Chess coordinate trainers compared: four options

Chess coordinate trainers compared, in one sentence: they all run the same drill, and they differ in timers, board orientation, voice answers and what else sits around the drill. You can learn the board on any of the four below, and three of them cost nothing for the core drill. This page lays out what each one does, from their own pages, so you can pick by how you like to train.

The drill they share

A coordinate trainer shows an empty board and asks one of two questions. Either a square lights up and you give its name, or a name appears and you click the square. The first is recognition, the second is recall, and you need both: you recognise squares when you watch a game and recall them when you read moves in a book. A good trainer offers both directions and both sides of the board.

We looked at four trainers: the Lichess coordinate trainer, chess.com Vision, the uChess coordinate trainer and our own coordinate drills. Where a detail is not on a tool's public pages or help articles, we left it out rather than guess.

Side by side

	Lichess	chess.com Vision	uChess	ChessTrainer.ai
Find a named square	Yes, Find square	Yes, Coordinates mode	Yes, Find the Square	Yes, Find the Square
Name a lit square	Yes, Name square, typed	Not in its help article	Yes, you choose the name	Yes, Name the Square, spoken or tapped
Beyond squares	Limit to some files and ranks, show pieces	Moves mode, such as Qd3, and a mixed mode	Show or hide pieces, leaderboards	Square colours, knight paths, diagonals, blindfold sequences
Clock	30 seconds or untimed	A time limit	45 seconds	Untimed levels, then a clock on the top level
Board side	White, Black or random	White, Black or a mix	White or Black	White, flipped, or changing every question
Voice answers	Yes	Not in its help article	Not on its page	Yes, in Chrome, Edge and Safari
Cost	Free, no paywall	Not in its help article	Free	Two drills free at every level, four with level 1 free

Lichess

Lichess calls itself a free, open source chess server run by volunteers and donations, with no ads and nothing behind a paywall. Its coordinate trainer has two modes. In Find square a coordinate appears and you click the square. In Name square a square is highlighted and you type its name, such as "e4". You choose a 30 second round or no time limit, play as White, Black or random, and can show pieces, put coordinates on every square, or practise only some files and ranks. It keeps your average score as White and as Black, and it has a voice option.

Pick Lichess if you want a trainer that is free with no limits at all, sits on the same site as your games there, and is open source. For pure square naming it is hard to argue with.

chess.com Vision

chess.com's trainer is called Vision, found under More then Vision. Its help article lists three modes: Coordinates, which shows a square such as e4; Moves, which shows a move such as Qd3; and a mix of the two. A Show Coordinates checkbox puts the labels on the board edge or takes them off, and you choose your colour or a mix of both before you start. You get as many right as you can in the time limit.

Pick Vision if your games, puzzles and lessons already live on chess.com and you want the drill in the same place. The Moves mode is a useful extra: reading a move, not only a square, is closer to following a game.

uChess

The uChess trainer has Find the Square, where you click a named square on a board with no labels, and Name the Square, where a square is highlighted and you choose its name. Each round is 45 seconds. You train from the White or Black side and can show or hide the pieces. It is free, and a free account records your scores and puts you on 90 day leaderboards for each mode.

Pick uChess if a leaderboard keeps you coming back. Racing other people for a score is a fair reason to drill.

ChessTrainer.ai

Ours has six drills. Name the Square and Find the Square are the classic pair, each with a level ladder: a quarter of the board, then half, then the full board, then the board flipped to Black's side. Both ladders go on to a level where the side changes on every question and a top level with five seconds per square. Both drills are free at every level, in the browser, with no account.

The other four go past naming squares: Square Colors (light or dark, then with the board hidden), Knight Paths (every square a knight reaches), Diagonals (do two squares share one) and Blindfold Squares (follow a piece through a short sequence of moves you cannot see). Level 1 of each is free. The higher levels are in Pro, at US$6.99 a month or US$49 a year. The per-square heatmap of your mistakes is free on every plan; adaptive mode, which drills your weak squares, is Pro.

Every drill except Find the Square takes spoken answers in Chrome, Edge and Safari. You say "e four", "dark" or "yes" and the drill checks you. Every drill also works by tapping.

Pick ours if you want to answer out loud, or if you already know the squares and want the next step: colours, knight routes, diagonals and short blindfold lines, which is where coordinates turn into visualisation. If you only want square naming and nothing behind a paywall, Lichess is the plainer choice.

How to choose

• Nothing paid, ever, and open source: Lichess.
• Your chess life is already on chess.com, or you want to drill reading moves: Vision.
• A public leaderboard and a 45 second race: uChess.
• Answers by voice, a level ladder, or drills past square names: ChessTrainer.ai.

Whichever you pick, the method matters more than the tool. Two minutes a day, both directions, both sides of the board. Start with a quarter of the board and widen it once you stop counting. The full routine is in how to learn chess coordinates, and there is more on answering out loud in train chess by voice.