Are Lichess players better than Chess.com players?

@Byrni said ^

I think the top players play on both sites but tend to prefer chess.com for rapid and blitz, and lichess for bullet. I've no idea why as I think lichess is by far the better site!

1. chess-com gives titled players some benefits to attract them
2. the network effect: "everyone" is there

There are a range of chess-based measurements, but let's just take ratings.
First you need to check for differences between the two sites and adjust if and as necessary.
Assuming we then have reliable measures (there is a lot of literature on reliability),
then we need to decide on the metric.

If averages, we need to consider the mean, the median or the mode. The mean is of course the mathematical average.
The median handles lumpier data. The mode shows what comes up most often.

And we may want to consider the average over time. (E.g. different world champions are considered the greatest depending on how long they held onto their titles. So is a Lichess player likely to be 'better' than a chess.com over x amount of months/years?

You can have access to all the data. On chess.com there's a lot more registered players, a lot of beginners, so the average level must be higher on Lichess. It's harder to be on the top 10% on Lichess than it is on chess.com. But for the individual experience it does not change anything, since you'll always have a infinite number of players stronger than you and weaker than you on each platform.

For the same level, in rapid :
Chess.com :
Elo : 1417 Ranking : 1 410 000 Percentile : 96%
Lichess :
Elo : 1878 Ranking : 41 000 Percentile : 88%

That tells you all you need to know...

Lichess also has a lot of people who play variants, but the game review in chess.com is great as well, so at this point, after reading all of these comments, I think that both websites are equal

@Nabhya54 said ^

Lichess also has a lot of people who play variants, but the game review in chess.com is great as well, so at this point, after reading all of these comments, I think that both websites are equal

Game review is absolute trash when you know What it says

@Nabhya54 said ^

Lichess and Chess.com are two different websites, each having their own different strengths and weaknesses, but which websites' players are better? Tbh, I think that Lichess players are better because there are more people who are good at chess on Lichess and has a lot of masters, not only GMs.

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@fallboss007 said ^

Lichess also has a lot of people who play variants, but the game review in chess.com is great as well, so at this point, after reading all of these comments, I think that both websites are equal

Game review is absolute trash when you know What it says

ok

Well, chesscom is better as lichess plus more ratings than chesscom.

To give a personal slant to the problem of measurement.
A year or two back, if I remember correctly, I had an average rating of about 450. At the moment, 350 seems more like it. And some years ago, I reached 1602 (but didn't stay there for long).
So, are we basing our ratings on an average at a particular time, top ever, or what?