Padel scoreboard or phone app: which one is worth it

It's a fair question: there are apps that keep the score of a padel match, plenty of them are free, and you're carrying your phone anyway. Does it make sense to spend money on a physical scoreboard?

It depends quite a lot on how and where you play. Let's go through it properly, with the drawbacks of each option on the table and with the app prices checked one by one, because they're almost never mentioned.

Which apps actually exist, and which ones charge

People talk about "the apps" in the abstract, so it's worth naming them. These are the ones in the stores today, with what they cost as of September 2026. The prices are the ones shown on the Spanish App Store listings, in euros; if you're reading this later, check them again, because they change.

App	Where it works	What it costs
Padel Point — Track your score	iPhone and Apple Watch	Free, no in-app purchases
Padel Watch — Cuenta tus puntos	iPhone and Apple Watch	Scorekeeping is free. Premium by subscription: between €2.99 and €4.99 a month, or between €29.99 and €49.99 a year depending on the plan
Kick Off Padel	Apple Watch	Free. PRO: €3.99 a month or €29.99 a year
Racketly	iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch	Free with limited features. Subscription from €5.99 a month, €44.99–€49.99 a year, or €99 as a one-off lifetime payment
PadelPoint — Marcador Pádel	iPhone and Apple Watch	€1.99, one payment
iWatch Padel — Puntuación Fácil	iPhone and Apple Watch	€2.99, one payment
Marcador de Padel	iPhone and iPad	Free. Premium: €0.99 a month or €4.99 a year
Padel Play	Android and Wear OS watches	We haven't been able to verify its price (its website doesn't publish one)

These are the prices on the Spanish App Store, so they are listed in euros. What you pay in the UK will be Apple's equivalent tier in pounds — we haven't checked those, so we're not going to quote figures we haven't seen.

Two warnings so you don't download the wrong thing. "Padel Point" and "PadelPoint" are two different apps, from two different developers: one is free and the other costs €1.99. And "Padel Play" is a name several apps use at once; the Wear OS one is not the same as the ones listed under that name on the App Store.

What you notice looking at the whole list: most of them are Apple Watch apps, and most of them have a free tier that counts points perfectly well. If all you want is to know how the match is going, you don't need to pay anyone anything. Worth saying before we go any further.

Does a scoreboard work out cheaper than a subscription?

The argument is tempting: you buy a scoreboard once and you pay a subscription every year. We did the sums with the prices above, and the answer is more qualified than we'd like.

Our two reference prices are €151 for the Kronoset base model and €199 for the Kronoset PRO. Against that:

• A €29.99-a-year subscription (Kick Off Padel PRO, or Padel Watch's cheapest annual plan): it takes a little over 5 years to reach €151, and nearly 7 to reach €199. At that price the app is cheaper for a long time.
• A subscription around €50 a year (Racketly, or Padel Watch's most expensive annual plan): after 3 years you've spent about €150, which is exactly what the base scoreboard costs. After 4 years, about €200, which is the whole PRO.
• The free tier, which is where most people stay: the app costs nothing and the money comparison simply doesn't exist.

So the honest way to put it is this: the sums only favour the scoreboard if you subscribe to one of the expensive plans and stick with it for three or four years. On the cheap plans they don't. And on the free tier there's nothing to compare.

The conclusion we draw ourselves: money is not the reason to buy a scoreboard. The reason is what a screen on the glass does that a wrist can't. That's what we'll get to.

Where the apps fall short

Scoring apps do their job. For one player who wants to know how the match is going, they're more than enough. Their weak points are elsewhere.

Only the person carrying it can see it. This is the big one. The other three players see nothing. When someone asks "what's the score?", it has to be said out loud, which is exactly what you were trying to avoid. And the "we were 30-15" argument isn't settled by a number only one person has.

You have to get your phone out, unless you have a watch. Every point means stopping, finding the phone, unlocking it and tapping. A connected watch improves things a lot, but it's still a gesture on every point — and, as the table shows, nearly all of these apps assume you own an Apple Watch. If you don't, the comparison changes.

The phone is in a pocket or on the floor. With heat, sweat and stray balls, a court isn't the best place for a device worth several hundred euros.

It switches off, a call comes in, it locks. Mid-match, it happens.

For a club it's a non-starter. You can't ask every player to install an app to use your court. And spectators see nothing at all.

A digital scoreboard on court

The proposition is different: the scoreboard is fixed to the court, all four players and anyone watching from outside can see it, and it doesn't depend on anyone's phone. We've explained the mechanics in more detail in how a digital padel scoreboard works.

Where it falls short

To be fair, it has drawbacks too.

It costs money. An app is zero euros; a scoreboard is €151 for the Kronoset base model. That's the main difference and there's no point dressing it up — and, as we've just seen, the subscription sums don't cover it.

It's one more thing to carry. If you always play at different courts and don't want extra baggage, a scoreboard is another item in your bag. For clubs it's the other way round: install it once and it stays.

It needs charging. With Kronoset that's over twenty matches per charge, so in practice you charge it every few weeks, but it's upkeep an app doesn't have.

About having to walk to the scoreboard

This is the criticism levelled most often at court scoreboards, and it's worth clarifying because they don't all work the same way.

Scoreboards with a remote require someone to hold the remote, which puts you back at the app problem: only one person has it and it needs finding. Some solve that with wristbands, but that's two more button cells to run flat. Scoreboards with a physical button do make you walk to the wall.

On a contactless scoreboard like Kronoset the point is added by holding your racket to the sensor, without touching anything by hand. Since the scoreboard sits on the glass, the gesture happens on your way to the serving position, a walk you're making between points anyway. No remote to lose, no phone to pull out.

That said: if your style is to stay at the back and never go near the wall, a sensor system will cost you a small detour. It's only honest to say so.

Recording the match with the score on it

This is the difference that gets talked about least and that most people ask for: being able to watch the point back later with the score over the picture, like on television.

Kronoset PRO does this. You record with your phone's camera and the score is overlaid on the video, taken from the device itself over Bluetooth. In other words, what you see in the video is what the screen on court was showing, not what somebody wrote down separately. It works on iPhone and on Android, and it's included in the €199 of the PRO, with no fee.

Now the honest part, because there's a claim going round that no app does this and that isn't true: Racketly records video with score graphics too. Its release notes say so in as many words — that you can record your matches and download highlight videos "with live-style score graphics". We haven't tested it and we don't know whether that feature sits in the free tier or only in the subscription, so check it yourself before you decide on that basis.

The real differences between the two are two, and they're small but they count:

• Where the score comes from. In the app it comes from the taps you made on your watch. On the scoreboard it comes from the device all four players were looking at, which is what heads off the argument afterwards.
• What you keep paying. The PRO's video is included in the purchase. A subscription app's video is paid for as long as you keep the subscription.

As for other scoreboards: no rival portable scoreboard records video. There it genuinely is a feature the rest of the category doesn't have.

A drawback that also needs saying: to record, you still need a phone propped up somewhere filming the court. The scoreboard takes the phone out of your hand, not off the court.

When each option makes sense

Stick with the app if…

• You play casually, at different courts, and don't want to carry anything
• One person seeing the score is enough
• You have an Apple Watch and the free tier does the job
• You don't want to spend

A scoreboard pays off if…

• You have a regular group and always play at the same courts
• You want all four players to see the score without asking
• You want to record matches with the real score over the picture
• You organise internal leagues, tournaments or americanos
• You run a club and want the courts to look professional

For a club it's a different question

For a club the comparison isn't even framed in the same terms, and it's worth explaining why.

An app isn't an option for a club. It's not that it's worse: it's that you can't deploy it. You'd have to ask every member to install one particular app, to own the right watch — remember that nearly all of these apps are Apple Watch apps — to keep it charged and to open it at the start. No club can make the experience of its courts depend on that. And even if you managed it, the score would still be on one person's wrist: at reception, in the stands and on the next court along, nobody would see a thing.

A scoreboard on every court changes how the venue is perceived. Matches keep their own score, internal leagues run without paper sheets, and in an americano the scoreboard heads off the result arguments that always end up at reception.

And the number: kitting out four courts with the base model is €604, once, with no licences and no annual fees. Set against what the rest of a club's equipment costs, it's a small line item for something everyone who walks in can see.

If you're weighing up kitting out several courts, email us at sales@kronoset.com and we'll put together volume pricing.

In short

There are good apps, many of them free, and if you play casually you'll probably get by with one of them: the money argument isn't reason enough to buy a scoreboard, and we'd rather show you the sums than hide them.

What an app doesn't do is show the score to the other three players and to whoever is watching from outside. An app counts your points on your wrist; a scoreboard on court shows them. If you always play in the same place, if you want to record matches with the result over the picture, or if you run a club, that's where the difference shows up in every match.

You can see the full Kronoset range with prices and the differences between models.