· 8 min read · comparisons, apps
Best Golf Course Tracker Apps in 2026 (Collectors vs. Scorecards)
Scorecard apps track strokes. Course collector apps track where you've played. Here's how 18Birdies, Hole19, Golfshot, TheGrint and Golfy compare for tracking courses.
"Golf course tracker" means two different things, and most app roundups blur them. One is tracking your game — strokes, GPS distances, handicap. The other is tracking your courses — the list of everywhere you've played, growing for the rest of your life. Almost every golf app is built for the first job. This guide sorts out which apps are good at which, so you can pick the right one (or the right two).
Full disclosure: we make Golfy, which is a course collector. We've tried to be straight about what the scorecard apps do better, because they do several things better.
The two jobs
| Job | What you want | Built for it |
|---|---|---|
| Track my game | GPS yardages, shot tracking, stats, handicap | 18Birdies, Hole19, Golfshot, TheGrint |
| Track my courses | Every course played, dates, photos, play counts, states, bucket list, friends | Golfy |
Scorecard & GPS apps
18Birdies
A polished all-rounder: GPS, scorecard, stats and a social layer, with a free tier and a premium subscription. Round history is searchable, so you can technically see the courses you've played — but there's no notion of a collection, no rarity and no simple way to log a course from years ago without a scorecard.
Hole19
Strong GPS and course maps with a clean scorecard, popular internationally. Same story on history: rounds are stored, courses aren't celebrated.
Golfshot
One of the longest-running GPS apps, with detailed stats and Apple Watch support. Excellent if your goal is a lower handicap.
TheGrint
Handicap-first, with a USGA-compliant index and league tools. Great for the competitive golfer; not designed for "where have I played."
If you want any of these, get one. They aren't competing with a course collector — they're the other half of the toolkit.
Course collector apps
Golfy
Golfy is built around the second job. You check in at a course (from the tee box or from the couch, years later), and it joins your collection with the date, score and a photo. What makes it more than a list:
- Rarity scores for 12,000+ US courses. Common to Legendary, based on scarcity, exclusivity and difficulty, with Epic and Legendary reserved for championship venues. How rarity works.
- XP and levels. A first check-in earns 2.5 XP per rarity point plus a tier bonus — up to 748 XP for a Legendary course versus ~90 for a common one.
- Badges for milestones, states, regions and rare rounds.
- Friends, leaderboard and King of the Course — the lowest score among your friends at each course holds the crown.
- Curated lists that double as a bucket list.
What it doesn't do: GPS, shot tracking, handicaps. It's iPhone and iPad only, free to download, with Go Pro at $3.99/month, $19.99/year or $59.99 lifetime after a two-week trial (pricing).
Spreadsheets and notes apps
Free, flexible, and abandoned by March. Fine as a starting point — see our guide to tracking every course you've played for a template — but you'll outgrow it the first time you want to know how many courses you've played in a state, or which one was the rarest.
How to choose
- You care about your handicap: pick a GPS/scorecard app. Add a collector if you also want the history.
- You care about where you've played: a collector app is the whole point. Golfy is the one built for it.
- You travel for golf: a collector with rarity scoring turns trips into a game, and the state directory makes planning easier (browse courses by state).
Try Golfy free
Download on the App Store and check in at the last course you played. Get Golfy →
