Why Lichess, the Wikipedia of chess, is loved by hobby players and grandmasters alike

At the ongoing FIDE World Cup, several grandmasters like finalist Javokhir Sindarov, SL Narayanan, Lorenzo Lodici and Sam Sevian have also used various functions of the Lichess app to prepare for the games, from the puzzles to blitz tournaments to the analysis feature.

“You could name basically any chess player and they’ve used Lichess at some point. Be it Magnus Carlsen or Indian players like Arjun Erigaisi, Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh as well,” says Wait, who is the Director of Operations at Lichess.

Hobby project

Born in 2010 as a hobby project of software developer Thibault Duplessis, Lichess has grown into a site that sees six to seven million games being played every single day on average. The site — which is run by a team of just three full-time employees including Duplessis and Wait besides 20 part-time helpers and an army of volunteers — offers other activities too, like puzzles, engine reviews of games, playing games against the engine or building chess studies for coaches. What makes the site stand out and endears it to top grandmasters and hobbyists alike is that it is a completely free resource that is run by a not-for-profit entity.

“At its fundamental core, Lichess is kind of a Wikipedia for chess. It’s an open source resource that anyone can contribute to. Our philosophical goals are openness of education, knowledge, making things accessible for people all around the world. On the site, there are no adverts, no commercialisation, no paywalls, no subscriptions. You can come to Lichess to play chess, to learn, to study chess, all without needing to pay us anything or give any subscription money. It’s completely free. Nothing is beyond a paywall. You can play anonymously as well, so we don’t collect your information either.”

Theophilus Wait, the Director of Operations of Lichess, at the FIDE World Cup.

It’s not just a useful tool for those wishing to play chess.

“If somebody wanted to create a new chess software, like, for example, to follow tournaments they can use the existing Lichess code as a starting block for that rather than having to start from the ground zero and having to invest $100,000 or whatever just to get into that stage. We can already give them that starting block and they can build around that. We can also help with other things: we have a lot of people who spend their time and their expertise contacting organisers of chess tournaments to get information about games. We can provide all of that as well for another software to potentially use and share with the world. If we weren’t doing that, they would have to reach out to all of those tournaments around the world themselves,” says Wait.

So how does the site which hosts six to seven million games a day make money?

“We don’t,” chuckles Theo before continuing: “In the sense that there is no profit motive. We’re doing it for reasons other than trying to make money, but if users want to, they can donate. There’s no pressure on them to donate. Irrespective of whether you donate anything or not, you still get access to all of the same features. About 98 percent of our income just comes from small user donations, an average of about 5 euros per donation.”

Even the limited criticism that it receives comes with a side of praise for all the good that it does. Recently, in a post on X that went viral, Azerbaijani grandmaster Vasif Durarbayli, who has built a chess app himself, grumbled about how Lichess made it hard for emerging businesses to charge money for their services. As one part of his post said: “Providing so many features for free makes it very hard for any chess business to charge for its services.”

This led to a barrage of criticism from grandmasters and hobby chess players on every social media site from X to Reddit. Eventually, Durarbayli had to post multiple explanations, where he pointed out how he had never received such “intense pushback” when he criticised other chess apps.

He concluded: “My point was never ‘Lichess is bad.’ Lichess has done tremendous good for chess. But things are nuanced. I highlighted one specific angle: how free high-quality platforms affect professional opportunities and market competition.”