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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

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24 alternatives to Online chessboard without any rules

My personal project: https://github.com/leonidasdeim/chasse Goal was to build session based chessboard game without any rules - to play just like oldschool over the board. Just create new board and share link with a friend. I would appreciate any feedback and github star. Thanks!

This is a free online chessboard designed for casual play between friends without enforced rules. Players create a new board and share a link to invite an opponent, mimicking traditional over-the-board chess where… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. Online chessboard without any rules launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Play chess online for free on Chess.com with over 250 million members from around the world. Have fun playing with friends or challenging the computer!

    2011 · multiplayerchess.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Thought I would post in celebration of 1 year of my website being online. I've been working on it on and off and currently the website allows users to play Hex, Tumbleweed, Amazons, and Connect 6 against friends or against practice bots. I've been a long time player of some of these games and I felt for a long time that the world could use a few more popular abstract strategy games compared to Chess or Go. If you try it, let me know what you think. I'm always looking for new games or new features to add :)

    2025 · abstractboardgames.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Hi HN! I'm the developer of rdx, a mildly popular ad-free, privacy and user friendly Reddit client. This time, I made something for a very specific use case: solving chess puzzles with no internet. Why? Well, my Wi-Fi is terrible in the bathroom—and that's where I do some of my best thinking. I tried printing out “mate in X” puzzles to solve offline, but they weren’t fun without interaction. So I built OffChess. OffChess is an iPhone/Android app that contains over 100,000 chess puzzles, fully offline and completely ad-free. You can solve puzzles by category (Mate in…

    2025 · offchess.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Play chess online for free against computer or friend!

    Jan 2026 · free-online-chess.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    3Chess▲106

    Play three player chess online free for web and mobile

    2023 · 3-chess.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Chess pattern training. No timers, no streaks, no ratings.

    Jun 2026 · boxwoodchess.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7LA

    Laser is a turn based game similar to chess, with different piece movement rules, starting position, and win conditions. It's named after the laser piece, which can shoot diagonally through every piece on the board except for the wall, which blocks it. The detailed rules are on the website. I made the website as a super minimal way to play online against friends. Nobody really knows about it so it might be hard to find a game, but maybe you will against someone on HN if people read this. It uses the lichess.org chessboard UI which is super pretty and allows you to draw on the board, make…

    2023 · playlaser.xyz · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    BreakBase.com. Play your favorite games, with anyone you

    2012 · breakbase.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9CA

    2020 · rootshirechess.glitch.me · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    A fun and free way to learn chess.

    2014 · chesscademy.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11CM
  12. 12

    Play Chess Online. No Sign-Up. No Ratings. Just Play.

    Aug 2026 · gmchess.online · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Puzzel games based on the chess rules

    2015 · ludusstudio.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hi HN! I built a simple chess game so that my son in Singapore can play chess with his grandfather in China. Why? There is currently no service or open source software that has all of the following: * All processing and assets on a single server (Critical to workaround a firewall) * No email account required (Chinese Internet services typically login via WeChat) * Works on Android browser * Simple to install and config I built it, together with Claude Code, using simple and boring technologies (Django + Client-side JS). I hope that when you use it, you will find it simple to understand…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Invite your friends to play chess with you in real time!

    2016 · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hello! I created SpicyChess(https://spicychess.com) because I wanted a tactics training app that would have the following features: - Spaced Repetition. - Countdown time to simulate blitz Chess where you have to find the best move quickly. - The ability to save puzzles for later review. I'd love to hear any feedback that you may have !

    2023 · spicychess.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17CE

    We built ChessBoss at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon this week. It didn’t make the top 10 but I thought Hacker News might think it’s pretty cool. https://devpost.com/software/chess-boss There are these really cool smart chessboards that can suggest moves and track your games... but they’re $400 and weigh 19 pounds. And of course there are apps that can analyze games but tracking and inputting games by hand is a huge pain. Or fully-digital chess apps... but board games are way more fun in real life! We wondered: “why can’t you just do that in software and bring the best…

    2019 · devpost.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Play Chess in Slack with your fellow workspace members

    2023 · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    A challenging puzzle game based on the rules of chess

    2015 · montoyaindustries.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20CB
  21. 21AL

    Hello HN, For a few months I'm been working on a fun side-project to port the (awesome) chessboardjs library to an easily reusable and embeddable web component. The quarantine has finally spurred me to put the finishing touches on it. https://justinfagnani.github.io/chessboard-element/ It works in plain HTML files just by writing an HTML tag: And it works in any framework because it's just an HTML element. Styling is encapsulated and customizable with CSS properties and parts: chess-board { --dark-color: darkmagenta; } /* Highlight the e2 square in red */…

    2020 · its alternatives →

  22. 22BG

    Tl;dr: Would like to hear thoughts on board games platform prototype (https://bordga.me/games/7) We are building an online board games platform which lets you create & play any board game online while video chatting with your co-players. Game play resembles the real world where users have to do everything from moving the pieces to enforcing the rules. We are quite early in our journey. We prototyped Chess to see if people would be interested in this direction. Please try it here! (https://bordga.me/games/7) You can enter your name that creates a new…

    2021 · its alternatives →

  23. 23FO

    Hello HN, I have started FBG some years ago when I moved to the Bay Area and could not find a simple, cross-platform, no-registration way to play board games with my friends back in my home country. I also wanted to make it simple to create multiplayer board games online for developers in their free time. Shortly after, I found out about boardgame.io with similar goals and decided to join forces with them. It became the engine of our board games, and we focused on publishing/serving them. To be fair with everyone and inspired by Wikipedia, we made the project a non-profit with GPLv3…

    2021 · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Guess AI Engine Tournament Position, Fun Stury Tool. Play Chess Without Moving Pieces. Crazy Chess is a Variant of Random Fisher and Really Bad Chess. Because of the rearranged pieces, players cannot use typical chess opening moves. study tool to understand chess, and learning how to read the board.

    2017 · ba.net · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →