Find the best next move in any position
Put a position on the board and Stockfish works out your next move: the strongest moves for the side to play, drawn as arrows, with 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, colour-coded from best to worst, 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 it is best, not just that it is.
- Explode the position to see every candidate move and its evaluation at once, when you want the whole picture rather than the top few.
See where each piece belongs
Square scores go a step further than a single best move. Pick a piece and the engine scores it on every square of the board. The squares it can actually move to are tinted by how good that move would be; the rest show what the position would be worth if the piece stood there instead.
It is 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 - set it 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 on every site and at every club.
Keep going
Analysis board
The full board: arrows, evaluation and position tools.
Game review
Review a whole game and get every mistake marked.
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: one line of text that describes a position - where every piece stands, whose move it is, the castling rights and the en passant square. 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 objectively strongest move, 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 to use, with no account and nothing to install.