Solitaire Games Online — Free Klondike, Spider, FreeCell & TriPeaks, No Download

Famous games that defined the genre

Microsoft Solitaire — The Klondike game Microsoft shipped with Windows 3.0 in 1990, programmed by Wes Cherry. It was included partly to get people comfortable with dragging and dropping with a mouse, became one of the most-used programs on Windows, and was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2019. Today it lives on as the Microsoft Solitaire Collection app; it is Microsoft’s product and is not hosted here. Play free classic Klondike here: Solitaire →

Microsoft FreeCell — FreeCell was devised by Paul Alfille in the late 1970s and became famous through the version Microsoft bundled with Windows in the 1990s, with numbered deals players could replay and compare. Of its original 32,000 deals, only one — #11982 — is generally accepted to be unsolvable. The Windows version is not hosted here. Play free FreeCell here →

Microsoft Spider Solitaire — Spider is an old two-deck patience game that reached a mass audience when Microsoft added it to Windows around the turn of the millennium, with one-, two- and four-suit difficulty levels. It is part of Microsoft’s collection and is not hosted here. Play free Spider Solitaire here →

Google Solitaire — Searching “solitaire” on Google shows a small playable Klondike game right in the search results. It is Google’s own feature and is not hosted here — but if you liked it and want more variants than one, everything on this page is the same kind of instant browser play. Play free Solitaire here →

The main kinds of solitaire, explained

Klondike is the classic: seven tableau columns, most cards face down, and the goal of building all four suits up from Ace to King on the foundations. You restack cards in descending rank and alternating colour, and draw from the stock when you get stuck. Spider uses two decks and ten columns, has no suit foundations, and asks you to build complete King-to-Ace runs in a single suit, which are then cleared off the board. FreeCell deals every card face up and gives you four free cells as temporary parking spaces, so it is a game of pure planning rather than luck. Golf and TriPeaks are the fast, casual branch: you clear a layout by moving cards one rank higher or lower than the top card of the waste pile, chaining as many as you can before drawing a new one.

Which solitaire should you play?

If you want the game you remember from an old office PC, play Klondike. If you want something that rewards careful thinking and almost never comes down to a bad deal, play FreeCell — with every card visible from the start, a loss is usually a mistake you can find. Spider is the long-session option: one-suit Spider is relaxed, while two- and four-suit versions are some of the hardest common solitaire games. And if you have five minutes and want quick little wins, TriPeaks and Golf are the ones to open — a round is short, and the higher-or-lower rule takes seconds to learn.

How to win more solitaire games

In Klondike, prioritise uncovering face-down cards over everything else — a move that turns a hidden card over is almost always better than one that does not. Do not rush cards onto the foundations if you may still need them as landing spots for lower cards, and only empty a column when you have a King ready to fill it. In FreeCell, treat the free cells as a scarce resource: every card you park there reduces how many cards you can move as a group. In Spider, build in the same suit whenever you can, even when a mixed-suit move looks tempting, because only same-suit runs can be moved together and cleared. In TriPeaks and Golf, look ahead before playing — the card you take now decides which chain is still open next.

Why solitaire works so well in a browser

Solitaire needs nothing a browser cannot do: a deck of cards, drag-and-drop, and a few rules. Rounds are short, there is no account to manage and no multiplayer lobby to wait in, and the games load in seconds on a laptop, a Chromebook or a phone. That is the same reason it was bundled with Windows in the first place — it is the most universally understood way to fill a few spare minutes with a computer.