Overview
The Chess.com Published Data API gives you read-only access to public player profiles, game archives, leaderboards, and puzzle data from one of the world's largest chess platforms. No authentication is required — all data is publicly available and returned as JSON. It's a perfect beginner project for building chess stat trackers or analyzing game history.
Beginner Tip
Monthly game archives can be very large; use the archive list endpoint first to get available months, then fetch only the specific month you need.
Measurement Record
What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.
- Request
- GET https://api.chess.com/pub/player/hikaru
- Result
- HTTP 200 · application/json · 611 bytes · compressed
- Response time
- 31 ms (median of 3) · fastest 28 ms
- Transport
- TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 · certificate issued by Google Trust Services
- Browser CORS
- Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
- Served by
- cloudflare
- Recorded
- 2026-08-10
Fields Returned
Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.
| Field | Type | Value received |
|---|---|---|
| avatar | string (url) | https://images.chesscomfiles.com/uploads/v1/u… |
| player_id | integer | 15448422 |
| @id | string (url) | https://api.chess.com/pub/player/hikaru |
| url | string (url) | https://www.chess.com/member/Hikaru |
| name | string | Hikaru Nakamura |
| username | string | hikaru |
| title | string | GM |
| followers | integer | 1404811 |
| country | string (url) | https://api.chess.com/pub/country/US |
| location | string | Florida |
| last_online | integer | 1786366884 |
| joined | integer | 1389043258 |
| status | string | premium |
| is_streamer | boolean | true |
Captured Response
Captured from a real request to https://api.chess.com/pub/player/hikaru on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.
{
"avatar": "https://images.chesscomfiles.com/uploads/v1/user/15448422.88c010c1.200x200o.3c5619f5441e.png",
"player_id": 15448422,
"@id": "https://api.chess.com/pub/player/hikaru",
"url": "https://www.chess.com/member/Hikaru",
"name": "Hikaru Nakamura",
"username": "hikaru",
"title": "GM",
"followers": 1404811,
"country": "https://api.chess.com/pub/country/US",
"location": "Florida",
"last_online": 1786366884,
"joined": 1389043258,
"status": "premium",
"is_streamer": true,
"…": "(4 more fields)"
} Implementation Example
Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.
const url = "https://api.chess.com/pub/player/hikaru/stats";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data); What Can You Build?
Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.
How This API Fails
We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.
{
"code": 0,
"message": "Data provider not found for key \"/pub/player/hikaru/apisscore-nonexistent-path\"."
} Common Errors & Troubleshooting
Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.
Measured Score Breakdown
Live HTTP request to the API endpoint
Fully tested on Aug 10, 2026
Technical Specifications
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