Chess.com, Lichess, ChessKid and Khan Academy compared for playing online, drilling tactics, reviewing your games with an engine and letting children learn safely.
Online chess has never been healthier, and choosing a platform is no longer a question of who has the most players. It is a question of what you actually want to do tonight: fire off fast games against matched opponents, grind tactics puzzles, replay a loss with an engine, or let a child learn somewhere strangers cannot message them. The 4 apps in this guide map to those four jobs. Chess.com and Lichess are the two complete platforms and differ mainly on payment philosophy, ChessKid is a closed environment for under-13s, and Khan Academy contributes a free, methodical way to study fundamentals; we picked the set so the guide covers every age and budget rather than crowning four near-identical play servers.
Chess.com is the world's biggest chess community: a matched opponent in seconds at any hour, strong lessons and engine analysis in one app.
Chess.com supplies everything the modern player expects: millions of games a day, level-matched opponents found within seconds, genuinely well-made structured lessons, daily tactics puzzles and engine analysis of your own games. The free plan already allows unlimited play, which is enough to decide whether the platform suits you. The costs appear at the edges. Unlimited engine analysis requires a subscription, the free tier caps daily puzzles, and the interface is deliberately crowded with features, game modes and promotions that can distract from the board itself. For polished teaching and the largest possible pool of opponents it remains the default; purists who resent the upsells gravitate to Lichess.
Lichess offers the full toolkit — unlimited analysis, puzzles and tournaments — completely free, ad-free and open source.
Lichess does essentially what Chess.com does with one defining difference: every feature is free, there are no ads, the project is funded by donations, and the code is open source. That means unlimited engine analysis, unlimited tactics trainers with no daily cap, studies, community tournaments and time controls ranging from bullet to correspondence, with nothing held back behind a subscription. It is the natural home for players who dislike paywalls and promotions. The trade-offs are small but real: the community is smaller than Chess.com's, so exotic time controls can be quieter, the structured learning content is less polished, and the mobile app has historically shipped some unstable releases. For serious improvement at zero cost, nothing beats it.
ChessKid is Chess.com's walled garden for under-13s: moderated, no open chat, video lessons and opponents their own age.
Chess for Kids: Learn to Play is Chess.com's version for young players, designed around safety first. The environment is closed and moderated, there is no open chat with strangers, lessons arrive as child-friendly videos, puzzles match the age group, and opponents are other children of a similar age — the most controlled way for a child to learn the game online. The limits are honest ones. The free plan contains limited content, a progressing child eventually outgrows the simplified material, and play stays inside its own closed network rather than connecting to the wider Chess.com community. Parental controls round out an app whose main rival is simply letting a child use an adult platform under supervision.
Khan Academy is not a chess app, but its free, methodical lessons suit learners who want structured study before they play.
Khan Academy is a non-profit best known for complete, free courses in maths, science, economics and computing, delivered through short videos and exercises that adapt to the learner's level, with no paid plans and no advertising — some of the best free educational content available anywhere. Its relevance to chess is indirect: the same calm, sequenced teaching style suits a beginner who wants to understand ideas before jumping into rated games. Know what it is not. There are no live games or opponents, the approach is academic rather than practical, and progress depends entirely on self-discipline because no tutor or streak pushes you. Use it as a study supplement beside Chess.com or Lichess, never as the only app.
Pros
Completely free, with no ads or paywall
Complete video courses and exercises
Exercises adapt to your level
Cons
No live chess games or matchmaking
Academic rather than board-focused
Needs self-discipline; there is no tutor
Download price only. In-app purchases and subscriptions may cost extra.
Questions & answers
Chess.com or Lichess?
Lichess if free is the deciding factor: unlimited engine analysis, no daily puzzle cap and not a single advertisement, funded by donations and open source. Chess.com if you value the community and the teaching: more players at every hour, better-structured lessons and a wider spread of game modes, though a meaningful share of the analysis and training tools sits behind the paid plan. Most improving players eventually install both and compare how each one reviews the same game.
Can you learn chess from scratch with these apps?
Yes. Chess.com and Lichess both cover the full path, from how each piece moves through basic openings and endgames, and both serve tactics puzzles matched to your rating — the fastest single lever for a new player. The effective routine is not twenty blitz games in a row but a smaller number of slow games replayed afterwards with the engine, which turns each mistake into a lesson. Khan Academy can supply the calmer, classroom-style explanation alongside the board work.
Is it safe for a child to play chess online?
Adult platforms have open chat and users of all kinds, so supervision helps even on a quiet game. ChessKid exists for precisely this concern: it comes from the Chess.com team, the environment is moderated, there is no free chat with strangers, opponents are around the same age, and family parental controls are built in. It sacrifices depth and the wider player pool, which is the deliberate trade-off for letting a child play independently.
Do tactics puzzles really make you better?
They are the fastest way to improve for beginners and intermediate players, because most games at those levels are decided by a tactical slip rather than deep strategy: a hanging piece, a missed fork or a back-rank mate. Ten or fifteen puzzles a day on Lichess or Chess.com produces visible results within weeks, especially when you read why the solution works. Strategy, opening repertoire and endgame technique matter more later, once blunders stop deciding games.
More related apps
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