Comparison
TOURNEYBASE
vs TOURNEYMACHINE
An honest, point-by-point comparison for tournament directors evaluating their options in 2026.
The short version
TourneyMachine has been around for 15+ years and is the default choice for many youth sports organizations. That tenure shows up in its breadth of features and brand recognition. It also shows up in the things directors and parents complain about most: outages on tournament weekends, broken search, ads on public pages, tiny fonts, and a spectator experience that hasn't kept up with what parents expect from a modern web app.
TourneyBase is new — we launched in 2026. That's a real disadvantage for directors who want years of stability data, and we're honest about it. Where we win is on the things you can verify in fifteen minutes: calendar sync, live scores under two seconds, AI-assisted scheduling, no ads, and a spectator experience that parents will actually use without complaint.
If brand recognition and a long feature checklist are what you optimize for, TourneyMachine still makes sense. If you've had a bad weekend with TourneyMachine in the last year — or if your parents have been complaining about the experience — read on.
Feature comparison
Last updated April 2026. Built from public documentation, hands-on testing, and feedback from directors who've run events on both. If anything below is out of date, email us — we'll fix it.
| Feature | TourneyBase | TourneyMachine |
|---|---|---|
| Spectator search | Full-text search across active tournaments | Broken or returns no results in most categories |
| Calendar sync (.ics / webcal) | Yes — per tournament and per team | No — parents copy game times by hand |
| Push notifications | Web Push for score updates and schedule changes | Email-only, often delayed |
| Live scoring | Real-time WebSocket push (<2s) | Manual refresh required |
| AI schedule generation | Yes — weighted preferences, hard-constraint validation | No — manual builder only |
| Weather rescheduling | Cancel a slot, schedule re-flows automatically | Manual reshuffle, group-text notifications |
| Offline scorekeeping | PWA with IndexedDB queue, syncs on reconnect | No — requires constant connectivity |
| Ads on public pages | None — ever | Display ads, sometimes intrusive |
| Mobile-readable typography | 16px+ on mobile, high contrast | Cramped tables, small fonts |
| Brackets and standings | Auto-seed, auto-advance, configurable tiebreakers | Yes — table stakes for both |
| Registration with payments | Stripe Connect direct to your bank, 2.5% platform fee | PayPal/Stripe with their own fee structure |
| Per-tournament pricing | Free up to 8 teams, then $99 / $249 / $499 | Annual subscriptions, varies by org size |
| Reported uptime issues | New platform, no historical incidents | Frequently reported outages on tournament weekends |
| Years in market | New (2026) | 15+ years, deep feature surface area |
| Brand recognition with traveling teams | Building | Widely known |
When TourneyMachine is still the right call
If your organization runs a single annual event that everyone's used to, the cost of switching may not be worth it. If you depend on a specific TourneyMachine integration with your governing body or league management software, check that we support it before switching — we cover the major ones but not all of them.
When you should switch
You've had at least one outage during a live tournament. Your parents have asked you why they can't add games to their phone calendar. You've manually rebuilt a schedule because of weather and it took three hours. You're embarrassed to share the public page link because of the ads. Any of these is enough.
Try it free
TourneyBase has a Free tier — up to 8 teams, no credit card. That's enough to run a small event end-to-end so you can see the spectator experience, the live scoring, and the AI scheduling before you commit to anything paid.