CheckmateX vs Chess.com vs Lichess — Best Free Chess Trainer 2026

Which Platform Actually Makes You Better?

I've been using chess improvement tools obsessively for the past three years — everything from mobile apps to desktop engines to dedicated opening trainers. I've spent money on Chess.com's premium membership, I've worked through Lichess's entire study library, and I've been using CheckmateX for opening and puzzle training since it launched.

This comparison isn't going to be a puff piece for any of these platforms. All three have genuine strengths and real weaknesses, and the best choice depends entirely on what you're trying to improve. Someone grinding toward 1200 has completely different needs than someone pushing past 1800.

But I do want to be upfront about one thing: I think the chess improvement market has gotten a bit muddled. Chess.com's premium tier costs $100+ per year and bundles enormous amounts of content — much of it you'll never use. Lichess is completely free and genuinely excellent for its breadth of features. CheckmateX is specifically focused on the areas most club players actually need: opening knowledge, tactical puzzles, and competitive play. These aren't the same product and they shouldn't be evaluated as if they are.

So here's my honest take on all three — where each platform shines, where it falls short, and which one you should be spending your limited study time on.

Chess.com — The Everything Platform

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Chess.com is the largest chess platform in the world and it's earned that position. The sheer breadth of content is genuinely impressive — videos, courses, endgame drills, opening explorer, puzzle rush, daily puzzle, news articles, lessons, a coach marketplace, tournaments, and more. If you want ONE platform that does literally everything related to chess, Chess.com is that platform.

But here's where it gets complicated: the free tier is extremely limited. Basic puzzles and basic games are free. Everything substantial — the video lessons, the full opening explorer, the detailed game analysis, the advanced courses — is behind a premium paywall that runs $14.99/month or $99/year. That's a real cost, and whether it's worth it depends on how seriously you take improvement.

For competitive play, Chess.com is excellent. The matchmaking is fast, the anti-cheating system is among the best in the industry, and the ELO rating system is well-maintained. You'll find games at any time of day or night regardless of your rating level. The community is enormous, which means you'll always find opponents.

For opening preparation specifically, Chess.com's opening explorer is powerful but overwhelming for most club players. It shows every possible variation with statistics, but without guidance on which lines matter and why, it's easy to get lost in a forest of branching moves. If you're above 1600 and want to dig deep into theory, it's excellent. Below that? The complexity often does more harm than good.

For puzzles, Chess.com's Puzzle Rush mode is addictive and genuinely good for tactical pattern recognition. The random puzzle format works, though it doesn't replace themed training.

My honest rating: Chess.com is worth a premium subscription if you're above 1500 and want a comprehensive platform. Below 1500, the free alternatives are likely better value for focused improvement.

Lichess — The Free Powerhouse

If you haven't used Lichess yet, go sign up right now. It's completely free — no premium tier, no paywalls, no "watch this ad to unlock a lesson." Everything on Lichess is free for everyone. That's a remarkable commitment and it's sustained by donations.

Lichess's feature set is legitimately comparable to Chess.com's free tier plus most of its premium features. You get: unlimited puzzles, a full opening explorer, sophisticated game analysis with Stockfish, studies (shareable annotated games and lessons), opening trainer, tactics trainer, and excellent tournament functionality. For a free platform, it's almost embarrassingly good.

The opening trainer on Lichess is particularly worth mentioning. It's interactive — you input a repertoire (or use a community-created study) and then practice it from memory with the trainer testing you on each position. This is active recall, which is the right way to learn openings. I've spent a lot of time in Lichess's opening trainer and it works well.

Lichess's puzzle section has millions of puzzles sourced from real games, all themed by tactical motif. The difficulty calibration is accurate. The spaced repetition system is solid. For pure tactical training, Lichess's puzzles are excellent and completely free.

Where Lichess falls short: the interface isn't as polished as Chess.com's. It's functional but feels dated in places. The lesson content is mostly community-created and quality varies. There's no equivalent to Chess.com's curated video library. And while the Stockfish analysis is powerful, it doesn't give you the kind of contextual guidance that helps intermediate players understand WHY a move is good.

For most club players below 1500 who aren't willing to pay for Chess.com premium, Lichess is genuinely the best all-around free option. It's hard to complain about a platform that gives you this much for nothing.

CheckmateX — Focused Training Where It Actually Counts

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I want to explain what CheckmateX does differently, because it's not trying to be Chess.com or Lichess. It's doing something more targeted.

The core of CheckmateX is an opening trainer built on active recall. You're not passively reading chess moves — you're being tested on them. The system presents you with a board position and asks what comes next. You either know the move or you don't. If you get it wrong, you see the correct answer with an explanation. This is the most effective way to learn openings — the same principle behind flashcards and spaced repetition systems.

What this approach solves: the problem most chess players have isn't that they don't know their opening exists. It's that they play the first four or five moves correctly from memory and then suddenly don't know where they are. The board position doesn't match what they studied because they learned the moves as a sequence, not as positions. Active recall training fixes that because you're always practicing from a board position, not from a list of moves.

The CheckmateX opening trainer covers the major openings — Sicilian, Ruy Lopez, Queen's Gambit, King's Indian, and more — with the kind of contextual explanations that help you understand WHY each move is played, not just what it is. That understanding is what actually transfers to your real games.

The puzzle trainer on CheckmateX is organized by tactical theme, which matters for pattern recognition. As I've discussed in the tactics guide on this site, themed puzzle sets build pattern recognition significantly faster than random puzzles. Instead of solving 100 random problems, you do 20 fork puzzles and your brain learns to recognize the fork "shape" automatically.

For competitive play, CheckmateX's play mode offers games against both human opponents and the bot, which is ideal for practicing specific positions you're studying. If you're working through the Sicilian Defense and want to practice it 10 times in a row, you can set that up and actually play through the positions instead of hoping you get that specific position in a rated game.

Combined, these features make CheckmateX the most focused improvement tool for the areas — opening knowledge and tactical patterns — that produce the most rating gains at club level.

My Actual Recommendation — It's Not One Platform

Here's the honest answer: the best chess players I know use multiple platforms, each for a specific purpose.

For rated competitive games and testing your skills against real opponents at your level — Lichess (free) or Chess.com (better interface, stronger community). Both are excellent for playing.

For structured opening preparation with active recall — CheckmateX's opening trainer. It's the most effective method for actually memorizing and understanding opening theory, and you can use it specifically for the lines you're playing right now instead of drowning in theory you don't need.

For tactics training — CheckmateX's themed puzzle sets or Lichess's puzzle section. Both are free and both are excellent. The themed approach in CheckmateX builds pattern recognition faster; Lichess's random puzzles give you broader exposure. I'd honestly use both.

For video lessons and curated courses — Chess.com premium if you can justify the cost, or the free community studies on Lichess.

For endgame study — Lichess's interactive endgame drills are excellent and completely free. I've covered the most important endgame positions you need to know in the rook endgames guide on this blog. The foundations don't require a paid subscription.

The biggest mistake chess improvers make isn't choosing the wrong platform — it's spending 80% of their time playing and 20% studying (or no time studying at all). Any combination of these platforms, used with intentional study rather than passive play, will produce improvement. The question is whether you're practicing deliberately or just accumulating game hours.

If I had to recommend one free starting point for a club player who wants to get better efficiently: use CheckmateX for opening and tactics training, use Lichess for competitive play and endgame drills, and upgrade to Chess.com premium only when you're above 1500 and want the full video library. That combination costs nothing until you're ready to invest, and it covers every fundamental area of chess improvement.