Tournify Alternative for Padel Tournaments

Tournify is Dutch tournament and league software that covers more than fifty sports and treats padel as one landing page among fourteen. Their own line is "No more Excel", and that is a fair summary of the job it does: online registration with payment, a format built from groups and knockouts, a schedule dragged onto pitches or courts, live results, an automatic standings table, a public tournament website, a mobile app and a slideshow for the screen in the hall.

The scale is not in doubt. Their about page claims hundreds of thousands of organisers and tournaments, over a million app installs and customers in more than sixty countries; those are self-reported marketing figures with no methodology attached, so read them as claims. What is independently visible is a Google Play listing with over half a million downloads and a customer list that includes all twenty Premier League clubs through the Academy Games Programme.

Format primitives are deliberately few: a group stage played once or twice round, a knockout with control over how winners and losers progress, and single matches for placement, combined freely with three ready-made templates. Set scoring exists for racket sports, with a fixed or best-of number of sets and a long list of tie-breakers.

The distribution is the interesting part. Every tournament gets a public site with no setup, and there is an /explore directory filtered by sport, country and open-for-registration, so an event can be found by people who were not on your mailing list. Their mobile apps carry push notifications for upcoming matches and new results, and the interface exists in six languages including Polish.

For how padel's own formats differ from a generic bracket, see the padel tournament formats guide.

Both platforms build a schedule, take self-registration, update standings live and put results on a screen. The split is padel's own formats on one side and reach, payments and apps on the other. For the wider field, see the padel tournament software comparison.

Capability	Tournify	JudgeMate
Americano	Not available. Their padel FAQ says padel-specific formats like americano are on the way	Yes, no player cap; sit-outs rotate round by round
Mexicano	Not present on any surface we checked	Yes. Quartets by current standing, court 1 plays 1+4 against 2+3
Format primitives	Group stage, knockout, single match, combined freely, plus templates	Six named formats, including groups plus knockout
Draw setup	Manual — their help centre describes clicking empty spots and assigning teams; no automatic draw or seeding is documented	Automatic draw generation per format, with an optional seed
Sign-up without a partner	Not available. Their words: single-player registration with automatic pairing isn't available yet	Yes. Americano and mexicano register individual players
Pair sign-up	Yes, teams register as a fixed doubles pair, with custom form fields	Yes: create a team, join one, or join the looking-for-a-partner list
Entry fees	Yes, Mollie: cards, PayPal, iDEAL, Bancontact, BLIK; add-ons like meal vouchers	No
Scheduling	Auto-generate then drag and drop; their help centre states it cannot avoid back-to-back matches for a team	Auto-schedule with start time, slot length and conflict detection
League scheduling	Their help centre: a fully automatic league scheduler is not yet available	Match days generated per round
Who enters the score	Organiser, co-organisers, and teams or referees through a unique passwordless link	Whoever holds the match QR — the panel opens for that match only
Public reach	Tournament website plus an /explore directory filtered by sport and country	Public event page; no directory
Mobile app	Native iOS and Android with push — but only from the €40 tier upwards	Web only
Referee management	Dedicated module: import, preferences, assignment, teams-as-referees	Referee QR per match plus a printable sheet
Organiser price	Free to 8 teams, then €40 / €120 per event or €300 a year	€0

Pick JudgeMate when the event is actually padel-shaped.

• Americano exists here. Rotating partners, individual scoring, sit-outs rotated round by round, points per round set to 16, 21, 24 or 32, and no cap on players. Tournify's own padel FAQ describes americano as still on the way.
• So does mexicano. Pairings are rebuilt each round from the current standings, with court 1 playing first and fourth against second and third. We found no trace of mexicano on Tournify's surfaces.
• A single player can sign up. In americano and mexicano the entrant is a person, so nobody needs to arrive with a partner. Tournify states plainly that single-player registration with automatic pairing is not available yet, which rules out the most common social padel format.
• The leftover player has a route. In pair formats, the looking-for-a-partner list collects singles for you to pair before the draw, instead of a message at 10pm the night before.
• The draw is generated, not assembled. Formats produce their own rounds. Tournify's help centre describes filling a bracket by clicking empty spots and assigning teams.
• Free at 8 teams and at 60. Their free tier stops at eight and their app publication starts at €40. Ours has no team cap and no tier.
• Referee QR per match. Scan at the net, enter that match only, no account. Their equivalent is a passwordless link per team or referee, which works but is not a poster on a court.
• Results can stay hidden. Set a draw to hidden and the standings do not appear until you release them.
• Forty other sports on the same account. A committee running padel and a climbing session does not need two platforms.

Start with the organiser guide, or try the americano generator with no account.

These two split cleanly by format, which makes them easier to combine than most pairs on this topic.

1. Knockout and group events with entry fees stay in Tournify. Sign-up, payment, sponsors, app publication and the /explore listing all pull in the same direction there.
2. Americano and mexicano nights run here. They cannot run in Tournify today, by their own statement, and they are the formats a padel club actually fills a Tuesday with.
3. Keep the boundary at the event. Do not split one tournament across both; pick per event and stay there.
4. Reuse the start list by hand. Nothing syncs — no importer, no shared player database, no export from one into the other. A list used in both is typed twice.
5. Put whichever public view you are using on the club TV. Their slideshow and our /display/[event-slug] do the same job; run the one that belongs to the event you are actually playing.

If your club runs one big open weekend a year and a social night every week, this split costs nothing and gives you the right tool for each. The americano night walkthrough covers the weekly half.