♟️ Lichess Chess Users Scraper

🚀 Export full Lichess player profiles in seconds. Multi-variant ratings, lifetime game counts, training scores, real names, and streaming links. No API key, no OAuth, no scraping HTML.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-12 · 📊 50 fields per record · ♟️ 12 chess variants · 🌍 Lichess: 14M+ registered users · 🔓 Free open-source platform

The Lichess Chess Users Scraper pulls full public player profiles from Lichess via its open public API. Pass a list of usernames and the Actor returns 50 fields per record, including ratings and game counts across 12 chess variants (bullet, blitz, rapid, classical, correspondence, ultra-bullet, chess960, king of the hill, three-check, antichess, atomic, horde, racing kings, crazyhouse), training scores (puzzle, storm, racer, streak), lifetime play time and TV time, real name, country flag, FIDE and USCF ratings, bio text, profile links, GM/IM/NM titles, patron status, and Twitch/YouTube streaming channels.

Lichess is the world's leading free and open-source chess platform with 14 million+ registered users, including most current top grandmasters playing under aliases. The official API returns rich profile data without authentication, making this Actor ideal for chess analytics, coaching platforms, tournament management, streaming dashboards, and esports research.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Chess coaches, esports analysts, tournament organizers, chess content creators, streaming dashboards, training-app developers, chess data scientists	Player rating dashboards, GM scouting, tournament seeding, streamer aggregation, training-tool integration, multi-variant strength comparisons, chess statistics research

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📋 What the Lichess Chess Users Scraper does

One simple workflow with rich output:

• 📋 Batch profile lookup. Pass any list of Lichess usernames and pull each profile in one run.
• 🎯 12 variant ratings. Bullet, blitz, rapid, classical, correspondence, ultra-bullet, chess960, king of the hill, three-check, antichess, atomic, horde, racing kings, crazyhouse.
• 🧩 Training scores. Puzzle rating and games, storm score, racer score, streak score.
• 📺 Streaming links. Twitch and YouTube channels for streamer aggregation.

Each record includes a stable user ID, profile URL, title (GM/IM/FM/NM/CM/WGM/etc.), patron flag, verified flag, profile flair emoji, account creation and last-seen timestamps, bio text, real name, country flag, FIDE and USCF ratings, profile links, lifetime play time in seconds, TV-watched time, total games (all, rated, win, loss, draw, import), per-variant ratings and game counts, and currently-playing game URL when the player is online.

💡 Why it matters: scraping per-player HTML pages on Lichess is fragile and slow. The public API is fast and stable, but most users only want clean structured rows for spreadsheets and dashboards. This Actor takes a list of usernames and returns a flat table ready to load into BI tools, training apps, or tournament-management systems.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded chess player dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
usernames	string[]	["thibault"]	List of Lichess usernames to scrape. Case-insensitive.
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.

Example: world-class GM profiles in one run.

{
    "usernames": ["DrNykterstein", "penguingm1", "Hikaru", "fabianoCaruana", "Anish_Giri"],
    "maxItems": 50
}

Example: full team roster for a chess club.

{
    "usernames": ["thibault", "ornicar", "veloce", "isaacly", "lichess-tools"],
    "maxItems": 100
}

⚠️ Good to Know: closed or disabled accounts return minimal data with a closed: true flag. Variant ratings with zero games show null. The Lichess API rate-limits aggressive callers, so the Actor paces requests at 200ms per user.

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📊 Output

Each player record contains up to 50 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🆔 id	string	"thibault"
🔗 url	string	"https://lichess.org/@/thibault"
👤 username	string	"thibault"
🏆 title	string | null	"GM"
💎 patron	boolean | null	true
✅ verified	boolean | null	true
🎨 flair	string | null	"nature.seedling"
📅 createdAt	ISO 8601 | null	"2010-11-22T08:48:00.000Z"
👀 seenAt	ISO 8601 | null	"2026-05-12T16:27:49.437Z"
📝 bio	string | null	"I turn coffee into bugs."
👤 realName	string | null	"Thibault Duplessis"
🌍 country	string | null	"FR"
🏆 fideRating	number | null	2551
🏆 uscfRating	number | null	2616
🔗 links	string | null	"github.com/ornicar"
⏱️ playTimeSeconds	number | null	6501435
📺 tvTimeSeconds	number | null	18024
🎮 gamesAll	number | null	23585
🎮 gamesRated	number | null	21193
🏆 gamesWin	number | null	11276
❌ gamesLoss	number | null	11268
🤝 gamesDraw	number | null	1036
📥 gamesImport	number | null	73
🔫 bulletRating	number | null	1785
🔫 bulletGames	number | null	7482
⚡ blitzRating	number | null	1805
⚡ blitzGames	number | null	11612
🏃 rapidRating	number | null	1907
🏃 rapidGames	number | null	894
🐢 classicalRating	number | null	1858
🐢 classicalGames	number | null	25
📮 correspondenceRating	number | null	1942
🚀 ultraBulletRating	number | null	1688
🚀 ultraBulletGames	number | null	3
🎲 chess960Rating	number | null	1551
🎲 chess960Games	number | null	348
👑 kingOfTheHillRating	number | null	1744
➕ threeCheckRating	number | null	1728
🔄 antichessRating	number | null	1465
💥 atomicRating	number | null	1633
🐴 hordeRating	number | null	1592
🏎️ racingKingsRating	number | null	1552
🤪 crazyhouseRating	number | null	1567
🧩 puzzleRating	number | null	1986
🧩 puzzleGames	number | null	5873
⚡ stormScore	number | null	33
🏁 racerScore	number | null	51
🔥 streakScore	number | null	33
📺 twitchChannel	string | null	"https://www.twitch.tv/ornicar2"
📺 youtubeChannel	string | null	"https://youtube.com/channel/..."
🎮 playing	string | null	"https://lichess.org/R8X0l6Ym/black"
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-12T16:30:27.977Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
♟️	12 variant ratings. Every chess flavor Lichess supports, including chess960, atomic, and horde.
🧩	Training scores included. Puzzle, storm, racer, and streak in one row alongside ratings.
📺	Streamer-ready. Twitch and YouTube channels pre-extracted for aggregator dashboards.
🏆	External ratings. FIDE and USCF numbers when the user has set them in their profile.
⏱️	Lifetime play time. Total seconds of chess played and time spent on Lichess TV.
🔓	Open-source ecosystem. Lichess is free and open-source; this Actor respects the API rate limits.
🚫	No login or OAuth. Public endpoints only, no token management.

📊 Lichess hosts the world's largest free chess community with 14M+ registered users and millions of daily games played.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ Lichess Chess Users Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	Any Lichess username	Live per run	usernames, maxItems	⚡ 2 min
Paid chess analytics APIs	$49+/month	Subset	Daily	Vendor-defined	⏳ Hours
Manual HTML scraping of profile pages	Free	One profile at a time	Manual	None	🐢 Days
Single-profile API calls in code	Free	DIY	Live	Code-defined	🛠️ Hours

Pick this Actor when you need clean profile rows for many players at once without writing your own batch pipeline.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the Lichess Chess Users Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Enter a list of Lichess usernames and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor walk the usernames list.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

♟️ Chess Coaches & Academies Student progress dashboards across variants Rating-based homework assignments Cohort comparisons by puzzle rating Online presence tracking via seenAt	🏆 Tournament Organizers Pre-tournament seeding by blitz or rapid rating Anti-cheat baselines via game counts Player verification with title flag Bracket pairings using FIDE rating
📺 Streamer Aggregation Live-streamer lists with Twitch/YouTube links Rating-leaderboard widgets for stream overlays Cross-platform discovery feeds Chess-content directories	📊 Esports & Research Multi-variant strength comparison studies Rating distribution histograms Improvement curves by training score Geographic mapping by country flag

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Empirical datasets for papers, thesis work, and coursework Longitudinal studies tracking changes across snapshots Reproducible research with cited, versioned data pulls Classroom exercises on data analysis and ethical scraping	🎨 Personal and creative Side projects, portfolio demos, and indie app launches Data visualizations, dashboards, and infographics Content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters Hobbyist collections and personal trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reporting and accountability projects Advocacy campaigns backed by public-interest data Community-run databases for local issues Investigative journalism on public records	🧪 Experimentation Prototype AI and machine-learning pipelines with real data Validate product-market hypotheses before engineering spend Train small domain-specific models on niche corpora Test dashboard concepts with live input

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🔌 Automating Lichess Chess Users Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Daily refreshes keep coaching dashboards and tournament rosters in sync automatically.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Provide a list of Lichess usernames, click Start, and the Actor calls the public /api/user/{username} endpoint for each one, paces requests to respect rate limits, and emits a clean structured record per profile.

🏆 What chess titles can appear?

Lichess displays titles such as GM, IM, FM, CM, NM, WGM, WIM, WFM, WCM, WNM, LM (Lichess Master) and BOT (for bot accounts). The title field reflects whatever the player has set after verification.

♟️ Why are some variant ratings null?

A null value means the player has not played that variant yet. Lichess assigns a provisional rating only after a few games in each variant.

📺 Why is country sometimes a flag string and sometimes null?

Players can pick any flag from the Lichess flag list. The field returns the raw flag code (e.g. FR, AQ, or fun choices like AQ for Antarctica). It is null when the user has not set one.

🔁 How often is the data refreshed?

Every run pulls live profile data. Ratings update after each rated game, so the seenAt and rating fields can move minute-by-minute for active players.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor on any cron interval (hourly, daily, weekly) and keep a downstream database in sync.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

Lichess publishes all profile data via its public open-source API. Profiles are publicly visible by default. Review the Lichess terms of service before mass redistribution.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

Lichess is licensed AGPL and the API is permissive for non-abusive use. Public profile data may be used for analytics, dashboards, and research. Respect the Lichess API terms regarding rate limits and attribution.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to use this Actor?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and gives you access to scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails or gets interrupted?

Apify automatically retries transient errors. If a run still fails, you can inspect the log in the Runs tab, fix the input, and re-run. Partial datasets from failed runs are preserved so you never lose progress.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

Lichess Chess Users Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe chess data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh chess data into your coaching app, or alert your team in Slack.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more games, esports, and community-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Lichess.org or its volunteer maintainers. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available profile data is collected.