18Birdies: Golf GPS Tracker Reviews

by SpecialKzx

I like the basic capabilities of this app, but I do not want the paid version. When I try to start a round of golf, for which I use this app just to see the course layouts, I must click through 10 screens, trying to upsell me, before I can get the round started. For the first few holes, 18Birdies keeps trying everytime I advance to the next hole.

Why can’t this be turned off? If they don’t want to offer a “free” option, then they shouldn’t offer a “free” option. But if you offer such, please don’t make it so annoying. I would be willing to make a one-time payment to use the basic functions without the annoying upsells, but this option isn’t offered. The only choices are costly subscription services. This is unfortunate.

The developers are leaving money on the table by not offering a one-time payment for the right to use basic functions.

by Todaytheday

May have to switch golf apps. I’ve liked 18Birdies very much and think it’s well developed, but don’t care for recent changes that will have me looking elsewhere. The ‘solid shot’ feature, while well intentioned, is annoying and pretty worthless. Leave it as a buried option, but make it less prominent. The GPS and tracking seems to be less accurate than previously. I regularly had been using as a striving-to-improve amateur the shot tracking feature that was available with the free version, but now is only available as an advanced feature with paid subscription. Honestly, I would consider paying for 18Birdies , but $99 a year is exorbitant, especially as most the other golf apps are nowhere near that and I’m a 2-3 times a month golfer, if that. A lot of the advanced features seem nice, but are more than I need currently. The shot tracking is very nice to have to improve club distance knowledge. I would consider a one-time fee app or paid ‘lite’ version with fewer features including shot tracking, but not worth current subscription price. It’s really too bad.

by Toolbockts

I have been using 18Birdies for about a year and used a premium membership for a few months as well. As far as golf scoring apps go, this is one of the best.

However, one of the main things that differentiated 18Birdies from others was the DreamGames features. DreamGames allows you to spend GolfBucks (earned by playing rounds and sharing items in the news feed) for entries in prize drawings. I have won a towel, a hat, a box of golf balls, and even a $150 gift card. This is what kept me coming back to 18Birdies each day.

Unfortunately, they recently made a change to the way golf bucks are earned by significantly reducing the payouts for various activities. For example, sharing a golf round used to pay a total of 50 golf bucks and now it only pays 5. I expect the reason they did this is because people exploited the previous system to accrue thousands of golf bucks.

I feel like the developers are really missing the point on this one, as there are many users like myself that will stop using 18Birdies if things continue down this road. The scoring features are good, but they really aren’t better than the other apps out there. If this app can’t get control of Golf Bucks distribution they will lose much of their user base

by TM1821

Great app for use on every course I have played so far. GPS is usually very accurate and helps with club selection. One thing they changed though is how many golf bucks (currency used in app to enter contests) you get per round played. You use these golf bucks to get scratch cards for 5 per scratch. You used to get 40-50 per round depending on if you played with another this app user. And another 10 for sharing your round. Now you get five for finishing a round and one to share your round while the scratch cards are still five per ticket. There are options to share your shots or share your score per hole for five GB each but I don’t understand why that gives you more than playing a full round. I get the social aspect they are pushing but that is going the wrong way with it. I don’t understand that change and had to write a review since they respond to each one it seems like. Just looking for clarification on the golf bucks change. It used to be my favorite part of 18Birdies and kept me coming back to it but now with that change, golf bucks seem pointless now

by Scotted12

The major problem with 18Birdies is when using the Apple Watch. Yardages are not consistent. Example; I could be standing on a par 3 tee box and look for yardage say 140 yds. The next time I raise my wrist it displays 709 yds. And it doesn’t change til I move 10-20 yds away. These yardage discrepancies could happen anywhere and almost always every time that I use the watch a 2nd 3rd 4th time. As I stated this is only with the Apple Watch. When I use the phone yardage is always correct. This is quite annoying and does nothing to speed up play. I am currently in touch with someone from support and watch is configured as 18Birdies directs. I have deleted and reinstalled 18Birdies on both the watch and iPhone and has not improved and phone and watch os are up to date. The other thing is with support he claims that I am not responding to his emails, which I am, so there is delays in him responding to my questions. I don’t know whether there is a problem with your email system. I will follow up with another review when and If they can get it working.

by Sashosik

So sad. 18Birdies is stunning on the phone. All of the premium features are worth the 99$... but I am obsessed with only using the Apple Watch on the course, and it was a disaster. 2 mains problems.
1. The yardages, omg... the phone is always 3 feet max from the watch. And every other app I’ve test driven on this course had no problem with the yardages. But this one is a nightmare. 130 yard par 3, says 366. I have to pull the phone out of the bag, unlock it, and then MAYBE the yardage matches the phone. Unplayable, unusable.
2. After you record your score and move to record putts, it starts you at the bottom of that page, and you have scroll up to record putts, and then scroll back down to move to next hole... this seems like a temporary bug, or their UX designer is on vacation.

Devs, product managers, what would make 18Birdies perfect for the Watch. The UI is stunning, UX has some very simple adjustments. This is very easy. Just go play a round with it lol.
Please, add layup yardages.. to start, how about just distance to a 100, 125, 150 lay up? Distance to hazards and over hazards would be amazing. Golf Logic does it.. but that’s a big project.

I’ll be checking back, this is the best app for the phone.. more or less, but Watch is far far behind. Good luck.

by ThisApp777

The last major update really made me stop using 18Birdies . They are correcting some things. But the one thing they have not corrected yet is scoring simplified. It use to be you enter your score and other players scores popped up immediately to finish your card. Now you have to close yours, swipe up, find the player, find the icon, and then put their score in for each person. All this in the sun clearing screen on a golf course where electronics really should be in the background, not dealing with it all the way to the next hole. To be honest I haven’t used 18Birdies since the first tome I tried it on the course and couldn’t stand how long it took to enter in everyone’s score.
I try it again every update to see if it’s fixed at home. But it’s still not and that is disappointing. So many good things, but this problem really overshadows them for me.

by Airforce97

Like many, I have a group of golf buddies I play with. Many started off with using other golf apps, but I convinced them all to switch to this app. Why? It has a friendly interface, its GPS tracking is ACCURATE (I double check it with a Golf Rangefinder and they both agree on the distance /- 3 yards), it has every golf course imaginable (even the random small municipal course in your town), and it's a great way to keep track of your progress through all of your rounds (tells you your up to date handicap!).

My only complaint is that it always shows your score (how many above par) as you play. In order for me to give a full 5 star rating, this app needs a setting to turn this off. Golf is as much a mental game as it is a technical/physical game. If I can have a setting to turn off the real-time score keeping (like how it is when you have a handwritten score card), then this app will be the GOAT of golf apps. For now, it's amazing but room for improvement.

I hope to see this change very soon for this season. PLEASE!

by Nevs1!

I’ve been using 18 birdies when there wasn’t so many users where I would win lots of their prizes when they had the drawings, too bad they don’t offer that anymore, but anyways.. back to 18Birdies , I think it’s still a great app and I like how they are starting to incorporate games with other players in the group, but my one and only biggest issue is the fact that I can’t input other players score into 18Birdies on my APPLE WATCH for added convenience, because I’m sure y’all know how hectic it can get sometimes to pull out your phone.. “golf game book” does allow you to input others score through the Apple Watch.. I like keeping my rounds saved with 18 birdies, but it is also great to know where everyone’s at for the round at a glance.. if y’all could add that feature, that would be a great added feature for everyone..

by Jared52

I’m really close to putting my money where my mouth is for 18Birdies but there is one glaring issue preventing me from doing so. Distances on my Apple Watch Series 3 GPS+Cellular are rarely if ever coming from the watch GPS. When I am riding I don’t want my phone in my pocket, so I have to be cognizant of where I park the cart so I get a good idea of the distance. Sometimes when I am walking to my ball from the cart, the distances are from my watch but that might be 2 holes a round. I did see a note from the dev about disabling Bluetooth on the watch temporarily but that seems to be a bit of a silly work around. Maybe Apple doesn’t provide an API to ensure the distances are coming from the watch but as soon as this part of 18Birdies is reliable, I will pay because everything else about 18Birdies is worth it.

by Whsufjbrua

App works great but the customer referral prompts are ridiculous. I add a friend who’s not in 18Birdies to my game as a guest and I’m forced to enter their phone number so 18Birdies can send a text to them to invite them to 18Birdies . How about you don’t force people to share their friend’s private information just to play a round of golf? That is not my information to share. No way to bypass the phone number so had to enter a fake number and then back out of the prefilled text message that comes up. Also pretty sure they are selling my location and app activity with Facebook. Don’t think I’ve never seen a Facebook ad for golf related products until today, 1 hour after I finished my round.

by Gdell1021

I have tested out several GPS apps. I like 18B because of the layout and user interface. It’s clean and provides the type of info and stat tracking I’m looking for. I’m not into the social aspect but if more of my friends had it, maybe I would be. I agree that the shot Tracking system currently in place is essentially unusable and complicated so I choose not to use that feature. I can’t speak about premium features as I only have free version now.

One thing I would like to see added is a list of things like: yards to a dogleg; yards to layup, yards to bunker, yards to front,middle,back of green etc like other apps offer. Sometimes it’s just easier to quickly see the distances already calculated rather than zooming in with my finger to pinpoint the location. If this could be incorporated, it would improve on an already great foundation.

by E 5280

So I reviewed 4 other similar apps and was interested in the one that would best work on an Apple Watch. My intent was to start the round on my phone and let it work on the Apple Watch from start to finish. After watching user video and signing up for the premium service I’m an disappointed to report it did not work as advertised. I downloaded 18Birdies , confirmed it was available on my Apple Watch and even tried a dry run before my round. Then when I started my round to learn that there was zero gps updates during my round on my Apple Watch or on my phone. The only thing that worked was that 18Birdies recognized the course I played but never the yards to the green. VERY DISAPPOINTED.

by Ryancarty

18Birdies is fantastic. I tried a bunch of apps that have similar features and this one was by far the cleanest, most updated, and well laid out app. It also has the most features in front of the paywall that I’ve found, but Premium gives you awesome additional features.

The GPS is super useful, entering stats is super simple and doesn’t take you out of the game. You can keep as thorough stats as you want. I like that I can add my exact clubs. They even had my ‘94 Big Bertha irons. They didn’t have one of my more obscure old clubs, and I emailed them asking if there was a reason, and they replied that I should refresh because they added them. Can’t beat that customer service. This feels like it was made by people who really enjoy golf, and less of a “company” if that makes sense.

The social aspect is a fun way to keep in touch with friends and see their progress and easily add them to a score card.

Love 18Birdies !

Features I would love:
• Automatic handicap calculator (I know this is being worked on to meet the new calculation methods)
• Green slope maps (even if its Premium only)
• Add a ball path tracer AI (maybe as part of the existing AI. Would be fun to share in the social area, and also see your ball flight

by Jjsand1788

This is a great app. Elevation changes don’t always work great in areas where it is really hilly and possible shotty phone service. I also much preferred the old shot tracker. The new one is way to complex and harder to use. Takes more time to get the exact post up of the shot and could lead to misleading shot yardage’s. The old one allowed you to move the pins to disk in the exact location and give you a read. If it was not for that I would give 5/5 rating.

Edit* After further use of 18Birdies I am still just as unpleased after the recent update and will be looking for other apps. Golf bucks are worse in every way now, elevation changes do not show up most of the time, shot tracking is extremely inaccurate and hard to use (due to lag and takes longer to dial in your location which just adds to length of round and takes your actual focus off playing golf), and wind is always off. Bring back the older version or make significant improvements. That being said the yardage’s are accurate and good. Nice for keeping score.

by Wolverine4206

18Birdies is or pretty cool and very useful. It can replace taking notes on a scorecard as well as track important stats like fairways hit(even has option to Indicate direction ball was off the Fairway), greens hit, number of chip shots, and most important for myself personally is number of putts per hole. I knew that I needed to work on my putting but I had no idea how many strokes per round it was costing me. At least 17 per round, birdies putted into double bogeys, it’s very frustrating but gives you an idea of where you want to get some practice in. Overall cool app, download if you are serious about your game and enjoy using technology to learn how you can improve your scores.

by Jay2987

Hi guys!! First off I want to say I love 18Birdies and it’s my main source for keeping my score out on the track. And a doubles as a social media account, but lately I’ve been having issues with entering my score I’m able to input it for each hole throughout my round but at the end of my round I can’t save my round. Please let me know if it’s an issue that is being worked on, or just me? Also just a suggestion but I hope you guys put it in the update, but can you please put a hcp calculator that does all the math for you lol. I’ve played a lot of roads and I would just like to take the doing the math every couple of months to figure out my hcp out of the equation. Lol see what I did their

by MichaelW2158

I’ve been using 18Birdies for a couple years now and loved it. However as of about a week or so ago 18Birdies wit not sync to my Apple Watch. I don’t know if this is a problem with Apple or 18Birdies but it is very frustrating that I can’t get it on my watch anymore! And with it not syncing to my watch it drains my battery on my phone very quickly! If it’s a problem with 18Birdies I hope they get it fixed quickly if not we’ll see what Apple does!

Update to my review, it was not a problem with 18Birdies but a problem with my watch. I got in touch with Apple and we got my problem resolved so since the problem has been rectified I will update my rating to five stars

by Sepatts

Ok, at the beginning I did not like 18Birdies. Now I realize it was because I did not understand the full capabilities of 18Birdies. I initially thought it just provided the overview of the course. It is so much more. 18Birdies is for serious golfers who want to track their stats and analyze their swing. I started doing both and am now addicted to 18Birdies . It has provided many insights on the parts of my game to improve. It also provides simple drills (in video form) to help correct even the subtle quirks the cause a loss in power, distance and accuracy. The premium version is worth the $100 yearly rate. I will renew when the subscription runs out. Most unfortunate that I only realized the full capabilities after few months; but glad I did.

by Steve - Computer Scientist

I have tried all suggestions including logging out of iPhone app, rebooting both iPhone and Apple Watch. Lots of frustration when I used to have no issue in starting my round. Watch app is great when it syncs with iPhone app. Just hasn’t been useful in for a few weeks.

The developer responded letting me know that they were aware of the issue and had an update for 18Birdies and the watch app that should resolve the issue.

After updating the apps on my iphone and watch, I was able to play a round of golf today using the watch and iPhone - it was great having it back - I will update my review again if anything changes. Thanks to the developers for resolving this issue and making the apps useful again.

by Lostdaug

If you just want a free gps service go ahead and use 18Birdies. Don’t ever use 18Birdies to book a tee time!!!!! Did it once and never again. They make you pay for the tee time at booking and if there are any problems you will get no refund unless you cancel before 24 hours before tee off. So if you are like me that looks for times at night for the next morning you are never able to cancel or change your tee time. I found this out the hard way and payed for 4 when only 2 played because I had 2 guys drop out last minute which happens to us all. Life happens! When I contacted them all I got was an automatic response stating cancellation policy. When I responded for more info all I got was crickets. Been more than 24 hours since last email and no response. They don’t care about anything but your money.

by AB2ski

I used to love 18Birdies. In fact I turned on so many buddies on to this. It’s so great! Well, it used to be! Apparently, now to create a tournament with my buddies, I need to pay a monthly or yearly subscription??? Really? $5/mo or $50/yr??? What really? Seriously? Look, I’m fine with buying an app, but a subscription model for a cool app that I may use 5-10 times a year? At most? More likely 2-3 for those super fun outings where we actually make a tournament! This is a total fail by 18 Birdies and just goes to show ya that nothing is ever really free. Even when they still give you ads.

Here’s a thought 18 Birdies team...give the free account level like 5 tournaments a year. A casual user would be fine with that. If I’m someone that’s playing more tournys than that a year, then it would make sense for me to buy up my subscription level.

by Sadaunhe

I use your app religiously. GPS values are accurate and consistent. Most of the time. Occasionally, however, 18Birdies gets confused and will project yardage for the wrong hole or from an incorrect reference point! Example: I was on the 3rd hole of the Calusa 9, Bell Glade Country Club, The Villages. Suddenly, 18Birdies showed me on the 4th hole. Advancing or retreating between holes made no difference. Second example: on the 9th hole on the Seminole nine, 18Birdies insisted on computing yardage from the middle of the street. Obviously an error, yet I could not get 18Birdies to reset and re-evaluate the yardage from the correct tee box. Lastly, if I go to the trouble to store my scores in 18Birdies , why can’t you compute my handicap? Seems a logical next step...? What am I missing?

by YummTwinkies

I have loved 18Birdies so far. It’s so nice to have stats so you can see where you are losing strokes on your game. It would be nice to be able to download the course map so if you are in a rural area, you wouldn’t need your data to load the map. The gps would still work fine. Also, making it easier to invite friends that you are playing with inside of 18Birdies so you can see each other’s scores while playing together would be nice as well.

Last but not least, please make it cheaper to use the premium version. If it was 5-10 bucks a month, I would be doing it. Just a little to expensive right now for me.

Thanks for the great app!

by 47MAK

18Birdies is good and I love the social network feel of it as well as a course management tool but...seems like the club database is severely lacking. The 2018 Callaway offerings have been out for sometime yet they’re not showing up in the database. Other company’s 2018 models are available but not these. Wouldn’t be a big deal but I can’t load clubs in without them being in the database which means I can’t use the shot tracking function to each specific iron without it. It’s a small issue but keeps it from 5 stars in my book. My rating is really a 4.99.

Edit: great developer support. This was fixed in less than a couple days.

by Gbstone13

Got 18Birdies for the Apple Watch feature and really enjoyed having it playing the latest round of golf. Was golfing an unfamiliar course and the yardage feature on the watch was terrific. The only odd thing was frequently when I checked the watch a second time when over the ball the yardage would be way off. The phone app was always correct and when I moved a few feet the yardage would reset correctly on the watch. I didn’t take advantage of all the other features but the look useful and will try them next time. All in all a worthwhile golfing app