The next move calculator finds the best move in any chess position. Set the position up on the board, paste its FEN, or paste a screenshot of the board from chess.com, Lichess or another chess site, choose whose turn it is, and Stockfish 19 searches it and shows the best move as a green arrow, with an evaluation and the line it expects. You can ask for up to five candidate moves at once, then play them out on the board to see why the engine prefers one over another. The engine runs in your browser, so it's free and there's no limit on how many positions you check.
The calculator can read a position from a screenshot of a digital chess board, so you don't have to set the pieces up by hand. The image is read in your browser and never leaves your device. It works on boards from chess.com, Lichess, chess videos and most other sites, including boards shown from Black's side and boards with arrows drawn on them. It doesn't read photos of a real, physical board.
The best move is shown next to the evaluation and drawn on the board. Every evaluation is from White's point of view: +1.00 means White is about a pawn better, -2.50 means Black is about two and a half pawns better, #3 means White mates in three and #-3 means Black does. With several candidate moves turned on, compare their evaluations. A gap of a pawn or more means the best move really matters; a gap of a few hundredths means the moves are about equal and you can pick the one you understand.
Don't. Using an engine during a game you're playing breaks the fair-play rules on Chess.com, Lichess and every other site, and it gets accounts closed. Use the calculator on positions from games you've finished, puzzles, books and your own study. That's where seeing the best move teaches you something.
Checking a single position is right when you already know which moment matters: a puzzle you couldn't solve, an endgame you keep drawing, or a sacrifice you weren't sure about. When you don't yet know where a game went wrong, a full game review is quicker, because it checks every move and points you to the mistakes.
It runs Stockfish 19, one of the strongest chess engines, on the position you set up. The engine searches the possible moves and replies and returns the move it rates best, along with an evaluation and the line it expects to follow.
Yes. Stockfish runs inside your browser on your own device, so there's no per-position cost and no limit on how many positions you check. You don't need an account.
Yes. Paste or upload a screenshot of a digital chess board, for example from chess.com, Lichess or a chess video, and the calculator reads the position, highlights any squares it isn't sure of so you can check them, and then finds the best move. The image is read in your browser and isn't uploaded. Photos of a physical board aren't supported.
It's the engine's assessment in pawns, from White's point of view. +1.00 means White is about one pawn better and -2.50 means Black is about two and a half pawns better. #3 means White has a forced mate in three, and #-3 means Black does.
FEN is a one-line text code for a chess position: where every piece stands, whose turn it is, and castling rights. Most chess sites show it in the share or export menu for a position. Paste it into the box above the board and the position loads.
The calculator checks that the position could happen in a game: each side needs exactly one king, pawns can't stand on the first or last rank, and the side that just moved can't be in check. A checkmate or stalemate has no move to find, so the calculator tells you which it is instead.