I can't comment as to their commentary, but lichess has them soundly beat in pretty much every other way.

Incorrect. Chess.com has a superior lessons system (it isn’t just text and a predefined board) and it has a superior computer to play against. In Lichess you have to use one of 7 levels in chess.com you have a sliding scale from 250-3200 and they have a lot more tools to analyze the game both during (when playing bots) or after. I use both but I swear that the comments I see dissing chess.com seem to be from people who are hardly familiar with it.

Seriously, I am a paying customer of chess.com -- I for the life of me could not get a new user signed up to play chess with. We wanted to play and selected the wrong level by mistake ( beginner ) -- it won't allow you to play even if you are friends on the site. Horrible user experience. You want to play variants on your phone, can't. go to the website.. Lichess is just awesome! Play anyone you want, variants on the app. Love it.

I basically only play Lichess now (>3k games last few years), but used chess.com once in a while still to play with friends having an account there. Never had the problem you describe, sounds like PEBCAK. The constant chess.com hating here and on reddit is kinda off-putting, though.

It is. I also use both platforms and you can’t even bring up preferring chess.com here or on Reddit’s chess subs without being downvoted to oblivion and dogpilled. It’s super cult like similar to the way Musk fanboys come out in droves if you even suggest he isn’t some great man of history.

They're great, but far from the best

They don't support variants on the app which lichess does.