Find the best next move in any position
Put a position on the board and Stockfish works out your next move. It draws the strongest moves for the side to play as arrows, and shows the evaluation and the line behind each one.
Try a sample position → White to move, from Légal’s trap. The engine finds the shot straight away.
How to find the best next move
- Set up the position. Place the pieces in the board editor, choose whose move it is, and set castling rights and en passant if they matter. Or paste a FEN into the box above.
- Read the arrows. The engine's top moves are drawn on the board, from green for the best to red for the weakest, and the evaluation updates as it searches deeper.
- Follow the line. Each candidate comes with the moves the engine expects next, so you can see why the engine rates it as it does.
- Explode the position to see every legal move and its evaluation at once, when the top few aren't enough.
See where each piece belongs
Ideal placement shows where a piece would do the most good if it could stand anywhere. Pick a piece and the engine scores it on every empty square of the board, as if you could lift it up and put it down there. Every square is scored with your opponent to move, so a square only scores well if the piece can stand its ground there. The best square shows 0.0 and the others how much worse they are, coloured like the engine's lines, from green to red.
Once you know where a piece belongs, the plan is getting it there. It is also a quick way to answer the questions a best move does not: where a badly placed knight wants to go, or whether a bishop is doing anything where it stands.
Where positions come from
- A puzzle you could not solve, or one whose answer you do not understand.
- A diagram in a book, a magazine or a video, which you can set up in the board editor.
- A position shared as a FEN on a forum or in a chat.
- A moment from your own game. For that, review the whole game instead, and the report marks the moves where it went wrong.
Use it to learn, not to play. Taking engine help in a game you are playing, online or over the board, is cheating under the rules of Chess.com, Lichess and FIDE.
Keep going
Analysis board
The full board: arrows, evaluation and position tools.
Stockfish online
More on the engine behind the arrows.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find the best next move in a chess position?
Set the position up in the board editor or paste its FEN, then open it on the analysis board. Stockfish starts searching immediately and draws its best moves on the board as arrows, with the evaluation beside them.
What is a FEN?
Forsyth-Edwards Notation, a single line of text that describes a position: where every piece stands, whose move it is, the castling rights, the en passant square and two move counters. Most chess sites can copy a position as a FEN, usually from a share or export menu.
Is the best move always the right one to play?
It is the strongest move the engine can find, but not always the most practical. A move that only wins after a long forced line can be much harder to play than a slightly weaker, simpler one. The evaluations of the other candidates show how much you give up by choosing one of them.
Is it free?
Yes. The board editor and the engine are free, run in your browser and work without an account.