Want a game of Battleship right now, with nothing to install? Our browser version is completely free, needs no download and no signup, and a match starts in about a minute: place your fleet, pick a difficulty, and take your first shot. You play 1 vs the computer on a classic 10×10 grid with 5 ships per side.
Play it now: Battleship free vs AI
Start a Match in 3 Steps
Step 1 — Place your 5 ships. Your grid starts empty and you place one ship at a time: Carrier (5 cells), Battleship (4), Cruiser (3), Submarine (3), Destroyer (2). Tap a cell to place the current ship (horizontal by default), tap Rotate to switch to vertical, or tap Auto-place and the game arranges the whole fleet for you. Ships cannot touch each other, not even diagonally.
Step 2 — Pick a difficulty. You choose it before placing your fleet: easy ×1, medium ×2, hard ×3 — the multiplier applies to every point you score.
Step 3 — Fire. You shoot first: tap a cell on the enemy grid. A hit scores 50, sinking a ship scores 100 to 500 depending on its size, and sinking all 5 enemy ships wins the match plus a 1,000 bonus. Hits do not grant an extra shot — after you fire, the AI fires back.
Which Difficulty Should You Pick?
The difficulty changes the scoring, but it also changes how the AI shoots — this is the real decision:
- Easy: the AI fires at random cells. Pick this for your first two or three matches while you learn placement.
- Medium: the AI plays hunt-and-target — it searches in a checkerboard pattern and fires at cells next to a hit. A good default once you place fleets confidently.
- Hard: the AI builds a probability map of where your remaining ships can be and fires at the most likely cell. Every point is tripled, but one placement mistake gets punished.
Rule of thumb: stay on easy until you win twice in a row, then move up. The ×2 and ×3 multipliers only pay off if you can actually finish the match.
3 Opening Tactics That Actually Work
These follow directly from the rules of this version — no guessing involved.
1. Search in a checkerboard. The smallest ship is 2 cells long, so firing on every other cell (like the dark squares of a chessboard) guarantees you will touch every ship. It roughly halves the cells you need to test before your first hit.
2. Finish what you hit. After a hit, fire at the cells right next to it — the ship continues in a straight line. And never waste shots around a sunk ship: the cells around it are automatically marked as misses, because ships cannot sit next to each other.
3. Protect your big ships with spacing. Ships cannot touch, so the game already forces gaps — but spread your fleet across the whole grid instead of clustering it in one corner. On medium and hard, a clustered fleet lets the AI's follow-up shots chain from one ship into the next.
For the full rulebook — exact scoring per ship and difficulty, worked examples, and how the AI thinks — read our complete Battleship rules guide.
Tips for Playing on Your Phone
The whole game is tap-based, so it plays naturally on mobile: tap to place, tap Rotate to turn a ship, tap the enemy grid to fire. If cells feel small, turn your phone sideways — the board gets much easier to tap accurately. There is nothing to install, so it also works fine on a shared or low-storage phone. It runs in any modern mobile browser.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Battleship really free, and do I need to download anything? Yes, it is completely free with no download, no install, and no signup. It runs directly in the browser on phone, tablet, and desktop.
How many ships are there? Five per side on a 10×10 grid: Carrier (5), Battleship (4), Cruiser (3), Submarine (3), Destroyer (2).
Can I play against a friend? This version is you vs the computer at three difficulties. If you want more single-player strategy, try our free browser strategy games guide or classics like Minesweeper and Reversi.
How is the score calculated? Every hit is worth 50, each sunk ship 100 to 500 by size, and winning adds 1,000 — all multiplied by the difficulty (easy ×1, medium ×2, hard ×3).
Where are the full rules? Step-by-step placement, the scoring table with worked examples, and the AI explained per difficulty: How to Play Battleship.