Chessly Review: Who GothamChess's Platform Suits

Chessly is a subscription chess-course platform from Levy Rozman (GothamChess), and we cannot give you a verified price, course list or lesson format for it. Judge it on its free 7-day trial, which needs no payment details, rather than on this page or on reviews, and check the price at checkout before you commit.

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Test depth: Public information only. Nobody at ChessCourseFinder has used this paid plan or its trial. This review is based on published documentation, pricing and reports: Chessly's terms of use and homepage, and Chess.com forum posts, read on 8 November 2026. Chessly's membership and course pages are built with JavaScript and could not be read. How we review explains the limits.

This review has no star score. Fit, price and limits are set out instead, and how reviews are made is public.

What Chessly is

Chessly is a membership site that sells access to a library of openings and skills courses. Its terms of use describe a "Membership Program" that auto-renews; you can cancel from Settings or through support and keep access until the period ends. Its homepage says it is for "new and improving players" and claims access to "ALL 70+ openings and skills courses", plus an AI chess assistant called Levi, XP, achievements and leaderboards. The 70+ figure is Chessly's claim, and so is the homepage's count of 1,400,451 people who have tried it (8 November 2026).

The homepage names no rating bands, and we could not read the course catalogue, instructors, durations or whether lessons are video or interactive. Those are gaps in what we could read, not statements about the product.

What it costs: sources conflict

No official price could be read, and the price shown here stays unconfirmed. Chessly's terms say that prices can change without notice, that they exclude tax, and that an increase affects only orders made after it. The figures that exist are second-hand and disagree:

We are not publishing a price as fact. If the $10 and $90 figures were both real, twelve monthly payments would be $120, so a yearly plan would save $30 and only pays off if you stay more than nine months (9 x $10 = $90). At the same unconfirmed $10, five months would match the $49.99 base price of the GothamChess 1.e4 Repertoire on Chessable (list price read on 8 November 2026). Check the checkout page, note the currency, billing period and any tax, and compare the annual cost with other options on our subscription break-even calculator.

How the trial and the refund fit together

You get two separate 7-day windows, and the terms treat them differently.

• Free trial. You have 7 days at no cost and without providing financial information. The terms say access ends after the trial unless you enrol, so on this wording there is nothing to cancel.
• Money-back guarantee. "Once you sign up and pay", you have a one-time period of 7 days to cancel for a full refund. The homepage also states a 7-day guarantee. A refund ends your access.
• After that. Fees are charged upfront, and the terms say there are no refunds for partial months or years, or for periods you did not use, except at Chessly's discretion. EU users are told they give up the right of withdrawal.
• Monthly and yearly periods. Cancelling keeps access to the end of the period, which the terms give as 30 days from joining on a monthly plan and the yearly period on an annual plan.

Read together, these could give you up to 14 days (7 + 7, calculated) before your money is finally committed: a trial from 1 to 7 March, payment on 8 March and a refund request by 15 March. The terms do not address using both, and they let Chessly deny access if it identifies "misuse" of either policy, so treat the second week as a safety net. If you study about once a week, the trial gives you one or two sessions, so plan them before you start.

How to use the seven free days

Because the course list could not be read, the trial is where you find out what we could not. Five checks, in order:

1. Before you open anything, write down the two openings you play most and your most common way of losing games.
2. Find those topics in the catalogue. For each course, note the title, instructor, stated level and length, and whether it answers White's and Black's main replies or only one line.
3. Do one full lesson on an opening you actually face. Record whether you watch, or whether the lesson makes you play the moves yourself.
4. Come back the next day and try to reproduce the line without looking. If you cannot, find out whether the site brings it back for review.
5. Open one non-opening course, tactics or endgames if listed, and check whether it has exercises.

Note what each course lists at the end of the trial. A subscription is only worth paying for if there is enough left that you would study over the next few months.

What an improver's subscription should cover

A rounded plan for a club player conventionally mixes tactics, endgames, reviewing your own games and a modest opening repertoire, which is coaching convention rather than a tested result. Here is how that sets against what we could read about Chessly.

What people say, and how much it is worth

The independent material we could find is small and anecdotal, and the posts we read are mostly positive:

• A Chess.com forum poster (December 2024) was very positive about the one-year subscription value, saying it cost less than a chess book, and reported one beta lesson that did not advance. That thread's author had used it for only days, and an 80+ course target mentioned in it had not yet been met at that point.
• Another poster in a GothamChess thread (January 2025) praised the move from per-course pricing to a subscription and raised no criticism.
• Page 4 of that thread has more cautious views on opening courses generally: one poster said expensive courses cover lines you rarely reach because opponents deviate, another that they are useful below about 1800 but run short for stronger players, and another that much of what they bought went unused. These are opinions, and they are not all about Chessly.
• A Chess.com blog promoting "Chessly 2.0" is promotional and gives no prices.
• Search snippets of Chessly's pages show vendor ratings and rating-gain claims (we could not open the pages). We do not repeat them, and no independent source we read validates them.

Two items point the other way, and we could not read either. A search summary of a Reddit mirror mentioned a complaint about paying again for courses bought under the old system, and a search-result snippet mentioned a user who regretted spending about $1,000 on Chessly courses. Neither is verified. We found no independent review site or study of Chessly, and the Trustpilot page that search listings point to refused our tools.

What the seller's pages do not tell you

• The size of the library. The homepage claims "70+" courses. A December 2024 forum post said about 30 courses were live then, and a beta tester described an 80+ course target as still a promise. These come from different dates and neither is a count we could check, so the number that applies today is unknown to us.
• Whether the two 7-day windows can be used in sequence. The terms set out each one separately and do not say. The guarantee wording points to the date you pay, but ask Chessly in writing if you are relying on it.
• What happens to old purchases. Chessly 1.0 courses were about $60 each per the forum poster. The terms say accounts that have made a purchase are never auto-deleted, but we found nothing on how older course purchases are treated under the subscription. Ask before assuming.
• What you keep after cancelling. The terms describe access until the period ends and a licence that can be revoked. We saw no provision for keeping course material after a subscription stops.

Who should skip this

• You need a documented catalogue and level guide before paying. The most closely documented subscription we have is ChessMood, whose pricing page, catalogue and refund page were readable; see our ChessMood review, ChessMood pricing and the ChessMood vs Chessly comparison. It publishes its prices and has its own downsides; we could not compare its cost with Chessly's.
• You want lines drilled on a spaced-repetition schedule. Chessable is built around that; see the Chessable review. Chessable also lists the GothamChess 1.e4 Repertoire at $49.99 base and $249.98 with video (list prices read on 8 November 2026), which is a one-off way to buy his 1.e4 repertoire.
• You are worried about paying twice. Under the unconfirmed report above, ask Chessly what happens to earlier purchases if you bought courses before the subscription.
• You want to own your course material. A subscription gives you access for as long as you pay.
• You are already strong and want deep lines. The homepage aims at "new and improving players", and one forum opinion above says opening courses run short for stronger players.

The free resources that cover similar ground

GothamChess has a YouTube channel (we could confirm only its title, not its content), and Lichess offers free Practice sections and studies; see Lichess studies and practice. We cannot say how much of Chessly's library they overlap with, because we could not read the course list.

Who might find it worth a trial

• An improver who wants a single subscription across several openings and skills, and is willing to see what the trial offers before judging.
• Someone who already watches GothamChess and wants to see whether Chessly's format suits them. That is a reason to try the trial, not evidence about quality.

Before you pay

1. Use the 7-day trial first, working through the five checks above.
2. At checkout, record the price, currency, tax, billing period and renewal date.
3. Check whether the courses you want show a level, length and format.
4. If you pay, put your 7-day guarantee deadline and your renewal date in your calendar.