Credits never expire.
Every figure above is what the credits can get per feature.
Payment safe and secure with world leader Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe - they never touch this site.
stripeFor purchases of credits on playstockfish.com
Credits are non-refundable, and they never expire. Once bought they stay on your account until you spend them, however long that takes.
A credit is site credit for the paid features on playstockfish.com, such as coaching, game analysis and the other tools that use AI. It is not money, has no cash value, and cannot be exchanged for cash.
Credits are sold as digital content that is available immediately, so a purchase is final and is not refundable, whether the credits have been spent or not. If a purchase was charged in error - a double charge, or credits that never arrived - contact us and we will put it right.
Credits do not expire. They stay on your account for as long as the account exists, and they are not reduced by leaving them unused. Deleting your account gives up any credits still on it.
Credits belong to the account that bought them. They cannot be transferred, sold or shared between accounts, and they cannot be reinstated on a new account.
Prices, pack sizes and what each feature costs in credits can change. A change never takes credits off an account you have already paid for - a balance bought at one price stays yours in full.
Payments are taken by Stripe. Card details go straight to Stripe and are never held by this site. Your card statement shows the charge under our Stripe account name.
If a payment has been taken and the credits have not arrived, or anything else about an order looks wrong, use the contact page and we will sort it out.
These credit terms are part of our Terms of Service.
Last updated: October 15, 2026
The short version. We collect what we need to run the site, your account and your purchases, and no more. We do not sell your information and we do not use advertising networks. We use Google Analytics to see how the site is used: in the EU, the UK and Switzerland only if you accept it, and anywhere you can turn it off from Cookie Settings. Otherwise the only cookies we set are the ones that keep you signed in.
Playstockfish.com (the “site”) is built and run by Edgeway Software (“we”, “us”). This policy explains what information the site collects, why, who else handles it, how long it is kept, and the choices you have. It sits alongside our Terms of Service.
The chess engines run inside your own browser, so the moves you play against Stockfish and our other engines are not sent to us while you play.
Every visitor, signed in or not, is counted anonymously so we can see which pages are used. For each page view we record:
We also use Google Analytics to understand how visitors find and use the site. When a page loads, your browser sends Google the page address, the referring site, your browser and device type, screen size, language and your IP address, from which Google works out an approximate location. Google Analytics does not log or store IP addresses.
Google Analytics cookies let Google recognise a returning browser. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, they are set only if you press Accept in the cookie bar; until you do, or if you decline, Google receives only cookieless page-view signals that cannot recognise you on a later visit. Elsewhere they are set from your first visit, and you can turn them off by choosing Decline. Either way you can change your choice at any time from Cookie Settings at the bottom of every page. We never turn on Google’s advertising features.
Some features can be tried a few times without an account. To count those free uses, we keep your IP address together with how many times each of those features has been used from it. The record is deleted automatically 30 days after the last free use from that address.
An account needs an email address, a username and a password — or a Google account, if you sign in with Google. For each account we keep:
The IP address an account is created from is also checked against other accounts, so that the free credits for new accounts go to one person once, as the Terms of Service describe.
While you are signed in, the site keeps the following on your account so that it is there on any device:
Payments are handled by Stripe on Stripe’s own checkout page. Your card details go straight to Stripe and never reach our servers. We give Stripe your email address and the pack you chose, and we keep a record of each purchase: the pack, the credits, the amount and currency, Stripe’s payment reference and receipt, and the date. Stripe handles your payment details under its own privacy policy.
When you use Ask AI in Coaching or Stockfish Talks in Play Stockfish, we send an AI provider what it needs to answer: the question you typed, the position and moves, and the engine’s evaluation. The request goes from our servers, so the provider does not see your IP address, and we do not send your email address, username or any other account details. We do not keep your questions or the answers on our servers.
The provider is whichever one we have switched on at the time, chosen from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, xAI and DeepSeek, and it handles the request under its own terms and privacy policy. Please do not put personal information in your questions. Spoken commentary is produced by Fish Audio, which receives only the text of the line being spoken.
We only email you about your account: the link to confirm your address, password-reset links you ask for, and a receipt when you buy credits. We may also email account holders about significant changes to this policy or the Terms of Service. We do not send newsletters or marketing email, and we never give your address to anyone else to send you any. Our mail is sent through Amazon WorkMail.
We set no advertising cookies. Google Analytics cookies are described below. The cookies we set ourselves are needed to sign in. They are encrypted, and scripts on the page cannot read them:
Google Analytics sets _ga and _ga_<ID>, which tell a returning browser apart from a new one and last up to 2 years. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland they are set only after you press Accept. Choosing Cookie Settings and then Decline removes them. Your choice is remembered in your browser’s local storage as psf_analytics_consent.
A separate sign-in cookie is used on the private administration page, which is not part of the public site. Google’s sign-in page, Stripe’s checkout page and Cloudflare’s bot check may set their own cookies, under their own policies.
The site also uses your browser’s local storage to remember things on your own device: your settings, your puzzle and opening progress, your saved analyses, the Chess.com or Lichess username you last imported from and, while you are signed out, your Estimate My ELO results and finished games. This stays on your device and is not sent to us — except that when you sign in, your puzzle progress, results and games are copied to your account. You can clear it at any time from your browser settings.
We do not sell or rent your information, and we do not share it for advertising. We use a small number of service providers to run the site, and each sees only what its job needs:
We may also disclose information when the law requires it, or where it is needed to protect the safety, rights or property of our users, the public or ourselves, including to deal with fraud or security problems. If the site is ever taken over by someone else, the information would pass to them and stay covered by this policy.
Some pages show banner ads that we upload and serve from our own servers. They involve no ad networks, no cookies and no tracking, and we do not record who sees or clicks them. An ad may link to another website, which has its own privacy policy.
Depending on where you live — for example in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or California — you may have further rights: to access, correct or delete your information, to receive a copy of it, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to complain to your data protection authority. Email us to use any of them; we will not treat you differently for doing so. We do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising.
Where the law asks for a legal basis, we use your information to provide the account, features and purchases you ask for (contract); to keep the site secure, prevent abuse of free uses and credits, and understand how the site is used (legitimate interests); to set Google Analytics cookies in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland (consent, which you can withdraw from Cookie Settings at any time); and to keep purchase records (legal obligation).
The whole site is served over HTTPS. Passwords are stored as salted one-way hashes, sign-in cookies are encrypted and signed, emailed links work only once and are stored only in hashed form, and card details never touch our servers. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a password you do not use anywhere else, and tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account.
The site is not directed to children under 13, and you must be at least 13 to create an account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.
The site is run from the United States, and the information described here is stored and processed there. AI providers may process requests in other countries — DeepSeek, for example, is based in China.
We update this policy when the site changes. The current version is always on this page with its “Last updated” date, and for significant changes we will give notice on the site, or by email to account holders, before they take effect.
Questions or requests about your privacy? Email support@edgewaysoft.com or visit our Contact page.
Last updated: October 15, 2026