Download and usage
Note
Stockfish is a command line program. You may want to use it in your own UCI-compatible chess GUI.
Developers should communicate with Stockfish via the UCI protocol.
- First download Stockfish. Stockfish itself is completely free with all its options.
- Next, download a GUI (Graphical User Interface) as it is needed to conveniently use Stockfish. There are multiple free and commercial GUIs available. Different GUI's have more or less advanced features, for example, an opening explorer or automatic game analysis.
- Now Stockfish must be made available to the GUI. Install in a Chess GUI explains how this can be done for some of them. If a different GUI is used, please read the GUI's manual.
- Ultimately, change the default settings of Stockfish to get the best possible analysis.
https://stockfishchess.org/download/
Binaries are also available on GitHub: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/releases/latest
- Navigate to our releases
- Expand the Assets
- Download your preferred binary
Note
We only recommend downloading from the official GitHub releases.
Websites such as Abrok are third parties, so we cannot guarantee the safety, reliability, and availability of those binaries because we are not responsible for them.
In order of preference:
- x86-64-vnni512
- x86-64-vnni256
- x86-64-avx512
- AMD: Zen 4 and newer (e.g. Ryzen 9 7950X).
- x86-64-avxvnni
- x86-64-bmi2
- Intel: 4th Gen and newer (e.g. i7 4770K, i5 13600K).
- AMD: Zen 3 (e.g. Ryzen 5 5600X).
- x86-64-avx2
- AMD: Zen, Zen+, and Zen 2 (e.g. Ryzen 5 1600, Ryzen 5 3600).
- x86-64-sse41-popcnt
- x86-64
- x86-32
A chess graphical user interface allows you to interact with the engine in a user-friendly way. Popular GUIs are:
| DroidFish (source code) | SmallFish |
|---|---|
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| Chessis | |
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| Chessbase | Hiarcs |
|---|---|
 |
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| Shredder | |
 |
Note
If you don't want to download a GUI, you can also use some of the available online interfaces. Keep in mind that you might not get the latest version of Stockfish, settings might be limited and speed will be slower.
|
Lichess Change settings |
Chess.com Change settings |
|---|---|
 |
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| ChessMonitor | Chessify |
 |
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| DecodeChess | |
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Engines tab > Add new > Install Stockfish
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Engines > Install New Engine...
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Select and open the Stockfish executable
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Engine > Choose engine...
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Select and open the Stockfish executable
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Log in with Lichess
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Click the Install Stockfish button
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Go to the Lichess analysis page
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Select the engine from the engine list
Note
Please check our FAQ guide to set the optimal settings.
Note
First uncheck these two settings
Right click in the engine name > Configure
Open the Engine menu
Select Stockfish in the engines tab
or open the engine settings in the Analysis board
Open the engine settings
Click the settings button in the analysis page
