Chess Variant Engines

Fairy-Stockfish

Strongest open source chess variant engine in many variants. Configurable for custom variants and trainable with NNUE (neural networks). Used by many chess variant websites such as Lichess, Pychess, Lishogi, etc.

Chess Shogi Xiangqi Janggi Makruk Crazyhouse Atomic Antichess S-Chess Duck Bughouse Custom variants
Download Fairy-Stockfish

Sjaak II

Configurable open source chess variant engine supporting a large variety of chess variants. Used to be one of the strongest variant engines, but it is mostly superseded by Fairy-Stockfish now, also because it is no longer actively developed.

Custom variants
Download Sjaak

Fairymax

The default chess variant engine coming with WinBoard/XBoard.

Custom variants
Download Fairymax

Nebiyu

Configurable chess variant engine.

Custom variants
Download Nebiyu

YaneuraOu

Strongest open source Shogi engine, based on Stockfish.

Shogi
Download YaneuraOu

Pikafish

Strongest open source Xiangqi engine, based on Stockfish.

Xiangqi
Download Pikafish

Stockfish

Strongest open source chess engine, basis of many strong variant engines. Only supported variant is Chess960.

Chess Chess960
Download Stockfish