Online PGN Cleaner & Formatter
Strip comments, format notation, and normalize your chess game files instantly. Perfect for cleaning database exports from Chess.com, Lichess, or ChessBase.
Illustration showing the difference between messy raw PGN and clean standard PGN.
What is PGN Cleaning?
PGN (Portable Game Notation) is the universal standard for sharing chess games. However, when exporting from engines like Stockfish or sites like Chess.com, the data often includes deep engine evaluations, timestamps, and nested variations that make it difficult to read.
Our PGN Cleaner uses chess.js to rebuild the game state and export a "normalized" version. This removes unnecessary clutter while preserving the core moves and headers (like White, Black, and Result).
Key Benefits
- Database Compatibility: Clean PGNs are much easier to import into ChessBase or SCID without errors.
- SEO Optimized Sharing: If you are a chess blogger, cleaner notation helps search engines index your moves.
- Privacy: Remove meta-tags like 'Site' or 'Date' if you want to share a training game anonymously.
Why Standardize Your Notation?
Professional chess preparation requires professional data management.
Avoid Import Errors
Messy comments can often crash lightweight PGN viewers. Standardization ensures 100% uptime for your tools.
Better AI Training
If you use LLMs to analyze your games, providing clean notation helps the model focus on the moves, not the timestamps.
Easier Collaboration
Coaches and students work best when looking at clear, concise notation without engine "noise".
Common Questions
Will cleaning PGN remove my moves?
No. The moves are preserved exactly as they occurred. We only remove metadata like comments, eval tags, and timestamps.
Does this support multi-game PGN files?
Currently, this tool processes the first game found in the input. For batch cleaning, we recommend our Pro toolkit.
Is my data stored on your server?
No. The cleaning happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your game data is never uploaded to our servers unless you use the 'Save to Cloud' feature.