Published August 9, 2026 · by Calli & Eden, Flying Comet Games
Searching "free crossword" turns up plenty of sites that are free until the third puzzle. So we checked. Every site below was loaded and verified on August 9, 2026, and each entry says what it's genuinely best for. We make puzzles ourselves, so we have a horse in this race — our own entry is near the bottom, limitations included.
Best for: a newspaper daily crossword and a quick mini in one place. The LA Times games page carries a full-size Daily Crossword, a Mini Crossword, and sudoku, playable free in the browser, with an optional account for tracking progress.
Best for: a mini, a daily, and a Sunday crossword surrounded by a whole arcade. The Post's games hub (powered by Arkadium) offers a Daily Crossword, a Daily Mini Crossword, and a Sunday Crossword alongside dozens of card, word, and puzzle games. Free to play and ad-supported.
Best for: community-made puzzles, from 5×5 minis to full-size themelesses and cryptics. Crosshare is free, ad-free, and open source — a featured daily mini plus a steady stream of 15×15s, cryptics, and meta puzzles from the community. Donation-supported, and the friendliest place to try constructing your own.
Best for: a deep archive of full-size puzzles, plus printables. Daily puzzles at increasing difficulty levels, an archive it counts at over 100,000 grids, and printable versions. No account required to start; registering unlocks a monthly tournament.
Best for: sheer volume with zero friction. 300,000 free crosswords with no daily limits, no subscriptions, and no account registration. Plain presentation, endless full-size solving.
Best for: a single hand-edited daily mini. A free daily mini — 5×5 on weekdays, 7×7 on weekends — edited by Jeff Chen, who has constructed over 150 puzzles for the New York Times. No account, no paywall, with streak tracking built in.
Best for: a quick daily mini with a free archive, plus a dozen other daily games. Our Mini 5x5 is a 5×5 daily crossword — same board for everyone, new puzzle at midnight Pacific, and every past puzzle free in the in-game archive. No account needed; an optional free one adds streaks, leaderboards, and friend groups. It's our only crossword — for a full-size 15×15, the picks above will serve you better. The full honest rundown, limitations included, is below.
Honorable mention: The Atlantic's crossword is a daily mini that gets a little more challenging each weekday. The Atlantic is a subscription publication, though, and we couldn't confirm how much you can solve without one, so it sits just outside this verified-free list.
Best for: a quick free daily mini with a free archive, leaderboards, and comments. Our Mini 5x5 is a 5×5 crossword with a median solve time of about a minute and a half. A new puzzle arrives at midnight Pacific Time, everyone gets the same board, and every past puzzle stays free to play in the in-game archive (the calendar icon). No account is needed; an optional free account adds streaks, daily and all-time leaderboards, and friend groups, and each day's puzzle has a comment thread.
The honest part: the site shows ads. That's how a free site run by two indie developers pays for itself. There's no subscription — one optional one-time purchase removes ads forever, and that's the whole business model.
And just as plainly: we don't have a full-size crossword. The 5×5 mini is our only crossword — if you want a themed 15×15, BestCrosswords or Boatload will serve you better. What we offer around the mini is variety: twelve more daily games, from Wordie and Word Search to Sudo-goose and Color Flood.
The six outside picks were checked on August 9, 2026: each one loaded and describes its puzzles as free to play. Sites change their terms, so treat this as a snapshot rather than a promise. Ponder Club is free with ads; a single optional one-time purchase removes them forever — there's no subscription.
A mini is a small grid — usually 5×5 — with straightforward clues, built to be solved in a minute or two. A full-size crossword is typically 15×15, often themed, and can take anywhere from ten minutes to most of a coffee break.
No. Our only crossword is the Mini 5x5 — a 5×5 daily mini. If you want full-size puzzles, BestCrosswords and Boatload Puzzles are the strongest free picks on this list.
No — every game and every archive puzzle plays without one. An optional free account adds streaks, daily and all-time leaderboards, and friend groups.
More from Ponder Club: our free daily mini crossword, the free NYT Games alternative guide, all 13 free daily puzzle games, and the FAQ.