Free Chessable Courses Worth Taking

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Seventeen named Chessable courses showed a "Get for free" button on Chessable's own course pages when we read them on 8 November 2026, and none of those pages credits a grandmaster as author. Twelve others that blogs and a Chess.com article have called free now show "This course is for members", including every Short & Sweet opening course we checked. If you only want the working list, start with the first table below and confirm the button before you rely on it.

Level suggestions here follow this site's default of Chess.com rapid ratings, which are approximate; see the rating bands overview.

What we could and could not check

We read each course page below without logging in, on 8 November 2026, and recorded the button it displayed. Chessable's homepage says that "most of our courses do cost money to use" and that "there are also dozens of completely free courses as well", so this is not the full list: Chessable's catalogue and free filter did not render for our reader. Status for your account can differ from what a logged-out page shows, and nobody at ChessCourseFinder has taken these courses.

Courses showing "Get for free"

Authors are as Chessable displays them, which is sometimes a username. Nearly all of these pages show no selected level, so the notes come from the page's own description or from the blogs we name.

Courses called free elsewhere that now show PRO

These twelve read "This course is for members / Get PRO Course" on 8 November 2026. If an older article sent you here, this table is likely why the course did not open as free.

The reason for the Short & Sweet change is on the record. Chessable's announcement says that from 2 January 2025 Short & Sweet courses and their sample lessons became PRO-only, with people who already owned them keeping access. A follow-up on Chessable's blog says everyone keeps the courses they currently own, including Short & Sweets, and that community courses stay free for everyone.

The evidence is not perfectly clean. The page for Banzea's 1.e4 displayed the PRO message, and its underlying page text also contains "FREE" and "Get Course". That may be for a different account state, and we cannot tell, so we do not call any Short & Sweet free.

Other names we could not place: GermanMC's d4, a Caro-Kann Short & Sweet by GM Erwin l'Ami mentioned in a podcast link, and any course not listed above.

Which free course to try first, by level

This is our reading of the descriptions above and conventional coaching priorities, not a result from anyone using them.

• Under about 1000: Everything You Need to Know About Chess if you are new, then Typical Tactical Tricks. Tactics come before openings at this level by common coaching advice.
• About 1000 to 1499: Smithy's Opening Fundamentals for principles, Basic Endgames for pawn endings, and one Black or White opening only if your games keep going wrong in the first ten moves.
• 1500 and up: The "on the Attack" series for tactics by piece. Beyond that, expect free community courses to run short, and use the free material as a sample of whether drilling moves suits you.
• Surprise weapons: Skip the Devin Gambit until you have a main repertoire. The page's own description makes clear it is a rare sideline.

Two rough numbers show the commitment. Typical Tactical Tricks at 15 new puzzles a day is about 34 days (500 / 15). Play the Power Pirc at 5 new lines a day is about 40 days (196 / 5), before any repeat reviews. These are our arithmetic from the listed counts.

Are free Chessable courses any good?

Opinion is split, and we can only report it. In a Lichess forum thread, one poster called every free course "teasers for the paid content", while another said a free 1.d4 course helped them "a bunch" and that they later bought the full version. The July 2025 blog author says free content is sometimes "too basic or too short" but that some is excellent. The September 2024 guide noted that some Short & Sweets ended variations with prompts to buy the main course.

The practical points for a free course are the same as for a paid one. Community authors are not vetted to any standard we could find, some are usernames with self-reported online ratings, and an opening file can be wrong or out of date. Check any critical line against a database before you depend on it.

How to check a course is free

1. Open the course page on Chessable and read the button. "Get for free" is the status you want; "Get PRO Course" means it is not free unless you already own it.
2. Add a free course to your account while it is free, because the Chessable updates we read say people keep courses they own. Re-read that wording before relying on it.
3. Try the free filter. The July 2025 blog suggests searching for your opening and applying a "free" filter on Chessable; we could not verify that filter.

Is Chessable PRO worth it just for free courses?

Probably not, because free courses are free without it, and Chessable courses are bought individually with PRO optional. Chessable's pages list PRO perks such as a discount of at least 20% on paid courses, variation preview, offline mode and Short & Sweet access (Chessable). The US App Store listing for the Chessable app shows in-app "Monthly Membership" $11.99 and "Annual Membership" $74.99 on 8 November 2026 (the listing does not label them PRO, and other storefronts showed different prices).

If the twelve PRO-only titles above are all you want, note that the blog and article we read describe them as short samples of larger paid material, so a membership only makes sense if you would also use its other perks. See our Chessable PRO review, the Chessable platform review and Chessable's own PRO page.

Chess.com also runs a separate Courses feature with much of Chessable's library. Chess.com says all members get a free "Starter Kit" course by level and that Basic members can preview 10 variations a month (announcement). Chess.com says courses bought there do not appear on Chessable.

Who should skip this

• You want a complete, guaranteed list. Only Chessable's own catalogue can give that.
• You want an opening repertoire by a named grandmaster. Most named-grandmaster material we checked is paid or PRO-gated.
• You want to start with the lowest effort: Lichess needs no account on a course platform.

The free resources that cover the same ground

Tactics, endgame and checkmate practice are free on Lichess. For the wider picture, see free versus paid chess training, free Udemy chess courses and how to choose a chess course.