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About CubingHQ
CubingHQ exists because practising at your desk and competing on a stage are not the same activity, and almost nothing online helps you bridge the gap.
The problem it was built for
Nearly every speedcuber has had the same experience. You average 14 seconds at home. You sit down at your first competition, a judge you have never met starts the inspection countdown, the timer is a Stackmat instead of a keyboard, someone is watching, and you post 19, 22, 17, DNF, 18.
Nothing about your cube changed. What changed was everything around it: the inspection being enforced rather than approximate, five attempts that all count instead of a rolling average you can quietly restart, a room full of noise, and the knowledge that this one is real.
That gap is trainable, but only if you can practise the conditions rather than just the solves. That is what CubingHQ is for.
What it does
Competition simulator
Pick a real upcoming WCA competition, or configure a round yourself. CubingHQ pulls the actual event list and round format from the WCA, generates competition-legal scrambles, enforces the 15-second inspection with the 8- and 12-second calls, runs a proper scorecard, and computes your result under WCA rules — including how a DNF wrecks a mean but only trims an average of five. It runs venue ambience underneath, and it does not let you restart a bad attempt.
Timer
A fast, keyboard-driven timer in the csTimer tradition, with sessions, statistics, scramble previews, and support for Bluetooth smart cubes including a move-by-move breakdown of where your time actually went. Available inside the app or standalone at the timer page.
Algorithms and drills
A browsable algorithm database covering the standard 3x3 sets and more, with a trainer that drills a chosen subset case by case and times your recognition. Learning an algorithm and being able to execute it under pressure are different skills; the trainer targets the second.
Records and competitions
Current world and continental records, and a browser for upcoming WCA competitions so you can find the one you are training for. Both read from the WCA's public API.
Battle
Head-to-head rooms where several cubers solve the same scramble at the same time and watch the results land live. It is the closest thing to competitive pressure you can get without leaving the house.
Who builds it
One person. CubingHQ is a personal project by a cuber from Portugal, built because the tool was wanted and did not exist, and kept running because other people started using it. It is not a company, has no team, and has never taken funding.
That has consequences worth being upfront about: fixes arrive when there is time to make them, and the roadmap is whatever seems most useful next. It also means that if you email about a bug, the person who wrote the bug is the person who reads the email.
How it stays free
Everything on the site today is free: there is no checkout, no subscription, and nothing behind a paywall. You can create an account if you want friends, the AI Coach or your settings kept, but almost everything works without one.
Nor is it earning anything yet. There is no advertising running on the site, so hosting and the domain currently come out of one person's pocket. The plan is to cover those costs with advertising — that is why you were asked about cookies.
A paid Premium tier is being built. If it launches, the free tools listed on this page stay free — but it would be a promise we cannot keep to say that nothing will ever be paid, so we are not making it. The Refund Policy is published in advance either way.
We do not sell data — see the Privacy Policy for exactly what that means in practice.
What it is not
CubingHQ is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the World Cube Association. Simulated rounds are practice and carry no official standing whatsoever. For official competitions, results and rankings, go to the WCA.
Standing on other people's work
Very little here is built from nothing:
- The WCA publishes an open API, which is why competition and ranking data can be shown at all.
- cubing.js does the scrambling and the 3D puzzle rendering. Random-state scrambling is genuinely hard, and we did not solve it.
- SpeedCubeDB is the reference for the algorithm sets.
- csTimer set the conventions for what a cubing timer should feel like. The timer here follows them deliberately.
Where to start
If you have never competed, read what actually happens at a WCA competition. If you have competed and it went badly, read why your solves fall apart under pressure. Everything else is in the guides.
Get in touch
Bugs, corrections, feature requests, or a note that something is wrong in a guide — all welcome at martimcubing@gmail.com or via the contact page.
Legal and operator details
Published so that anyone who needs to know who is behind this site, or who needs to serve a formal notice, can find it in one place. Required of an information society service provider by Decreto-Lei n.º 7/2004.
| Service | CubingHQ (cubinghq.online) |
|---|---|
| Operated by | An individual based in Portugal, acting in a personal capacity. Not a registered company. |
| Postal address | Available on request by email, for formal correspondence. |
| martimcubing@gmail.com | |
| Data controller | The operator named above. See the Privacy Policy. |
| Supervisory authority | Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD), Portugal |
| VAT / company number | None — no business is registered and nothing is sold. |
Content on this site is the operator's own except where credited. The interface, the icons and the social preview image are generated from code in the project's own repository; no stock photography or third-party imagery is used. Country flags come from flagcdn.com, and the typefaces (Inter, JetBrains Mono, Space Grotesk) are used under the SIL Open Font License. Algorithms, scrambles and puzzle rendering are credited in the Terms of Use.
If you believe something here infringes your rights, email the address above with enough detail to identify it and we will remove it promptly while we look into it.