Chess.com Premium vs Lichess: Do You Need to Pay?

You do not need to pay to improve: Lichess is free with no paid tier, and its Practice sections, puzzles and Studies cover checkmates, tactics and endgame basics. Chess.com's paid tiers are worth considering only if you specifically want its lessons library, unlimited puzzles or, at Diamond, game statistics and move-by-move coach explanations. Use the free Basic tier and the 7-day trial before paying.

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Test depth: Public information only. Nobody at ChessCourseFinder has used a paid Chess.com plan for this comparison. This page is based on published documentation, pricing and reports read on 8 November 2026. How we review explains the limits.

The axis: free everything versus a paid ladder

Lichess has one tier. Its about page calls it "100% free" with no ads, and its Patron page says no features are reserved for Patrons, who get only cosmetic "Patron wings". Lichess says it is funded by donations. Chess.com has Basic (free), Gold, Platinum and Diamond, each adding to the last, per its membership-types article dated 21 July 2026.

The Lichess Practice page lists five sections: Checkmates, Fundamental Tactics, Advanced Tactics, Pawn Endgames and Rook Endgames (Lucena and Philidor among them). Its features page shows the same entitlements for free accounts and Patrons and says "All features are free for everybody, forever!" The mobile list there is shorter: it shows play, tournaments, the analysis board and puzzles, but not Studies or Insights, so check the app if you mainly study on a phone.

What each paid step actually buys

The first paid step, Gold, is the one with the clearest gap between the two sites, and the later steps have less to justify them. The "adds" column follows Chess.com's membership article, the Lichess column follows its features page, and the last column is our view.

The free daily limit answers the Platinum question for many schedules. One full review a day is up to about 30 games a month (calculated), so if you review your serious games and play fewer than that, unlimited review adds nothing on Chess.com.

What Chess.com costs

Official Chess.com prices were not visible to us: the plans section of its membership page did not render. The US App Store listing shows in-app purchases of $4.99, $6.99 and $29.99 (Gold), $6.99, $10.99 and $79.99 (Platinum) and $14.99, $16.99, $99.99 and $119.99 (Diamond) without saying which is monthly or yearly, and we do not assign them. Confirm the price and billing period before paying; our Chess.com Premium review has the detail.

A member-written Chess.com blog, which we treat as unconfirmed, gives yearly-billing rates that would come to about $50 for Gold ($4.17 x 12), about $80 for Platinum ($6.67 x 12) and $119.99 for Diamond. Monthly rates of $6.99, $10.99 and $16.99 would be $83.88, $131.88 and $203.88 over twelve months (calculated). On those figures each yearly step up costs about $30 to $40 more. One mismatch is worth noting: the blog's Gold figure does not fit the $29.99 Gold price on the App Store, so check before relying on either.

The trial and refund rules

A 7-day trial exists on Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Family plans, one per account, with a payment method required, and it converts to paid unless you cancel in time (support article dated 13 July 2026). First-time credit card and Android subscriptions carry a 30-day money-back guarantee; Apple purchases are refunded by Apple; the refund article is dated 8 July 2026, and Chess.com's cancellation article says cancelling does not refund the current billing period. Nobody here has tried a refund, so treat these as the promises of the seller. Our money-back guide lines up other vendors.

How to spend the one trial

Because the trial is one per account, the tier you start it on matters. Each tier adds to the last, so a Diamond trial would show you everything and you could work down from there. We did not confirm whether a plan can be changed during a trial, so assume it converts at the tier you chose unless you cancel. This schedule is our suggestion:

1. Day 1: note the renewal date, set a reminder for day 6 and write down what you hope to get from paying.
2. Days 1 to 3: start one course in the lessons library at your level and count the lessons you finish.
3. Days 4 and 5: review three of your games with the coach explanations, then import the same games into Lichess's free analysis and note anything you would do differently because of the paid version.
4. Day 6: open Insights and write down one change it suggests.
5. Day 7: keep only the lowest tier whose feature you used on at least three days. If you cannot name one, cancel.

What people say the paid value is

Members in a Chess.com forum thread cited unlimited tactics, lessons and the Diamond coach explanations as the value; others said nothing beyond Gold justified paying. In a separate Diamond thread, replies were mostly positive about the tactics trainer, lessons and game review, with caveats: it is not essential, not worth it for a few weeks, try the 7-day trial, and one user found the app unstable. These are members posting on Chess.com's own forum. On the Lichess side, replies in a Lichess forum thread about paid courses said free material is as good. Both are opinions from the platform's own communities.

Three further opinions set out the trade-off from outside those two threads:

• GM Noël Studer, who sells his own courses, wrote in an August 2023 review that on Lichess you "can basically get everything from the Diamond Membership" for free. He framed the differences as cost, features and interface. If you do pay, he recommended Platinum, mainly for unlimited game review. The article is three years old.
• House of Staunton, a chess retailer, argues that almost every feature a serious player needs is matched for free on Lichess, credits Chess.com with gamified puzzles and a strong app, and notes that many people keep accounts on both.
• In an archived Lichess forum thread, one poster said they subscribed to Chess.com only for Puzzle Rush, and another said you pay for premium content, not for playing.

Which to choose

1. Start with Lichess and Chess.com Basic. Both are free, and you can keep both accounts.
2. Try Gold's 7-day trial if you want the lessons library or find 3 puzzles a day too few. Set a reminder before day 7.
3. Consider Diamond only if you want to study your own games and want Chess.com to explain moves and show statistics. If you play on Lichess or want a separate tool, see Aimchess vs Chess.com Insights.
4. Stay free if you already have more material than you finish.

You can start a trial from the Chess.com membership page, which may become an affiliate link; the advice above stands without it.

A caution on comparing ratings

Lichess ratings and Chess.com ratings are not interchangeable. Lichess uses Glicko-2, starts new players at 1500 plus or minus 1000 and, in its FAQ, advises against comparing its ratings with other organisations such as FIDE, USCF and ICC, because player pools and rating systems differ. So a rise or fall after switching sites, or after buying a plan, tells you little by itself; see rating bands for how this site handles the scales.

What the seller's pages do not tell you

• Chess.com's page text did not give prices, and Lessons gating is not shown. The lessons page lists courses tagged Beginner or Mastery but not which tier opens each, and its first page showed 25 courses and about 194 lessons, not a library total.
• The paid tiers stack, so the jump you pay for matters. Lessons begin at Gold, unlimited review at Platinum, and Insights and coach explanations at Diamond, according to the support article.
• Lichess's own pages do not describe a paywall anywhere, and its Patron page says no features are reserved for Patrons. Its limits are capacity limits, such as 40 deep server analyses a day. What it does not offer in its features list is a coach explaining each move.
• Free on Lichess does not mean equivalent. The two sites' analysis and statistics tools share names, but we have not compared their output, and nothing on either site's pages does.
• Neither site's pages say how much any feature improves results. Treat any rating-gain claim on a membership page as marketing unless it shows how it was measured.

Who should skip paying

Skip Chess.com's paid tiers if you play and solve puzzles on Lichess already, if the free daily limits are enough, or if you have not finished the material you have. Platinum and Diamond are hard to justify before Gold has been tried. A paid tier does not replace analysing your own games; many coaches recommend that first (received wisdom, not tested here).

The free resources that cover similar ground

Lichess is itself the free option, and Lichess studies and practice explains how to use its practice sections and studies. Related pairings: Chess.com Lessons vs Chessable, Chessable vs ChessMood and ChessMood vs Chessly. See also the Chess.com University review, the Chess 012 course page and all comparisons.