Chess.com Reviews 1,585

Manipulative site, you enter with a free account, but you face 98% bots and cheaters, it's impossible for players who are starting their chess career to try to climb the ranking or rating.

Only those who pay for a premium account face fewer cheaters, and even then, cheaters use premium accounts.

Another detail of the site is that it's full of cookies investigating your browser, a total of 350 to 500 cookies for what purpose?!

Another negative point of the site is that to play tournaments you need to pay for a premium account and have a high rating.

After this rating system came along, it became a huge scam in the chess world, both for FIDE and online sites, it became a total mess. When they remove this rating system, they will give anyone the opportunity to play chess.

With ratings there is manipulation, an anonymous player cannot beat the world champion because they don't have a rating, even though they may be better than the champion.

Ratings and cheaters are a scam!!

i think i am talking to robot here , but still a better platform than flyordie or boardgamearena (multi game sites)

I have played this site for more than a year.
I lose a hundred points every so often andd I play 800 rating. Put the same moves I played into a 2200 rated chess computer... They are almost the same.
On another note when I was 15 I played for my county. That alone means I am better than 800.
Most people cheat on chess.com

I’m leaving a 1-star review due to repeated integrity issues on the platform. Over time, I’ve encountered what appears to be a high volume of cheating in games, and the overall experience has degraded as a result. Reporting doesn’t feel effective, and outcomes are unclear, which undermines confidence in fair play.

Separately, I’m concerned about the public review ecosystem around Chess.com. From my perspective, older critical reviews on third-party sites seem harder to find than they used to, which creates the impression that the public rating may not reflect historical feedback. In addition, many responses to reviews look highly templated and repetitive, which feels more like automated reputation management than genuine customer care.

At this point, I can’t recommend the service for anyone looking for consistently fair matchmaking and transparent, human support.

If you want, tell me (1) what happened (how often you saw suspected cheating, what support said, whether you’re a paying member), and I’ll tailor this to be even more credible and specific while staying within safe wording.

I’m leaving a very negative review of chess.com.
My rating is around 600 — I’m just a casual player. I was banned without any clear explanation. I did not use cheats, I did not boost accounts, and I have never had a high rating. I simply learned a couple of openings and played them consistently, which apparently is considered suspicious now.

I contacted support multiple times and never received a response. No explanation, no discussion — just a silent ban. For a platform that actively promotes paid subscriptions, this feels extremely disrespectful to users.
On top of that, the website lags frequently, with connection issues and problems during games. It feels like instead of improving service quality, the priority is automated bans without proper review.

This experience really highlights that there are much better alternatives, such as lichess, which offers:
- no aggressive subscriptions
- stable performance
- transparent and fair treatment of players
After this experience, I have no desire to return to chess.com.

My account was banned for violating the "Fair Play" policy. No justification or reason was given. Congratulations to the platform. It's a waste of time playing there. However, the only fair form of gaming is face-to-face, at least for amateurs. I strongly advise against creating an account.
Regarding your response: You closed my account without any proof of your claim, any basis for such a step. Please provide some reason for closing my account, even the most abstract one. I filed an appeal. I was informed that it could take up to several weeks to process. Pathetic. And now you're writing that you're doing this out of concern for others (probably weaker/less experienced players who don't know how to lose). I've represented all the schools I attended in chess tournaments. I've played hundreds of thousands of games in my life. Maybe we can organize a tournament in Wrocław with everyone I've beaten so far... Frankly, I hope you'll either get your cheating detection system sorted out, or simply go out of business, making room for portals/apps whose managers know what to do in such situations...

Horrible app and I don’t get it. How can the guys who made so much money on this game cannot fix their app. It constantly gives out mistakes. I cannot invite my friends. My friends cannot invite me. How long is this shit gonna last once I even bought their stupid automatic magnetic board. It was also crap. Who are these people man awful product. It has the potential but I don’t know why they can’t fix this.

The second part is the response to your useless response that you wrote my account has been active for a few years and I had a very expensive membership, which I just upgraded because I don’t see a point in paying please leave your useless advice for somebody else and fix your app instead of trying to imply that I’m not able to use my account. I’m not an idiot. I run a large business and I want company. I know how to work things out in an online world.!

Although Games are readily available, the rating pairings do not seem to match up,

Most players are cheating/ using AI to win. It is impossible to improve using this platform.

They never deal with reports or even reply, it is run by bots from what I can tell.

I have been playing two games with a person who continually puts himself on leave. The games have been ongoing for over two months because he constantly puts himself on leave and stalls the game. I am guessing it is a scam to get me to resign and manipulate his rating.

I’ve played numerous people on there who are obviously cheating - like 200 rated players with a history of losing to 200 players, suddenly playing like masters. They are always from India. They should make it possible to deselect countries so you don’t have to play people from certain countries.

I have complained numerous times and nothing gets done.

I am deactivating my account and will go elsewhere.

Cheaters and bots and more cheaters and bots.

Win or lose, half the players cheat, the otherhalf arent real players but bots aimed at bloating the service so it seems more popular.

How many screenshots have I got of accounts with streams of 96-99.9% accurate matches on year old account that never seem to get banned? Too many.

If you like chess and want to keep your sanity, or even improve, do it elsewhere or In person.

They are LIARS AND RIP-OFFS. MY ACCOUNT GOT CLOSED FOR VALID REASONS WITH A 1 YEAR BAN , BUT ITS BEEN A YEAR AND A HALF AND THEY ARE NOT ALLOWING ME TO OPEN MY ACCOUNT AGAIN. BUNCH OF SCUMS THEY ARE!

I appreciate your response but NOT only are the players cheating but it's your IT system is messed where it skips the seconds within the minute I am playing that time and I have mentioned to you on this other times; but no one seems to do anything about it, but telling me to correct it on my end. I have kept consistently cleaning it but it seem to lag the play but goes fast on my minute then I get CHEATED on it.

After playing on chess.com website not paying them because the site is NOT worth paying for wasted playing time when their IT is MESSED up and allowing other players to cheat others and their IT doesn't know how to correct the issue as many times as I played for hours and years of trying to keep my rating high, it SCREWS up my play everytime as I can spend hours playing. How does people play on here and not smart enough to pay this site when it's their system is VERY MESSED UP??

I commented before and if you want an accurate rating for yourself play the bots. I hover around 600 highest 669 then the cheaters come a 45o player playing like a grandmaster the cheating is ridiculous. But I played the bots and beat the first 3 the highest one rated 1375 so I'd say my rating would be 1400ish or more without the cheaters.

i like chess but i am convinced this site is filled wiht people who cheat, use some sort of bot or helper somehow that is illegal.. i kick butt in this then all of a sudden out of nowhere its checkmate.. and theyre all low rated players..i forgot why i stopped playing this and today again i realized why i stopped playing.

Chess.com isn't what it used to be. Many of the games I play are against cheaters (which I find out through the points I get refunded a few days after losing said matches), while some individuals they catch aren't even cheaters! They unfortunately fail to admit when a false positive takes place, which I fell victim to. I truly though those stories on Reddit were jokes, until it happened to me.

Last Thursday (Jan 8), I played about four games, and got wrongfully banned for "violating fair play rules". I don't even know how they detect such things, especially when my games were around 75% accuracy, two of which I lost blundering (who hasn't blundered?).

My account got closed immediately after the end of a match against a friend, and I can't lie - I was surprised.

I appealed, and got rejected for it - once I contacted support, they told me I got banned for "violating Fair Play Rules", but they can't tell me which one exactly. I've honestly never used a software, nor have bothered to try using one, and I'm being banned for it!

If Chess.com can't tell me why I got banned, how will I know that a false positive like this won't happen again to me? This, unfortunately is a very frustrating experience for me, as they haven't given me the chance to explain myself, and they've been definitive on my closure - for a reason even I don't know.

What the most dissapointing part of this is, is that I paid for the annual "Premium" subscription, in order to learn how to play better, alongside use their analysis feature after a game. It sucks that a year of progress has gone due to an error they made.

So in short, what chess.com did:
1) Wrongfully banned a paying customer for suspected fait play violation
2) Rejected my appeal outright, not telling the reason - didn't even bother to hear my perspective.
3) Offered to move my subscription to a new account, without offering a true solution, not knowing if I'll be a victim to it again (in compliance with Consumer Protection Laws) - doing the absolute minimal, and failing to recognize an error.

That's one way to lose a customer! Off to competitor sites it is.

so many cheaters 60,000 a month chess,com close down. do they think these cheaters just give up once caught.

7Chess.com is full of cheaters and although they say they care ...they don't. There only goals are user numbers and making money. Play long enough a I promise you that you will feel highly manipulated. Do not waste your money.

Congrats to chess.com low rating players play like chess masters.
Shows incompetence of site it's a joke please forgot the reply you do nothing to administer this just out to get money you should be taken down worst site ever