How GothamChess Turned 7.6M Subs Into an App

Levy Rozman teaches chess to more people than anyone alive. As GothamChess, he has 7.6 million YouTube subscribers and more than 5 billion views. But the smartest thing he ever did was stop relying on the algorithm to pay him. He built Chessly, a subscription app where his audience pays every month to get better at the game. That move is the whole story. A creator earns when a video performs. A founder earns whether the video performs or not. Key Takeaways:

Levy Rozman (GothamChess) is the largest chess creator on the internet: 7.6M YouTube subscribers and over 5 billion views.
He turned that audience into Chessly, a chess-learning subscription app that more than 1.2 million people have used.
Chessly runs on recurring revenue (roughly $10/month or $90/year), not one-time course sales or ad payouts.
His YouTube channel feeds the app, and the app gives him endless content. Each loop strengthens the other.
The lesson for any creator: an audience is raw material. The business is what you build with it.

Who Is Levy Rozman (GothamChess)?

Levy Rozman is a 30-year-old International Master from Brooklyn who became the face of online chess. He earned his IM title in 2018, then started posting YouTube videos during the pandemic in early 2020, right as the world went looking for something to do indoors. The timing helped. The consistency is what made it stick. He posted daily, explained games in plain language, and built a reputation as the teacher who makes chess feel beatable. By September 2021 he had passed every other chess channel to become the biggest on the platform. In January 2023 his channel became the first chess channel to cross 1 billion views, per his Wikipedia profile. He also wrote a book, "How to Win at Chess," which hit number four on the New York Times bestseller list in 2023 and has sold more than 100,000 copies. In 2024 he made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the games category. By any creator metric, he had already won.

From a Pandemic Channel to 7.6M Subscribers

Here is the part most creators miss. Rozman had the reach. He had the book deal. He had the brand partnerships. He could have ridden YouTube ad revenue and sponsorships for years. Plenty of creators his size do exactly that, and they stay creators. Instead he asked a founder's question: what do my fans actually want that I can sell them directly? The answer was obvious once he looked. His viewers did not just want to watch him analyze grandmaster games. They wanted to get good themselves. Watching a video teaches you nothing if you never practice. So he built a place to practice.

Your audience already wants to buy something.

The hard part is not finding demand. It is building the product. Built by Foundry builds, launches, and runs it for you. $0 upfront. Three weeks to App Store.

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What Is Chessly?

Chessly is a subscription app where chess players learn openings, drill tactics, and play against a bot trained on Levy Rozman's teaching style. Instead of buying one course at a time, members pay a recurring fee and get everything: more than 70 courses, experience points, achievements, leaderboards, and a custom AI opponent called Levi. That last word matters: recurring. Chessly started as a pay-per-course store and switched to a flat subscription, around $10 a month or $90 a year. The change turned scattered one-time purchases into predictable monthly income. More than 1.2 million people have used the platform, according to Chessly. The product solves a real problem. New players feel buried under chess content. There are millions of videos, thousands of books, and no clear path. Chessly gives them the path, narrated by the one teacher they already trust. The trust was built on YouTube. The money is made in the app.

Why Build an App Instead of More Courses?

Because a course sells once and an app sells every month. That is the entire argument, and the math is brutal once you run it. Say a creator sells a $90 course to 1,000 people. That is $90,000, and then it is over. They have to find 1,000 new buyers next month to repeat it. A $90-per-year subscription to those same 1,000 people is $90,000 too, but it renews. Keep most of them and add a few hundred more each month, and the number climbs instead of resetting to zero. There is a second reason, and it is the one creators feel every single day. Rozman never has to wonder what to post. Every Chessly feature is a video. Every new course is an announcement. Every leaderboard is a story about his community. The app and the channel feed each other in a loop, which is the same engine we broke down in our guide on turning a YouTube channel into a subscription app.

This is not unique to chess. We have seen the exact same pattern with Justin Sandercoe, who turned free guitar lessons into the JustinGuitar app. Free content builds the audience. A focused app turns that audience into a business.

A course pays once. A subscription pays forever.

You teach. We build the product that earns while you sleep. $0 upfront, 3-week delivery, we run the tech forever.

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The Math: Followers vs. Recurring Revenue

Followers are a vanity number until you attach a price to a fraction of them. Rozman has 7.6 million subscribers. He does not need all of them to pay. He needs a small slice to subscribe, and that slice compounds. Here is how the three common creator income models compare for someone with his reach.

Income Model	How It Pays	Predictability	Ceiling
YouTube ad revenue	Per view, varies monthly	Low	Capped by views
One-time course sales	Once per buyer	Low	Resets each launch
Subscription app	Every month, per member	High	Grows as members stack

The ad and course rows depend on doing the work again to get paid again. The subscription row is the only one where last month's effort still pays this month. If you want the real benchmarks behind these numbers, we collected them in our creator app benchmarks for 2026.

What Creators Can Learn From GothamChess

You do not need 7.6 million subscribers to copy this. You need three things Rozman had, and you probably already have two of them. First, a specific skill people want to learn. Chess, guitar, baking, budgeting, language, fitness. If viewers comment "how do I get better at this," you have demand. Second, an audience that trusts you to teach it. Trust is the asset YouTube and TikTok actually build. Most creators spend years building it and then rent it out to brands for a few thousand dollars a post. Third, a product they can pay for monthly. This is the piece most creators never build, because building software is hard, slow, and expensive if you do it the normal way. That is the gap we close. You can read more about how our model works.

GothamChess did the rare thing. He stopped thinking like a channel and started thinking like a company. The audience was the easy part. The app is what made it a business.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Chessly and who made it?

Chessly is a chess-learning subscription app created by Levy Rozman, known on YouTube as GothamChess. Members pay a recurring fee for access to more than 70 courses, drills, and an AI opponent named Levi.

How much does Chessly cost?

Chessly uses a subscription model of roughly $10 per month or $90 per year, with all courses included. It previously sold courses individually before switching to a flat membership.

How many subscribers does GothamChess have?

As of mid-2026, GothamChess has about 7.6 million YouTube subscribers and over 5 billion views, making him the largest chess creator on the internet.

Can a creator build their own app like Chessly?

Yes. Any creator with a teachable skill and an engaged audience can turn that expertise into a subscription app. Built by Foundry builds and runs the entire product for $0 upfront in exchange for a revenue share.

Why is a subscription app better than selling courses?

A course sells once per buyer. A subscription earns every month from the same member, so revenue compounds instead of resetting with each launch. Want to turn your expertise into an app? We build custom apps for creators. $0 upfront, 3-week delivery, and we handle all the tech forever.

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