Guide

Chess bots by rating: which settings fit your level

By the Best Chess Bot team (ChessHelper) · Published November 12, 2026 · Updated November 12, 2026

The right bot is the strongest one you can beat about half the time. This guide maps real settings on Chess.com, Lichess, Maia and ChessKid to four player levels, explains why bot ratings are slippery, and shows how to use ChessHelper (chesshelper.ai), our own review tool, to study those games at the same level you play them.

Why bot ratings don't match your rating

A bot's number is a label, not a promise. Chess.com rates its bots on its own scale. Lichess does not give its Stockfish levels official ratings at all. The Maia bots on Lichess have real Lichess ratings that move with every game, and in some time controls those ratings sit hundreds of points away from the rating band each model was trained on.

Bots also fail differently from people. A weakened engine might play ten precise moves and then leave its queen hanging. A human-like bot misses the same tactics a 1200 player misses. So treat every number in this guide as a starting point. Play three games, then adjust: up a step after three straight wins, down a step after five straight losses.

What each platform lets you set

Before matching levels, it helps to know the controls. Everything in the table below comes from each platform's own documentation or source code, checked in November 2026.

Around 600: learning not to give things away

At 600, most games are decided by a piece left where it can be taken for free. You need an opponent that punishes some of those mistakes but also leaves its own pieces hanging often enough that you learn to spot them.

On Chess.com, start with the Beginner tier, somewhere between 250 and 600, and turn on threat arrows for your first sessions. On Lichess, level 1 or 2 is the equivalent. Level 1 plays with Stockfish's lowest skill setting and searches to a depth of only 5 plies (half-moves) for 50 milliseconds, so it makes plenty of outright blunders. ChessKid's lowest levels, starting at 400, suit younger players.

Your goal at this stage is a single habit: before every move, ask what your opponent's last move attacks. The beginner guide covers this in more depth, including the queen-and-bishop attack on f7 that low bots love to try.

Around 1000: basic tactics and checkmate patterns

By 1000 you rarely leave a piece hanging in one move, but two-move tactics still decide games: forks, pins and back-rank mates. Pick Chess.com bots near the top of the Beginner tier or the bottom of Intermediate (850 to 1100). On Lichess, try levels 3 and 4. When you win comfortably there, maia1 is the next step, because it was trained on 1100-level human games and makes human-shaped errors.

The pattern below wins a surprising number of games at this level, against bots and people. White's rook drops to the eighth rank and Black's own pawns trap the king.

Around 1400: plans, not just tricks

At 1400, you need opponents that do not hand you material. Chess.com's Intermediate tier tops out at 1400 and the Advanced tier starts at 1500, so play the top of one and the bottom of the other. On Lichess, level 5 and level 6 are the step up: level 6 searches to depth 8, which is enough to see most simple tactics you set up. maia5, trained on games from around 1500, is the most useful sparring partner here because it plays reasonable plans and still drifts in quiet positions, the way club players do.

This is also the level where reviewing your games matters most. You will lose to bots that simply understand where pieces belong. In review, set ChessHelper's engine to around 1600 to 1800, a little above your level, so the suggested moves are improvements you can understand. Then compare with a full-strength engine for the one or two critical moments.

1800 and above: strong engines and human-like bots

Strong players use bots in two ways. For opening and endgame preparation, they want the strongest engine available: Lichess level 8 or Chess.com's Engine bot near 3200, started from a specific position. For game practice, a full-strength engine is less useful, because it never makes the mistakes your human opponents will. maia9, trained on games of players around 1900, and Chess.com's Advanced and Master bots (1500 to 2450) fill that gap.

At this level, try playing from positions instead of from move one. Set up a middlegame from your own repertoire and play it out against a bot at 2000 to 2200, then review it. You learn more from ten games starting at move 15 of your main line than from ten games where the bot varies on move 3.

When to move up or down

Track results over small batches instead of single games. A simple rule works:

• Three straight wins: move up one step (one Lichess level, or about 100 to 200 points on Chess.com).
• Five straight losses: move down one step and look at how you lost in review.
• Mixed results: stay, and focus on reviewing the losses.

Avoid letting hints and takebacks hide your real level. On Chess.com, each bot shows crowns based on how much help you used; a win with no help earns the most. Use those as a signal: when you start earning full crowns against a bot, it is time to move on.

A weekly bot plan by level

Three sessions a week is enough for steady progress. Each session: one or two games against a bot at your level, then a review. Under 1000, use 15-minute games or no clock so you have time to check every move. From 1000 to 1600, 10-minute games with a 5-second increment are a good balance. Above 1600, mix longer games with position practice.

Review is where the improvement happens. Our learning from bot games guide sets out a routine you can follow in about 15 minutes per game, and how to beat chess bots covers the practical side of winning more of them.