess venues and players near you.
Can Chess.com or Lichess track my over-the-board games? You can import the moves of an over-the-board game into either one and analyze it. Their ratings only count games played on the site, so in-person results aren't tracked or rated. Checkmate IRL logs those games and gives them an offline rating.
Are these chess apps free? All four are free to start. Lichess is free with every feature included. Chess.com and Chessable are free with paid upgrades. The Checkmate IRL chess clock and game tracking are free on iOS and Android.
Sources: Chess.com (member count and Premium features), lichess.org/about and lichess.org/features, and the Chessable App Store listing.