Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

We use the recently released cosmic chronometer data and the latest measured value of the local Hubble parameter, combined with the latest joint light curves of Supernovae Type Ia, and Baryon Acoustic Oscillation distance measurements, in order to impose constraints on the viable and most used $f(R)$ gravity models. We consider four $f(R)$ models, namely the Hu-Sawicki, the Starobinsky, the Tsujikawa, and the exponential one, and we parametrize them introducing a distortion parameter $b$ that quantifies the deviation from $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. Our analysis reveals that a small but non-zero deviation from $\Lambda$CDM cosmology is slightly favored, with the corresponding fittings exhibiting very efficient $AIC$ and $BIC$ Information Criteria values. Clearly, $f(R)$ gravity is consistent with observations, and it can serve as a candidate for modified gravity.