Playmaker vs CourtDraw

The closest comparison on the site

CourtDraw is the tool that looks most like us, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. It runs in a browser with nothing to download. Its board opens with no account. It works on a phone, a tablet and a laptop, and it installs to a home screen like an app. Its free tier keeps three saved plays, which is our number too. And its paid plan is €6 a month, which is our $6 in a different currency.

It is also bigger than us in the most obvious way: CourtDraw draws 38+ sports and we draw eight. Our eight are soccer, basketball, American football, field hockey, rugby, netball, baseball and volleyball, each drawn to scale with its own markings. If your sport is not on that list — tennis, handball, futsal, ice hockey and a long tail of others — CourtDraw has a court for it and we do not. That is the first thing to check, and for some coaches it settles the question before anything else on this page matters.

Where the free tiers part company

Both of us give away the drawing. What happens after the drawing is where we differ, and it is the reason this page exists. Read off CourtDraw's own plan cards on 8 November 2026:

• Playback is Pro. CourtDraw's phase animation, up to five phases with animated playback, is on the Pro plan. On the free plan you draw a static diagram. When we tried the free board on 7 November and pressed Play, it said "Pro Feature: Animated Playback". Playmaker animates every play on the free tier, with no account.
• Share links are Pro. CourtDraw's Pro plan lists "shareable board links"; the free plan shares a PNG with a courtdraw.app watermark, which you send through a messaging app. Ours: draw the play, copy the link, send it to the group chat, and every player who opens it watches the runs and passes play back on their own phone. No app, no login, on our side or theirs.
• One court on free. CourtDraw's free plan gives you one court of your choice; the other courts carry a Pro lock. Our free tier draws all eight of our sports.

None of that is a criticism of how CourtDraw chooses to make its money. It is a perfectly reasonable line to draw. It is just a different line from ours, and if the thing you need is to get an animated play in front of fifteen players tonight without paying, it is the line that decides it.

Where your plays live

CourtDraw's FAQ says free and Pro tactics are saved in your browser's local storage, on your device. That is fast, it works offline, and it means nothing leaves your phone. It also means the plays are on the device you drew them on.

A Playmaker play lives in its link, so a new phone or tablet loses nothing: open the link anywhere and the play is there. A free account keeps three saved plays on our servers, and Pro keeps unlimited.