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by n_f 1884 days ago
lichess > chess.com
2 comments

I use both, but what is chess.com better at is that they have grandmasters there you can learn from. That's the advantage of the commercial model - you can use the money to push things to a higher level. But overall I am on lichess more, since I can play crazyhouse against the computer there. :-)
Why do you prefer lichess to chess.com?
Chess.com is super bloated, slow to load, and hard to navigate. There's so much noise on the screen compared to playing on lichess. Features are paywalled. For example if I want to know how the top players are responding to a certain sequence of moves, I can just see that on lichess. Also weird stuff is locked like using your own computer to analyze games. Also if you haven't been to the site for awhile you get a lovely modal again asking you for money. It's not that getting paid for services is bad, it's just awful when there's a better quality free service.
Yes - not only features are limited and paywalled (fine, you need to keep the lights on), but they're nagging you about buying a subscription at every turn (now this feels intrusive to me).

Their UI also feels clunky and dated: kind of like a 90s, or early 2000s desktop app.

They do offer much more features, but most of them aren't even remotely essential to me: like a bazillion of bizarre chess variants (lichess has a few simple alternatives, but no stuff like 4-player chess etc.), or "personalized" bots to play against ("play against Beth Harmon"; it feels very Disneylandish to me), and so on.

This being said, I don't mean to bash chess.com, it has certain advantages, and I do play on both websites. Still, lichess is my go-to, no-nonsense, default option.

chess.com consistently lags for me why Lichess does not. I often lose completely winning positions because of the lag.