If you want an app to track tennis matches with friends, the thing to check first is whether it tracks a group or just a person. Most tennis apps are solo stat trackers — you chart your own serve percentage, you get a graph, nobody else is involved. What a friend group needs is different: a shared table everyone can see, results both players confirm so nobody logs a phantom win, head-to-head records, and a ranking that updates itself. Rackt does exactly that and is free on iOS and Android. Below is the honest checklist — five features that separate a group tracker from a scorekeeper — so you can judge any app, including ours, against it.
Solo trackers vs group trackers
Tennis apps split cleanly into two camps, and the App Store does a bad job of telling you which is which.
| Solo stat trackers | Group match trackers | |
|---|---|---|
| Who logs the match | You, for yourself | Either player, confirmed by both |
| What you get | Serve %, winners, unforced errors | Standings, ELO, head-to-head, streaks |
| Who sees it | You | Everyone in the group |
| Settles arguments | No | Yes |
| Good for | Improving technique | Deciding who's actually best |
Neither is wrong. If you're working with a coach on your second serve, a charting app is the right tool. If your problem is that Marco insists he's 6–2 up on you this year and you're fairly sure it's 4–4, you need the other kind.
The five things that actually matter
1. Both-sides confirmation. This is the whole ballgame. If one player can log a result unilaterally, the table is fiction and everyone knows it. Rackt sends the result to your opponent to confirm before it counts. It sounds like a small feature. It's the reason the standings mean anything.
2. A rating, not just a win count. Win-loss records lie in mixed groups — beating the weakest player nine times shouldn't outrank one win over the strongest. An ELO rating, borrowed from chess, weights each result by who you beat and how expected it was. We explained how it applies to racket sports in padel ELO ratings explained; the maths is identical for tennis.
3. Head-to-head history. The single most-argued-about statistic in any friend group. A good app shows your record against each specific person, the last time you played, and which way the trend is going. This is what turns a match log into something you actually open.
4. Logging that takes fifteen seconds. Every app that asks you to chart point-by-point gets abandoned by week three. Final score, done. Depth is optional; speed is not. The apps that survive in real friend groups are the ones you can fill in while walking off court.
5. Tournament formats built in. Sooner or later somebody suggests a Saturday tournament. If your tracker also runs Americano rotations, Mexicano and brackets, that's one app instead of three and a group chat full of screenshots.
Rackt was built around those five points because it started as a group chat argument. Private group tables, confirmed scores, ELO, rivalries, streaks, tournament formats and a match predictor — free on iOS and Android.
What to ignore
AI shot analysis. Impressive in demos, requires phone mounts and good light, and almost nobody does it twice.
Public global leaderboards. Your ranking against 400,000 strangers is meaningless. Your ranking against the eight people you actually play is the interesting number.
Anything requiring wearables. The moment tracking depends on hardware someone forgot to charge, it stops happening.
Social feeds. You already have a group chat. It's already too loud.
Getting a group started properly
Add everyone before you play, not after. A group that gets set up mid-argument on court never fills in the backlog. Agree the scoring format once — best of three sets, a single set, or a 10-point tiebreak — and stick to it, because a rating built on inconsistent match lengths drifts. Log the first ten matches religiously; after that it becomes habit and the table starts to have opinions.
If your group prefers a challenge structure to a straight rating, a ladder works too — the rules and the reasons most ladders quietly die are in how to run a tennis ladder with friends. And if you're going to run an event, the formats guide covers what fits which group size. Tennis's governing body, the ITF, publishes the official rules of scoring if you want to settle the format question with a primary source.
FAQ
Is there a free app to track tennis matches with friends?
Yes — Rackt is free on both the App Store and Google Play, including group tables, confirmed scores, ELO rankings, head-to-head records and tournament formats. Several solo stat-charting apps are also free, but most group-oriented options put rankings or multiple groups behind a subscription.
How do you keep track of tennis scores between friends fairly?
Confirmation is the mechanism. Whichever app or spreadsheet you use, the result should be visible to and acknowledged by both players before it enters the record. Anything logged by one side only invites the "I don't remember that match" defence three weeks later.
What's the best way to rank players in a friend group?
An ELO-style rating, because it accounts for who you beat rather than just how often you win. Straight win percentage rewards whoever plays the easiest opponents most often. A ladder is a decent alternative if your group prefers challenges to a rolling number, but it needs more discipline to keep alive.
Can the same app track padel and tennis?
It should. Most friend groups play both now, and keeping separate ratings per sport matters — padel is a doubles game with different dynamics, so a combined rating tells you nothing useful. Rackt keeps tennis and padel ratings separate within the same group.
Stop relitigating last month's result from memory. Get the group on one table, confirm the scores, and let the rating do the arguing. Download Rackt free.
The table never lies. That's usually the problem.