Free Sports Facility Scheduling Software: What You Actually Get
An honest look at the free and open-source options for scheduling a sports facility, what each one costs you elsewhere, and when paying $79/mo is the cheaper answer.
Free is a real option — until it is not
Plenty of facilities run on free tools for years, and for a single space with a handful of regular hirers, that is a sensible decision. A shared calendar, a form, and one organised person can carry a small operation a long way.
The point where it stops working is predictable: more than a few bookable spaces, more than a few people booking, or the moment the one organised person is unavailable. What breaks is not the tool but the fact that the schedule only exists properly in somebody’s head.
What you get
Shared calendars (free)
Google or Outlook calendars cost nothing and handle a single space well. They do not take requests, price a booking, or stop two people claiming the same slot.
Forms plus a spreadsheet (free)
A form collects requests and a sheet records them. It works, but availability is never visible to the person booking, so every request is a guess and every reply is manual.
Open-source booking systems (free to licence)
Genuinely capable, and genuinely a project. You are taking on hosting, updates, payment integration and security — real costs, just not on an invoice.
Free tiers of commercial tools
Usually capped on the thing sports facilities need most: the number of bookable spaces. The cap is what moves you to a paid tier, and per-space pricing is where it gets expensive.
What $79/mo flat covers instead
Unlimited spaces and venues, a public booking page, approval workflow, duration-based pricing, staff roles, recurring series, invoicing and card payment — hosted, maintained and supported.
Try it before deciding
A 30-day money-back guarantee means you can run your real venues on it and compare against your current free setup rather than guessing.
The honest comparison
The question is not free versus $79. It is $79 against the hours somebody spends relaying availability, the bookings lost because asking was too much effort, and the occasional double-booked Saturday. For a facility renting even a few hours a week, one recovered booking covers the month.
If you run one space and take five bookings a month from people you know, a free calendar is the right answer and you should keep it. This is worth paying for when the schedule stops fitting in one person’s head.
By facility type
Questions
Is there a free plan?
No. There is one plan at $79/mo flat with unlimited spaces, and a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can evaluate it on your real venues without risk. We would rather be straightforward about that than offer a free tier capped where it hurts most.
What are the best free options?
For a single space, a shared Google or Outlook calendar plus a request form is genuinely hard to beat on value. For multiple spaces, open-source booking systems are the strongest free route if you have someone to host and maintain them.
Is there a good open-source court booking system?
Several exist and some are well built. Budget for hosting, updates, payment-gateway integration and security patching — the licence is free, the operation is not. If you have technical staff, it is a legitimate choice.
Why do free tiers cap the number of spaces?
Because bookable spaces are how most of the industry prices. Sports facilities have many, so they cross the cap almost immediately — which is the point of the cap. Our flat plan does not count spaces at all.
What does the money-back guarantee cover?
Thirty days, refunded in full if it is not right for you. It is intended so you can set up your actual spaces and real bookings rather than evaluating on a sandbox.
Can we migrate off a spreadsheet easily?
Yes — most facilities set up their spaces and start taking new bookings immediately, letting existing commitments run out on the old system rather than doing a big-bang migration.
Will you raise my price?
No. We will not raise prices on customers who sign up at the current $79/mo Pro rate — even if our public pricing increases later.
Will you retire my plan?
No. We do not retire old plans. Your plan tier stays valid; we never force you onto a new tier to keep the same features at a higher price.
What does grandfathered mean?
You keep your signup rate and plan tier forever. Sign up at $79/mo Pro today and that is what you pay — always grandfathered in.