Chess Caddy / Guides / Free tournament software

Free chess tournament software: an honest comparison

What each tool costs, what it runs on, whether it can file rated results — and which ones are quietly dead. Written by people who make one of them, and clearly labelled as such.

Last updated: 2 September 2026 · Rules verified against the current FIDE and US Chess texts on 25 July 2026.

Most chess clubs need three things from tournament software: it pairs the rounds, it prints something you can pin to a wall, and it does not cost more than the entry fees. About fifteen tools clear that bar. The hard part is working out which one fits, because the landscape has moved and most of the advice online has not.

This page lists what each tool runs on, what it costs, whether it can file rated results, and whether it works offline — then tells you which one to use.

The comparison table

Every price below was read off the vendor's own live pricing page in July 2026. Treat it as dated rather than permanent. Anything we could not confirm from a first-party source is marked unverified.

Two tools are missing on purpose: CircleChess and PLAYINGA publish no pricing at all, and we will not guess. Also note that chessmanager.online is a different, name-adjacent operation from chessmanager.com.

What has changed since most comparisons were written

Five things, and between them they invalidate a good share of the advice on forums and in older comparison articles.

Swiss Perfect is dead. It was the default recommendation for a decade. The vendor stopped selling it — described as no longer available for purchase by 2021 — and swissperfect.com now hosts an unrelated personal blog by a teenager in Valencia. If a forum thread tells you to download Swiss Perfect, that thread is stale.

SwissSys changed hands and changed address. After 36 years, Thad Suits sold it. swisssys.com now redirects to chessroster.com/swisssys. The software is alive and still $99; it is every article citing the old domain that is out of date.

WinTD is not FIDE-endorsed. Several comparison pages list it as though it were. WinTD's own site says it has applied for endorsement. That matters if you are running a FIDE-rated event, and not at all if you are not.

The pairing engines diverged in 2026. JaVaFo, for years the reference implementation of the FIDE Dutch system, has been stuck at version 2.2 since September 2018. Meanwhile bbpPairings shipped v6.0.0 on 1 February 2026 with the rewritten 2026 Dutch rules, and Swiss-Manager activated Otto Milvang's new Gacrux engine on 15 April 2026. Our Swiss guide covers what changed.

FIDE endorsement is point-in-time, not a rolling certificate. A program is endorsed at a specific version. Vega is endorsed at 7.6.0 and ships 12.1.2. That is normal, but it does mean "FIDE endorsed" on a marketing page is a weaker claim than it sounds. Check the version number against FIDE's own list.

The tools, one by one

Swiss-Manager

Strengths. The most widely deployed arbiter tool in Europe, exports to FIDE and a long list of national federations, and publishes straight to Chess-Results.com. New Gacrux pairing engine as of April 2026. Limitations. Windows only. €150, or €75 for the light edition. Knockout only arrived in November 2024, and the interface is dense. Best for: federation and FIDE-rated events in Europe.

Vega

Strengths. The only serious desktop tool running on Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi, and it is free on Linux. Broad rating-report support including FIDE, US Chess and ECF. Limitations. €50 on Windows and Mac. Endorsement attaches to version 7.6.0, not the current release. No knockout. Best for: arbiters not on Windows, and anyone wanting a capable desktop tool for nothing.

SwissSys

Strengths. One of the two tools US directors actually use. Produces the rating-report files US Chess expects, plus FIDE and CFC, with decades of rulebook handling behind it. Limitations. $99, Windows only, and now under new ownership at a new domain. Best for: a US club or scholastic organiser running rated events regularly.

WinTD

Strengths. The other US incumbent, and the only paid desktop option with a genuine Mac build. $90, with strong US Chess pairing and prize-distribution logic. Limitations. Not FIDE-endorsed — it has applied. Its US Chess export is described by resellers rather than confirmed first-hand, so treat that claim as unverified. Best for: US directors on a Mac.

ChessManager

Strengths. Polished interface, a usable free tier, live public standings players can follow on their phones, and TRF, PGN and CSV export. Limitations. $97/year for the paid tier, needs a connection throughout, no knockout. Best for: organisers who want players and parents watching standings update live.

Tornelo

Strengths. The strongest option for online and hybrid events, with real anti-cheating and arbiter tooling. Free to run; the AUD $0.25 plus 2.75% fee applies only when you charge entry. TRF and TRFx export. Limitations. Entirely online — a Wi-Fi failure stops the tournament. Best for: online, hybrid and ticketed events.

Chess Nut

Strengths. Modern and quick to learn, with a free tier that covers a small club night and US Chess plus TRFx export on the paid plans. Limitations. The rating export sits behind the paywall — exactly the feature a rated-event organiser needs — so the free tier is effectively a trial. $8/month, Pro $14/month. Best for: a club that would rather pay monthly.

ChessPairings.org

Strengths. Genuinely free with no tiers and no upsell, and it exports both TRF-16 and TRF-25 — unusually generous for a free browser tool. Limitations. Online only, no knockout. Best for: a club with reliable venue Wi-Fi that wants free Swiss pairing and TRF files.

Chess-Results.com

Strengths. The de facto public archive of tournament results worldwide, free, and where players expect to find your crosstable. Limitations. It is a publishing platform, not pairing software — it does not pair rounds at all. Best for: publishing results from Swiss-Manager, which uploads to it directly.

Coronate

Strengths. Free, open source under MPL-2.0, runs in the browser, stores data locally and needs no account — the closest thing to Chess Caddy's model that exists. Limitations. Paused since 2021, and no rating export. Best for: someone who wants a free, private, offline tool on a laptop and is comfortable with unmaintained software.

Chess Caddy

Strengths. Free to run events, with no ads, no per-event charge and no account needed to pair a tournament. Runs in the browser and keeps working offline after the first load; there is an iOS app in the App Store, and Android is in closed testing. Swiss, round robin, knockout and Bughouse — including a random-partner scramble, which nothing else here offers. Handles byes, forfeits, withdrawals and manual pairing overrides in Swiss, prints pairing sheets and wall charts, and exports a tournament as a JSON file you actually download. Limitations. No rating report of any kind, no FIDE endorsement, a simplified Swiss rather than the Dutch algorithm, three tiebreaks, and its Buchholz excludes forfeits — matching neither the FIDE nor the US Chess rule (the tiebreak guide explains why). Data lives in browser local storage, so export a backup. Publishing a public results page is free but asks for an email sign-in, and the club page — permanent address, tournament archive, rating ladder — is a $2.99/month subscription. The site uses Google Analytics, so "no ads" is true and "no tracking" would not be. Best for: unrated club nights, school clubs, casual and corporate events, and Bughouse.

Rated events: what actually has a hard requirement

This is where free tools stop, and where most comparison pages go vague. The two federations work completely differently.

US Chess has no approved-software list. No certification, no whitelist, no vendor gate. Submission goes through MUIR, which takes your event as three DBase (DBF) files, and any tool emitting valid DBFs will work. Rating fees run at roughly $0.30 per rated game with a $3 minimum per event. SwissSys and WinTD are what US directors use because they produce those files reliably — convenience, not permission.

FIDE does have a hard requirement. A FIDE-rated event must be paired with a FIDE Endorsed Pairing Program and submitted in Krause format, which rules out every free browser tool here. The two file worlds also do not mix: US Chess will not process TRF files for US submission, so TRF export does not help a US-rated event.

Worth knowing before you spend money: on the US Chess directors' forums, pairing is a solved problem and paperwork is the battleground — whole pages of the index are MUIR submission problems, not arguments about pairing quality. Buy for the submission workflow, not the algorithm.

Working offline (and what that really means)

Search for an offline chess pairing app and half the results are apps for playing chess without a connection — a different thing entirely. What an organiser means is: the tournament keeps running when the venue Wi-Fi drops.

Being precise about who this distinguishes you from matters, because the honest answer is narrower than the marketing suggests:

• Offline is a real difference against the web tools — Tornelo, ChessManager, Chess Nut, ChessHost and CaissaChess all need a live connection, so a church hall with one bar of signal is a genuine risk.
• It is not a difference against SwissSys, WinTD, Swiss-Manager, Vega or ChessArbiter Pro. Those are installed desktop applications and have always worked offline. It also explains why venue Wi-Fi complaints barely appear in US forums: the US incumbents were never online to begin with.
• Nobody offline is unique. Sharly Chess ships a free open-source offline arbiter app, and Coronate is free, offline and account-free, though paused since 2021. Chess Caddy's claim is the combination — free, no account needed to run an event, offline, multi-format, Bughouse and on a phone — not offline on its own.

One caveat for every browser tool storing data locally, ours included: local storage is private but fragile. Clearing browsing data, an incognito window or iOS reclaiming storage will take your tournament with it. Export a backup after every round.

How to actually choose

A club night with 8–30 players, unrated. Almost anything works, so optimise for how little it gets in your way. A free browser tool — Chess Caddy, ChessPairings.org or ChessManager's free tier — is the sensible start, and you can move up later. Do not pay $99 for an unrated Tuesday. Near eight players, consider a round robin instead; our rounds guide does the arithmetic.

A national or FIDE arbiter. The decision is made for you. Swiss-Manager in Europe; Vega if you are not on Windows; ChessArbiter Pro in Poland. Check the endorsed version number, not just the badge.

A scholastic coach. The deciding factors are the school laptop's operating system and whether events are US Chess rated. Rated means SwissSys or WinTD. Unrated on Chromebooks means a browser tool. Printed pairing sheets and a wall chart matter more with children than live standings.

A one-off casual or corporate event. You want zero setup and no accounts for people who will never come back, so a free browser tool with no sign-up wins on friction alone. If the format is Bughouse, the field narrows to one.

The real competitor to all of this is inertia. If your workflow already produces correct crosstables, keep it.

What you need → what to buy

Do you have to be a licensed arbiter to use this?

No. This comes up constantly in forums and deserves a straight answer.

Anyone can organise a chess tournament. There is no licence to run a club night, a school competition or an office event, and no certification exists that you are failing to hold. Every tool on this page can be opened by anybody, and standard Swiss principles — pair on score, never repeat an opponent, balance colours — are not proprietary.

Certification and federation affiliation are needed only when you want results officially rated, because that is the body that maintains the ratings and it decides who may submit and in what format. Until then, run the event. Our FAQ covers the neighbouring questions — byes, withdrawals, whether you need clocks.

Frequently asked questions