FOUNDATION OF LICHESS

Lichess was founded in 2010 by French programmer Thibault Duplessis. The software running Lichess and the design are mostly open source under the AGPL license and other free and non-free licenses. The name Lichess is a "combination of live/light/libre and chess".

On February 11, 2015, an official Lichess mobile app was released for Android devices. An app for mobile devices running iOS was released on March 4, 2015.

As of April 28, 2022, lichess.org had a global rank of 683 at Alexa, with most of its visitors coming from the United States, India, and China. According to Alexa rank, Lichess is ranked second only to Chess.com as one of the most popular internet chess servers in the world.

In April 2021, the United States Chess Federation announced its official endorsement of Lichess's fair play methodology that automatically detects obvious cheaters based on engine move matching analysis.