Best Free Alternatives to TournamentSoftware for Martial Arts Clubs

TournamentSoftware is the de facto standard for badminton and squash — but it was never designed for martial arts. If you have tried to force a taekwondo event into it you already know the pain. Here are the realistic alternatives that actually fit how a martial arts competition runs.

Why TournamentSoftware is a poor fit for martial arts

TournamentSoftware (and its cousin Tournament Planner) is excellent at what it was built for: racket sports with a single match format and a single ring of two players. Martial arts events have none of those constraints. You typically run sparring + patterns + breaking on the same day, you have weight categories that overlap with grade categories, you need bye handling that respects seeding, and you need multiple rings running in parallel with shared judges.

None of that is impossible to bodge in TournamentSoftware. It just takes hours of fiddling and produces a fragile draw.

The honest comparison table

Here is what the realistic 2026 landscape looks like for clubs that want to leave TournamentSoftware behind.

1. Challonge — Free, generalist

Challonge is the obvious starter. Free single-elimination and round-robin brackets, easy embedding, no martial arts features whatsoever. Good for one-bracket exhibition fights, useless for a real category-driven competition.

2. Smoothcomp — Paid, BJJ-first

Smoothcomp is well-known in BJJ. It does brackets and scoring well, but it is BJJ-flavoured and the per-athlete pricing makes interclub events expensive.

3. Sport80 — Federation-grade

Sport80 underpins the official British Taekwondo entry system. It is a great national federation tool but completely overkill (and overpriced) for clubs.

4. Open Martial Arts Tools — Free, open source

A handful of GitHub projects aimed at karate clubs. Free, but require Linux server skills and have no support if something breaks at 9am on the day of the event.

5. Spreadsheets + Google Forms

The default. Free, infinitely flexible, falls apart the moment you need live scoring or multi-ring coordination. We wrote a whole post on why.

6. TKD Competition Manager — Purpose-built UK option

Built for taekwondo and martial arts. Sparring, patterns, padwork, breaking — all in one engine. Live scoring, multi-ring, OBS overlays, CSV import. Pricing starts at £39 per event with a £149 Starter plan that covers most clubs. See plans →

So which one should you actually pick?

If you run one bracket once a year for a few mates, Challonge is fine. If you run a real category-based interclub or open competition with sparring + patterns, you want a martial-arts-native tool. Free tools sound attractive but the hidden cost is the day you spend fixing the broken bracket the night before your event.

For most UK clubs the realistic shortlist in 2026 is Smoothcomp (if BJJ-style is acceptable) or TKD Competition Manager (if you want something built around taekwondo categories from day one).

What to look for in any martial arts tournament tool

• Sparring + patterns + breaking in one engine, not separate workflows
• Bye handling that respects seeding — no top seeds meeting in round one
• Multi-ring scoring with a shared fixture board
• CSV import for entries — typing 200 fighters in by hand is not a feature, it is a punishment
• Coach + audience displays that update without page refresh
• Per-event pricing, not per-athlete — interclubs should not punish you for bringing more kids