A chess game leaves two kinds of evidence: the board, which holds one moment, and the scoresheet, which holds the whole game. ScanChess reads both. Point the camera at a board and you get the position as FEN; photograph the sheet and you get every move as PGN. This page is mostly about the first, because it is the one people do not expect.
Board photo → FEN
Hold the phone above the board with all sixty-four squares in the frame and upload the picture. The vision model works out which piece is on which square and returns a FEN — the one-line description of a position that every chess program understands — with the position loaded onto a board on screen. Printed diagrams and screenshots work as well as real boards.
Costs 1 credit. What it is for:
- A game in progress with no scoresheet. A park game, a club skittles game, a position someone set up to argue about.
- "What should I have played here?" Paste the FEN into the Lichess or Chess.com analysis board and the engine answers; the question becomes a link instead of a description. There is a direct button to analyze on Lichess.
- A puzzle from a book or a screen. Photograph it, then solve it on a board that moves.
- A position you want to keep or send to a coach.
Check it before you trust it. Squares the model was unsure about are highlighted, and a piece on a badly lit square can be misread. Open the result in the board editor to move pieces, set the side to move and castling rights, and copy the corrected FEN — all free. What is FEN? explains each field of the string.
A board photo is not a scoresheet scan: it gives you one position, not the moves that led to it. If you have the sheet, scan that instead.
Scoresheet → PGN
A photo of the scoresheet returns every move in order, as standard notation and as a PGN file, checked against the rules as it is read. This is what you want after a tournament round or a club game: the complete record, replayable and analyzable. It costs 2 credits, whatever the number of pages.
That path has its own pages: Chess scoresheet scanner for what the tool is and costs, and Convert a chess scoresheet to PGN for the process end to end.
What happens after either scan
Replay it. A scanned game loads onto an interactive board: step forward and back, or jump to any move. This is the fastest way to confirm the transcription matches the game you remember — and it is free, as is everything after recognition.
Fix what is colored. In a scoresheet scan, illegal moves are red and uncertain ones amber with the legal alternatives to pick from, and the pencil button beside a move corrects it — Scan chess notation explains how. In a board scan, you move the pieces on screen.
Fill in who played. Names, event, date and result become the PGN tags, which is what makes a library searchable later.
Send it somewhere. Export the PGN or copy the FEN into Lichess or Chess.com for engine analysis. A Lichess import gives you a link anyone can open — usually the easiest way to show a coach.
Keep it. Saved games sync across the web and iOS, and the whole library exports as a single PGN file from your account settings.
Which one you want
| You have | Use | Result |
|---|---|---|
| A board mid-game, no sheet | Board photo | One position, FEN |
| A diagram or a screenshot | Board photo | One position, FEN |
| A finished scoresheet | Scoresheet scan | Full game, PGN |
| A stack of old sheets | Scoresheet scan, in batches | An archive — see Digitize your chess games |
Related
- What is FEN? — the position format, field by field
- How to share a chess game online — PGN, FEN and links, and when to use each
- Chess scoresheet scanner — the tool, its platforms and its price
A new account's 10 credits go furthest here: ten board positions, or five full games, before you spend anything.