People searching for MSN free games usually want one of two things. Either they want the games themselves, or they remember the old standalone MSN Games site and are trying to find it again now that the games live inside the MSN news portal.
This page covers both. We are TrySolitaire, a free games site, so we are a competitor and not a neutral reviewer. We have no connection to Microsoft or MSN. Where MSN is better, we say so.
MSN Games is Microsoft's free casual-games portal. It runs in a browser at msn.com and spans several genres: card games including solitaire, FreeCell, Spider and Hearts; puzzle and logic games; word games and crosswords; and arcade and matching titles.
You do not need to sign in to play. A Microsoft account is what saves scores and carries progress between sessions and devices. The portal is supported by advertising.
The change that surprises returning players is the setting. The games now sit inside the MSN portal rather than on a games-only site, so the page around the board carries news, weather and other MSN content. Nothing is broken — it is simply busier than the standalone site people remember.
A wider range of genres. MSN carries arcade and matching titles that we do not have at all. Our catalogue is card games and puzzles. If you want a shooting or bubble-popping game between hands of solitaire, MSN has one and we do not.
Crosswords. We have word games, but no crossword. That is a straightforward gap.
Microsoft behind it. A large company with a long track record is not going to vanish next year. We are small, and honesty requires us to say that a small site is a bigger bet than a Microsoft property.
No news feed. There is no news feed and no weather panel around the game. Several people who search for the old MSN Games site are really searching for that.
Depth in cards rather than breadth in genres. Three hundred games, and the great majority are solitaire and card variants implemented from cited rules — including Forty Thieves, Yukon, Canfield, Scorpion, Seahaven and a long list that no portal has ever bothered to build.
Statistics without an account. We record from your first game with no sign-in at all. A free account is optional; create one and the play you have banked is carried up into it and follows you to any device.
Cross-game leaderboards. A rolling 24-hour board and an all-time board across the whole catalogue, with your rank against the field.
| MSN Games | TrySolitaire | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Page around the game | Inside the MSN portal, with news content | The board and controls only |
| Account to play | Not required; needed to save scores | Not required; optional and free |
| Statistics without an account | Limited | Yes, from the first game |
| Statistics across devices | Yes, with a Microsoft account | Yes, with a free account |
| Genre range | Cards, puzzle, word and arcade | Cards and puzzles only |
| Crosswords | Yes | No |
| Solitaire variants | The well-known ones | The well-known ones and roughly 290 more |
| Leaderboards | Within the Microsoft ecosystem | Cross-game daily and all-time boards |
| Languages | Many, through MSN's regional sites | 20 languages |
| Company behind it | Microsoft | A small independent team |
Stay with MSN if you want crosswords, you like the arcade and matching titles, or you value having a very large company behind the site. Those are sound reasons.
Try us if you mainly play card games and puzzles.
TrySolitaire runs 300 card and puzzle games in a browser. No account is required, nothing installs, and every game opens on the first click.
The card games MSN players look for are all here: Klondike, Spider, FreeCell, Pyramid and TriPeaks. So are Sudoku, Mahjong and 2048.
Play Free — No Account, No InstallYes. MSN Games is Microsoft's free browser games portal, supported by advertising.
Not to play. An account saves scores and carries progress between sessions and devices.
Microsoft moved the casual games into the MSN portal at msn.com, so they now sit alongside the news feed rather than on a games-only site. The games are still there; the surroundings changed.
Yes. Solitaire and the other card games remain part of the catalogue.
We would say us, and we are biased. The honest version: we have far more card games and no portal content around the board, while MSN has a wider genre range and crosswords that we do not.
No. We are an independent free games site with no relationship to either. MSN and Microsoft are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation and are named here only to compare the two services.