Our Software Catalogue

If you're a beginner please have a look at our Top Picks for Beginners page which contains our initial recommendations for you.

The items listed here are all freeware or shareware (if you decide to keep them you should pay for them).
We no longer host software, so these are all on other web sites.

We list software for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and the Android platform separately, including various items listed below. Reviews of some programs are in our Software Reviews section. The American Go Association's Go Software page has details of some programs for other platforms (eg Linux).

Links that directly link to the software itself are labelled: *name*

 
Name OS File size Description

Go-playing Programs

Dariush Windows 1.8Mb A Go program by Frdric Boissac and Eric Marchand. It’s interface can also be used to play against a number of other Go playing programs, study joseki or solve problems. The free version available for download only plays on a 13×13 board.
Explorer
Mac 430Kb By Martin Müller.
Recommended Mac program
Described here.
Free since October 2001.
Gnugo Mac (Classic) 950K By Hideyuku Fujiwara.
Official website.
C source available.
Version 3.2
Described here.
Goban Mac OS X 6.2Mb Version 42. Acts as a front end for GnuGo version 3.2. Uses SGF format. Can also be used as an internet Go client.
Recommended Mac OS X program. Described here.
*Go Game Machine* Windows 832Kb From the Nihon Ki-in, and Tei Meikou 9p. English-language version. Plays only on a 9x9 board. Reasonably strong. Very fast. Intended as an introduction to Go, particularly for children. Recommended

Use is free, the Nihon Ki-in retain the copyright.
Igowin Windows 786Kb Free 9*9 version of David Fotland's Many Faces of Go. Strongly recommended as the best free introduction to Go for those who have Windows. Includes an introductory tutorial about Go. Now available on iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch as various varieties of Igowin.
Leela Windows ?Kb Leela now supports 19x19 and 9x9, replacing the Lite version
Strength dan level.
New in 2008. Recommended.
Many Faces of Go Windows - Version 11 of David Fotland's program
Version 12 now has Monte Carlo method ($89.95).
Minimago Java 156Kb version of ImaGo by Robert Rehm
Described in BGJ 98
Peter's Go Windows 220Kb Shareware Go-playing program by Peter Raffelsberger
From Version 3 is in English.
Different board-sizes and levels of difficulty. Recommended
SmartGo Windows/Vista also iOS 12Mb Free 15 day trial, then becomes Viewer only, version 2.8 of SmartGo. By Anders Kierulf. Also available on iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad in various forms.
STOP Java   Go playing program that works best under graphical interfaces such as GoGui or GoBen. By Folkert van Heusten.
Turbogo 32-bit Windows 1.14Mb Shareware Go-playing program by Arnoud van der Loeff. Includes an English-language tutorial.
Recommended
Version 5.0 (released 2000-08-20)
25 guilders
WinHonte Windows 826Kb By Fredril Dahl of JellyFish AG from Norway, publisher of the leading backgammon program, Jellyfish.
Free for download, but not re-distributable.
"WinHonte uses several different neural nets for different tasks. Some nets are trained from self-play, while others are trained from pro games. It also uses alpha-beta search to solve local well-defined problems like connectivity and life-and-death."
Wulu Windows 980Kb 13x13 Go-playing program by Jimmy Lu (Lu Jinqiang).Recommended

McMahon draw programs

GoDraw V6 Windows 1Mb The latest version of Geoff Kaniuk's program to run McMahon Tournaments.
Used in most UK tournaments.
Approved by us
If you use it, please consider a donation to the Castledine-Barnes Trust.
MacMahon Windows 95 or better 172Kb Christoph Gerlach's program to run a McMahon draw.
You must notify Christoph if you use it.
OpenGotha Linux, MacOS or Windows 3073Kb zipped Luc Vannier's program to run a McMahon draw widely used in France and Ireland.

Game-record viewing (and editing) programs

Another source of game-record viewing programs (SGF only) is Jan van der Steen's page.
Cgoban 1 Unix, X11 336Kb An SGF viewer and editor by William M. Shubert.
Supports the Go Modem Protocol. It is also a client for some Go servers.
Free, includes source code.
Cgoban 3 Java Virtual Machine 6Mb KGS client only, by William M. Shubert.
It is also an SGF viewer and editor.
Free, replaced cgoban2.
Drago Windows 4Mb SGF editor, problems and database interface, GnuGo client. Foreign language versions. Free.
Go2000 Windows 1844Kb By Changmei Hwung. Allows you to record games and positions, store them in a database, and index them on moves that you select. Uses SGF format. Shareware: $50 to register.
Go-Heaven Windows 500Kb By Markus Stahlberg.
Supports SGF and Ishi forrmats. Available in English- and German-language versions.
Hibiscus Windows 1088Kb By Zjev Ambagts. Uses SGF version 4, also Ishi format. Can produce RTF diagrams.
qGo Linux, Windows, Mac OS X 2Mb Written in C++, using the Qt library, by Peter Strempel and Johannes Mesa. Free.
Shodan Mac OS X   Interactive study of games and problems.
Smart Game Board Mac   Uses SGF format.
Smart Go Mac 464Kb
stmgt Atari ST   Available to members of gobase.org only.

Miscellaneous

Arnoud's screensaver Windows 95/98/NT 359Kb by Arnoud van der Loeff, the author of TurboGo above. When your PC is not in use, it plays through professional games on the screen. If the PC is in an office, this is a way of interesting your colleagues in Go.
Goban Screensaver Linux 530Kb Go screensaver for Linux. Free and open source.
GoBen Java   Graphical interface to programs that play the game of Go and use the Go Text Protocol (GTP), such as GNU Go. Ver 0.1.1.
goDummy Unix?   Bill Shubert's user-interface to a Go-playing program. This is a complete Go-playing program, without the move-generating bit. So if you want to write your own Go-playing program for Unix, you can start with this and just write the interesting bit. It supports the Go Modem Protocol.
GoGui Java 15.6Mb Graphical interface to programs that play the game of Go and use the Go Text Protocol (GTP), such as GNU Go. GoGui has special features that are useful for Go program developers. Ver 1.1.10.
JText2Sgfs any Java Virtual Machine 4Kb A utility to extract SGF game records from from a single text file.
By Steffen Glückselig
Free
OpenGo Windows, or Linux/Unix   By Jeffrey Greenberg. This is the source code for a Go-playing program, but without the actual Go-playing engine. Thus, it allows a would-be writer of a Go-playing program to get on with the interesting bit, the actual move-generating engine, while OpenGo handles the tedious stuff of displaying the board on the screen, collecting the user's mouseclick for where he wants to play, supporting the Go Modem Protocol, etc. It does in fact come with a few weak move-generating engines.
Version 5.0.
Free.
SGFsaver Windows 161Kb By Francois Mizessyn. Screensaver for Windows that displays Go games.
Free.
uliGo Any system with Python support.   A program to practice solving Go problems.
By Ulrich Goertz.
Free.
Gnugo 3.6 Unix (and Mac OS X), Linux, Windows
  Current version of GnuGo for Unix, Linux and Windows, by the Free Software Foundation.
Version 3.6 (much stronger than previous versions)
Free, includes source code
Last updated Sun Dec 16 2018.
If you have any comments, please email the webmaster on web-master AT britgo DOT org.