Chess.com Premium gives you the tools. Choosing what to study is on you.
By Chess Goat · Updated
Premium unlocks unlimited reviews, lessons and puzzles. What it doesn’t do is look across all your games, find the few mistakes you keep repeating, and put those first. That part is left to you.
What Premium gets you
From chess.com’s help center, checked September 2026:
- Free: one full Game Review, three puzzles and one extra lesson a day, and unlimited games.
- Gold: no ads, unlimited lessons, puzzles, Puzzle Rush, drills, endgame positions and games against the Coach.
- Platinum: Gold plus unlimited Game Review and analysis.
- Diamond: Platinum plus coach explanations on every move, Insights (stats on all your games), Advanced Stats and Brilliant Moves.
Prices depend on your country, so chess.com shows them on its membership page rather than in one list (why). It is a good product, and the best place to play.
Why the plan matters more than the library
A 2026 study of 44,213 chess.com players found focused practice was about 3.6 times more efficient for learning than playing games, and that not all practice was equally useful (Southwick et al.). Unlimited puzzles only help if they are the right puzzles. The right ones come from your own mistakes.
What it leaves to you
| You need | Premium gives you | What fills the gap |
|---|---|---|
| Your repeated mistakes, ranked | Game Review, one game at a time. Insights shows stats across games. | The Goat Report runs Stockfish on up to 2,000 games and ranks the mistakes you repeat by the rating points they cost you. |
| A study order | Unlimited lessons. You pick which ones. | Goat Pass reads your games and puts the lessons that fix your biggest leaks first, with the reason in your own numbers. |
| Remembering what you got wrong | Unlimited puzzles. Bringing back the ones you missed isn’t among the listed plan features. | Every puzzle you miss in Goat Pass comes back after 1, 3, 7 and 21 days until you solve it cleanly. |
| Knowing when to stop playing | Unlimited games. No stop rule among the listed features. | The free Goat Card measures your tilt, clock trouble and worst hours, and writes you one rule. |
| Puzzles from your own games | Game Review walks you through one game’s mistakes. | The Goat Report cuts puzzles from the positions you actually misplayed, grouped by the leak they belong to. |
“Not among the listed features” means we couldn’t find it in chess.com’s plan list. If that changes, we’ll update this page.
What chess.com does better than us
- Playing: millions of opponents, every time control, tournaments and bots. We don’t host games at all.
- More to browse: a far bigger lesson and puzzle catalog. Our course has one of five levels written so far, and we only add what fixes a real leak.
- Live analysis in the moment, right after each game.
- Apps, community, coaches and events.
So don’t cancel your chess.com account. Keep playing there. Use us for the part it leaves to you: deciding what to study, and making it stick.
A setup that covers everything
- Play on chess.com, free or Premium, as you do now.
- Check your Goat Card once a month. It’s free and takes five seconds.
- Train the leaks it finds with Goat Pass: $5 a month or $39 a year, every lesson included. Lessons 1 to 3 are free.
- Add free drills from Lichess puzzles when you want more volume.
Comparing more options? See six ways to train, side by side.
Free · 5 seconds · no email
See what your games say, free
Type your chess.com username. Five seconds later you see your tilt, time trouble, best and worst hours, and your nemesis.
Want the full engine read of your games, with every repeated mistake ranked by the rating it costs you? The Goat Report is $5, paid once. See a blitz sample and a rapid sample first.
References
- Southwick, D. A., Harwell, K. W., Wright, G., Olsen, J. A., & Ogles, B. M. (2026). Not all practice is created equal: Longitudinal evidence from over 40,000 chess players. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976261452568
Keep going
- Compare trainingSix ways to train, side by side, including the free one we’d use first.
- Rating not going upIs it skill, noise or tilt? How to read a flat rating line.
- Adult improverThirty minutes a day, one teacher at a time, your own games first.
- TiltA stop-loss rule, and what to do instead of pressing New Game.
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