The solitaire where luck barely matters. Every one of the 52 cards is face up from the first second, so winning or losing comes down entirely to the order you play them in.

How to play on this page

1. Press START and all 52 cards are dealt face up. An unfinished game reopens where you left it, and if you arrived through a friend's challenge link, that exact deal number is laid out instead.
2. Next to time, moves and deal number the bar shows Move up to N — the largest run you can currently pick up. It updates live as free cells and columns open and close (the display tops out at 13).
3. Tap a card and it looks for a home in this order: foundation, a column it can extend, an empty column, then a free cell. Drag to place it yourself. Grab more cards than the limit allows and the run turns red with a note saying how many you can move right now.
4. In the toolbar, Safe autoplay (on by default) sends aces and twos to the foundations the moment they surface, while Auto-finish moves up everything that can go right now. Undo is unlimited, Hint gives five per deal, and New deal, Today's deal and the #️⃣ deal number button (1–99999) sit alongside.
5. Fill all four foundations to the King and the win screen shows your time and moves. Enter a nickname (12 characters max) to submit, share the result, or play again.

How FreeCell works

The deck is dealt into eight columns — seven cards in the first four, six in the rest — and every card is face up, so the whole problem is visible immediately. The four free cells in the top left each hold a single card as temporary storage. The four foundations in the top right are the goal: build every suit from Ace up to King and you win. Within the columns you stack in descending order with alternating colours, a black seven onto a red eight. Unlike Klondike, an empty column accepts any card, which makes empty columns the most valuable real estate on the board.

The rule behind multi-card moves

Dragging a run of cards in FreeCell is really shorthand for shuffling them one at a time through your free cells and empty columns. That is why there is a hard limit on how many cards you can move at once:

Maximum cards = (empty free cells + 1) × 2^{(empty columns)}

With all four cells free and no empty column you can move five cards; open one column and it jumps to ten. Moving into an empty column is the exception: that column can't also serve as a staging area, so it doesn't count toward the multiplier. Pick up more than the limit and the run turns red and tells you how many you can move right now — empty a cell or a column to raise it.

Five tips that actually help

• Treat free cells as a last resort. Every occupied cell roughly halves how many cards you can move. Before parking a card, check every column for a legal home.
• An empty column beats an empty cell. Columns double your move limit, cells only add one. Aim your early play at emptying the shortest column.
• Send up aces and twos, hold the rest. Low cards are the bridges that keep columns connected; once a card is on a foundation it can't come back.
• Plan backwards from a buried card. Decide where the three cards above that black nine will go before you touch anything.
• Undo is unlimited. Because nearly every deal is winnable, a loss usually means the order was wrong — step back or replay the same deal number.

Nearly every deal can be won

FreeCell's reputation rests on a remarkable fact: shuffle at random and the hand is almost always solvable. Of the 32,000 numbered deals in the classic Microsoft version, volunteers proved that exactly one — deal #11,982 — has no solution. That is why FreeCell rewards study: replay the identical layout, take a different route, and watch a "impossible" board fall apart. Deal numbers here work the same way, and the daily deal is generated from the date so everyone in the world faces the same cards on the same day.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Safe autoplay and Auto-finish?

Safe autoplay runs after every move and lifts only aces and twos to the foundations — they never serve as a bridge for another card, so moving them up costs nothing. Auto-finish fires once when you press it and moves every card that can legally go up, from the free cells or the top of any column, whatever its rank. It is meant for the closing stretch; if nothing qualifies you will see "Not ready to auto-finish yet". Both can be rewound with Undo.

Which move does the hint pick?

You have five hints per deal. A move to a foundation ranks first, then returning a card from a free cell to a column, then column-to-column moves (longer runs score higher), then a move into an empty column. Parking a card in a free cell is suggested only when nothing else exists — so a hint that points at a free cell is a warning that the position is tight.

Can I bring a card back down from a foundation?

No — foundation cards cannot be picked up in FreeCell here. If you sent one up too early, use Undo to cancel the move itself. Undo is unlimited, so there is no reason to hesitate.

How do challenge links work?

The link created by Share result after a win carries your time, move count and deal number. A friend who opens it sees your time on the title screen, and pressing START deals that same numbered layout so you compete on identical cards.

How is the leaderboard ranked?

By solve time in seconds, fastest first, top ten worldwide, with only a nickname required. Hints, Undo and Safe autoplay carry no penalty. Progress is saved after every move, so closing the tab does not lose the game.

More card games

Prefer the classic? Play Klondike Solitaire. For a longer battle try Spider Solitaire, or Pyramid Solitaire when you only have a couple of minutes. All free, no download, identical on phone and desktop.

Related tools

• Sudoku — like FreeCell, pure logic with no luck involved. Four difficulty levels and a daily puzzle.
• Minesweeper — deduce the mines from the numbers. Safe first click, daily board.
• Block Puzzle — plan your placements with no timer running.