Hey there!
Can you guys recommend some free chess sites with good competition?
Do not want to pay for the ICC subscription, though might still go for it, if there would not be anything interesting. Used to play there 2 years ago, and ran my rating up to like 2800-ish at the maximum.
From my part I can share the link to the russian site
chessplanet.ru
It is free if you don't participate in tournaments, otherwise it's like 15$/yearly
The players are quite strong and you can meet real IM's and GM's at the top, but I'd like to try something new.
So any suggestions?

www.chess.com hasn't treated me wrong

Thanks, will give it a try

freechess.org if you want an ICC-like server.

FICS (freechess.org) is probably still the best free site if your only goal is to play live chess games. On the other hand, while it lags a little behind for live chess (imo), chess.com is still a good option and also offers correspondence play with a large opponent pool, plus has a multitude of training materials (some of which require a paid account, but many of which are at least partially accessible for free). If you're looking to both play and study, and want to do it all in a single all-purpose spot, then chess.com is definitely the better way to go.

One caveat is that I'm a class player, and thus exist in a rating range where finding games is easy on any server - there are tons of patzers like me out there. If you ran your ICC rating up to 2800 then the level of competition at the top will matter more for you. I'm not sure what the best free site is for that purpose, my understanding is that quantity of "strong" players tends to be the area where all free sites struggle the most.

Thanks for the detailed answer! Chess.com proved to be superb, a lot of educational material, articles, live coverage of events and strong player pool made it my choice #1. I am struggling to get past 2250, the competition becomes tough and in order to ascend higher you have to really polish your openings. If anyone wants to play, challenge me when I am online. Good luck!

What's your chess.com username, same as here?

Yikes, I'd stay as far away from Chess.com as you can. That place is bad news!

Surprisingly, no Kingscrusher fan has yet mentioned lichess.org, an open-source server that has autopairing pools similar to ICC ones.

Not a fan of KC, but lichess is coming along nicely. Unlike FICS, it is actually actively developed (FICS has been unchanged since about 2006 and it's pretty unlikely that that changes anytime soon).

Some people seem to like http://www.chesscube.com

I tried it and didn't like it.