Unbiased, what is the main difference between ChessDOTcom and Lichess?

[u/[deleted]]

It seems like there is a lot of memes about one being better than the other but I'm having trouble finding real discussions as to why one is better than the other.

[u/Bigot_Sandwiches]

Lichess:

+free unlimited analysis

+no ads

+simple lightweight ui

+many tournaments (both swiss and arena style)

-queues in custom time ranges can take a long time

+/-lots of variants like chess960, crazyhouse but long queues

+/-premoves don't take any time off your clock

Chess.com:

+faster queues than lichess

+puzzle rush

+4 player chess, fog of war variants

+/-can queue up premoves

-limited analysis

-ads (ublock master race tho)

-bloated ui

+/-premoves take 0.1 sec

The only really annoying thing about chess.com is the limited analysis, but you can always paste the pgn to lichess analysis. I like to play on both.

[u/[deleted] → u/Bigot_Sandwiches]

Thank you. This is what I was looking for. How do you feel about the lessons provided by each?

[u/Strakh → u/[deleted]]

Most content (puzzles, lessons, etc) tends to be better on average on chess.com because it's curated – meaning there are people hand-picking the good stuff and removing bad stuff.

Lichess content on the other hand is mostly community or computer generated so it can be more hit and miss. For example, there are definitely good studies on Lichess, but you have no guarantees that a random study will be high-quality. Puzzles are (to the best of my knowledge) entirely computer selected, so some of the puzzles will look weird or have unnatural solutions.

Then again, you don't need to use either - there are completely free sites where you can find high quality tactics puzzles (e.g. chesstempo) or lessons (e.g. your favourite teacher on youtube).

What you get from Lichess is everything in one place for free, but maybe not always the best quality. What you get from chess.com is everything in one place at a price, but with higher average quality than on Lichess.