Best Chess Move Finder
Give the engine a position and it ranks the three strongest moves, with an evaluation for each and the line it expects to follow. Free, no account, and the search runs on your device.
Why three moves and not one
A single best move hides the thing you actually want to know: how much worse everything else is. When the top three moves all evaluate within about a fifth of a pawn of each other, the position is a matter of taste and your own move was probably fine. When the best move is a pawn clear of the second, something concrete is happening, usually a tactic, and missing it cost real material.
Strong players call this candidate move thinking, and it is the habit an engine can genuinely teach. Before you press the button, name your own two or three candidates. Then compare.
How to use it
- Reach your position by playing moves on the board, or paste a FEN.
- Set the side to move correctly. The engine answers a different question for each side.
- Press Find the best move and read the ranked list.
There is no account, no sign in, and no limit on how many positions you can check. Nothing on this page is gated.
What a move finder cannot tell you
The engine will hand you the move. It will not tell you why you did not see it, and that is the only part that transfers to your next game. A move finder answers positions; a weakness profile answers players.
If you keep reaching for a tool like this in the same kind of position, that is data. Chess DNA reads it from your actual games instead: it analyses them with the same engine, classifies every move, and sorts the errors into nine themes so you can see which one keeps costing you rating.
About the engine
The engine is Stockfish 17.1, the same open source engine that powers analysis on Lichess and inside Chess DNA. It runs as WebAssembly in your own browser, so your position is never uploaded anywhere. The first search downloads roughly 7 MB of engine; after that it is cached and every later search starts instantly.
Depth is how many half moves ahead the engine searches before it commits to an answer. Depth 10 is quick and already stronger than almost every club player. Depth 18, the setting Chess DNA uses when it analyses your imported games, is far more reliable in sharp tactical positions but takes noticeably longer in a browser tab. Start at the balanced setting and raise it when the position is unclear.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find the best move in a chess position?
Name your own candidate moves first, then check them against an engine. Paste or set the position in the tool above and it will rank the three strongest moves with an evaluation for each, so you can see both what is best and how much better it is than the alternatives.
Is the best move finder free?
Yes, with no account and no daily limit. Stockfish runs in your browser, so there is nothing to pay for.
Why does the engine sometimes suggest a move that looks strange?
Engines evaluate the position that results, not the plan that produced it. A move that looks odd is usually holding a tactical detail together several moves deeper. Play the suggested line out on the board and the reason normally appears within three or four moves.
What do the evaluation numbers mean?
They are in pawns, always from White's point of view. Plus 1.0 means White is better by roughly a pawn. Minus 2.5 means Black is much better. M4 means forced checkmate in four moves.
Does this work on mobile?
Yes. The board is touch friendly and the engine runs on phones, though a deep search takes longer than on a laptop. Depth 10 is a sensible setting on a phone.
