Best Chess Extensions for Study: Openings, Analysis and Puzzles

The best chess extensions for study are the ones that turn your own games and the material you already read or watch into practice. For analysis at your own level we pick ChessHelper (chesshelper.ai); for opening repertoire work on Lichess, LiChess Tools; for positions in videos, Chessvision.ai; and for free game reviews and puzzles, Chess Review. Every extension on this page was live on the Chrome Web Store on November 12, 2026.

We grouped them by study task: opening preparation, game analysis, puzzles and habits. Each section ends with a worked example you can repeat.

How to choose a study extension

A study extension should do one of three things: save you time getting a game or position into an analysis board, give you feedback you can understand, or make you practice the right things. Extensions that only show a best move while you play do none of these, and they break the rules on Chess.com and Lichess, so they are not on this page. For the rules themselves, see our fair-play guide.

Opening preparation

Good opening study has two halves: knowing the moves and knowing what to do when the opponent leaves them. Extensions help with both.

LiChess Tools is the strongest free option for repertoire work if you use Lichess studies. Its listing describes Extended Interactive Lessons that let you play all the variations in a study chapter rather than only the main line, and Explorer Practice, which lets you play against the moves in the Lichess opening explorer, so you meet the replies real players at your rating actually choose. It also merges several PGNs into one in the analysis board, which helps when you collect a repertoire from multiple sources.

ChessHelper approaches openings from your games instead. Its site has opening pages for the Sicilian Defense, Italian Game, London System, French Defense, Ruy Lopez and Caro-Kann Defense, and its overlay, set to a strength near your rating, shows which deviations from those openings cost you in finished games. Chess Review adds interactive opening lessons you can practice from either side.

Worked example: a London System sideline

London System players meet an early queen sortie all the time. After 1.d4 d5 2.Bf4 Nf6 3.e3 c5 4.c3 Qb6, Black's queen attacks the pawn on b2.

Put the position in an analysis board and compare the candidate moves. At depth 20, Stockfish rates 5.Qb3, offering a queen trade, and 5.b3, simply defending, about equal at +0.30 for White; 5.Qc2 comes in lower at about +0.14. The useful lesson is not one "correct" move but that White has two sound, different answers: one leads to a queenless middlegame, the other keeps queens on. Pick the one that suits your style, add it to your study, and drill it with Explorer Practice until you play it without thinking.

Game analysis

Reviewing your own games is the habit that most separates improving players from stuck ones, and the extensions here remove the friction.

Chess.com Analysis at Lichess (by Robert Anderson, open source, about 20,000 users) opens any finished Chess.com game in the Lichess analysis board, from your archive or right after the game ends. It also works on chessgames.com, chess-db.com and chesstempo.com, which makes it handy for studying master games. Free Chess Analysis (by imlokesh) does the same job with even less setup: one click imports the game, turns on local analysis and flips the board if you had Black.

Chess Review (by Julsgaard, open source) builds a full review report inside your browser: accuracy for both players, move classifications, an evaluation graph and opening detection, all using Stockfish locally. Its developer declares no data collection. A similar side-panel tool, chess.com.puter, imports completed Chess.com and Lichess games into a Stockfish 18 side panel; it is newer and has a small user base, so treat it as one to watch.

ChessHelper earns its place when the full-strength engine stops being useful. Set to a strength a few hundred points above your rating, it shows alternative lines you could have found, and its dashboard keeps your accuracy and rating trend in one place.

Worked example: a fifteen-minute review routine

• Right after the game, write down the two moves you were least sure of.
• Send the finished game to an analysis board with a bridge extension, or open it with ChessHelper or Chess Review.
• Check your two moves first, before looking at the engine's list of blunders. Did your doubt match the evaluation?
• Find the largest evaluation swing. Play out the engine's line to the point where you understand why it is better.
• Save that position to a study and replay it against the computer once a week.

Puzzles and tactics

Puzzles train pattern recognition, which is why they make up a big part of most improvement plans. Both Chess.com and Lichess have large built-in puzzle sections, so extensions add value mainly by connecting puzzles to your own study.

Chess Review includes 50,000 puzzles you can filter by difficulty and theme, which is useful if you want tactics drawn from a single place along with your game reviews. Chessvision.ai fits a different habit: when you solve puzzles from a book, a newsletter or a video, it can scan the diagram and open it in an analysis board, and it can hide notation behind spoiler tags so the solution does not catch your eye before you have tried.

A tip that applies to every tool: when you miss a puzzle, set the position up on an analysis board and play the solution out against the engine's defense. Seeing why the second-best move fails teaches as much as the solution itself.

Visualization and habits

Two small extensions target the way you practice rather than what you study.

Chess.com Keyboard (by everyonesdesign, open source) lets you type moves such as Nf3 or e2e4 instead of dragging pieces. Its listing pitches this as both an accessibility aid and a way to build board vision, since you have to name the square before you move. It gives no move advice.

Lichess Bullet Block (by jan1577) removes the options to start bullet games on lichess.org and, if you choose, blitz games and puzzle variants. If your playing time is mostly one-minute games, this is the simplest way to move it into longer games where you have time to apply what you study.

Learning from videos and articles

Much chess study now happens through videos. Chessvision.ai Chess Position Scanner, with 100,000 users the largest extension on this page, lets you pause a lesson, scan the board and open the position in the Lichess analysis board, or in a Chess.com analysis, to test the presenter's claims yourself. It requests access to YouTube, Chess.com, Lichess and X only when you use it there, which is the permission design we like to see.

A weekly study plan using these tools

The table shows one way to combine the extensions above into a week that a busy adult player can keep. Adjust the time to your schedule; the balance matters more than the totals.

Before you install any of these, read our safety guide and set each extension's site access as described in the install guide.

Frequently asked questions