Chess.com
Online chess platform in Games & consoles
Recommended for puzzles, review mode, custom variants and easy navigation. Critics most often say paid features cost too much.
Recommended for puzzles, review mode, custom variants and easy navigation. Critics most often say paid features cost too much.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 32%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Expensive paid tier
“I hate that chess.com puts game reviews under their most expensive plan, I ain't paying so much for something I can get in lichess for free.”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Chess.com Leak Exposes 7.3M Users, Evidence Points to Scraping” “Chess.com is just not worth the price to me.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “Lichess and Take Take Take Sign Cooperation Agreement” “I'm not paying for a second year for sure”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Chess.com Leak Exposes 7.3M Users, Evidence Points to Scraping” Data leak and weak security
“It might very well be possible that there were API endpoints that exposed way too much information.”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Chess.com Leak Exposes 7.3M Users, Evidence Points to Scraping” “Email addresses were not supposed to be leaked but they were, which hints at atrocious security.”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Chess.com Leak Exposes 7.3M Users, Evidence Points to Scraping” Heavy, slow site loads
“it loads 150mb of data for new visitors and 1200 request (40mb) for home page in a minute”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “Chess.com produces 3500 ton of CO2 in air for loading JavaScript bundles” “They are terrible at caching, optimization etc.”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “Chess.com produces 3500 ton of CO2 in air for loading JavaScript bundles” Outages and lost games
“Chess.com isn't the shining beacon of 99.9999 SLA - sometimes this just happens.”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Anything Down?” “I regularly had games end abruptly and be completely removed from my game history”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Lichess and Take Take Take Sign Cooperation Agreement”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lichess | 42 | 4 | 91% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Chess.comThis page | 7 | 15 | 32% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
24 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I can play it on a pixelated screen just as much as on chess.com or lichess.org”
“Email addresses were not supposed to be leaked but they were, which hints at atrocious security.”
“I just never managed to warm up with that site”
“I'm not paying for a second year for sure”
“chess.com is at value extraction phase”
“I hate that chess.com puts game reviews under their most expensive plan, I ain't paying so much for something I can get in lichess for free.”
“It might very well be possible that there were API endpoints that exposed way too much information.”
“they changed nothing to prevent it”
“Chess.com relies on inference, which is wildly inaccurate, with many false positive and false negatives.”
“They are terrible at caching, optimization etc.”
“it loads 150mb of data for new visitors and 1200 request (40mb) for home page in a minute”
“keep it simple and easy to navigate for every player level”
“Chess.com is just not worth the price to me.”
“FIDE and chess.com did behave pretty shitty sometimes”
“I regularly had games end abruptly and be completely removed from my game history”
“has much less functionality than Lichess's only tier”
“The only thing I love about chess.com is the ability to create custom variants”
“Chess.com is a pain to use compared to it.”
“chess.com is probably the more credible org for global rankings anyway”
“Bro single-handedly (in scala, no less) made what chess.com took a cast of thousands to make”
“Chess.com isn't the shining beacon of 99.9999 SLA - sometimes this just happens.”
“it's always game-level feedback which is insane to me because it's really not that helpful”
“i think review mode is a huge reason why chess.com puzzles”
“I switched to HN from chess.com”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.