Golf apps for British club golfers: MyEG general play, free yardages and what a medal allows

On a Saturday in late October the typical British club golfer has two apps open before the first tee. One is the governing body’s app, MyEG in England, where the general play round has to be pre-registered before anyone hits a ball. The other is whatever gives the yardage to the front edge of a green half hidden in the drizzle. The first is free and fairly plain; the second can be free as well, or cost anything up to about £100 a year. This page sets out what each of the apps British golfers actually carry does without paying, what the paid tiers cost on the UK App Store this month, and where the Rules of Golf and the World Handicap System, as run in Britain, draw the line.

It is a presentation of the apps and a reading of public opinion about them, not a review. Nobody at Panxis Golf played a round with any of these apps for this page, and none of the accuracy or battery points below comes from our own use.

Two apps in the pocket, two different jobs

In Britain the handicap app and the GPS app are rarely rivals. The national apps of England Golf, Scottish Golf and Wales Golf exist to run your Handicap Index under the World Handicap System: registering a round, returning the card, getting it verified by a playing partner. None of the three store descriptions promises yardages. That job falls to a separate app, which is where the subscriptions live.

So the real question is whether a free GPS tier is enough next to your federation app, or whether a paid extra earns its place on a parkland course you know by heart, or a links where the wind changes the club every hole anyway. Keep in mind that a phone fix is good to a few yards, and that a green rebuilt over the winter throws the numbers until the map is redrawn.

MyEG: England Golf’s own app

MyEG is the official app of England Golf, and if you belong to an affiliated club in England you will be asked to use it sooner or later. Its job is your handicap record. On first login you need the membership number your club holds for you, formerly known as the CDH number, and the email address registered with the club.

• Free for club members and iGolf subscribers: your Handicap Index and playing record, the scores that count towards it, hole-by-hole cards, Course Handicap for any affiliated and rated course in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, pre-registering and submitting general play rounds at those courses, and verifying the scores of other members you played with.
• Free for iPlay users: England Golf’s free entry level for golfers without a club, which gives an average score indicator rather than a Handicap Index, and lets you submit scores from affiliated clubs and facilities in England.
• Paid: nothing inside the app. The UK App Store listing shows no in-app purchases. What costs money is the route to a Handicap Index if you have no club: England Golf’s iGolf subscription is advertised at £47 a year on its own site, read on 28 October 2026, with public liability insurance included.

What MyEG does not do is measure anything: its store description lists no GPS, no hole maps and no shot tracking. Hence the second app.

Scotland and Wales have their own versions, built by the same developer. My Scottish Golf covers handicap management, player stats, score submission and, unusually, competition and tee time booking; Scottish Golf’s OpenPlay, its digital membership for golfers without a home club, runs through the same app and is bought on the Scottish Golf website. The Wales Golf app shows your handicap record and hole-by-hole history and lets you take a scorecard and enter your score. Northern Irish golfers come under Golf Ireland, which publishes its own app on the same platform. My Scottish Golf and Wales Golf, like MyEG, are free downloads with no purchases inside the app on the UK App Store.

Hole19: a generous free tier

Hole19 is the GPS app many British golfers meet first, and its free version is the reason. Where several rivals now keep front and back of the green for paying users, Hole19’s UK listing still puts them in the free column.

• Free: distances to the front, centre and back of the green and to hazards and targets, on more than 42,000 courses; a digital scorecard with putts, fairways and greens in regulation; course previews before you tee off; distances on an Apple Watch; LivePlay for live leaderboards within a group; Stroke Play, Stableford and side games.
• Premium: plays-like distances adjusted for elevation, shot tracking, club suggestions from your own recorded distances, an augmented reality view, a handicap calculator, club and overall statistics, scoring and flyover maps on the watch, match play and team formats, no adverts.
• Intelligence: a higher tier with an AI caddie that writes round reports, strokes gained analysis and practice plans.

Price on the UK App Store, read in October 2026: Premium Pro Yearly listed at £69.99, with a second yearly entry at £59.99, a six-month plan at £49.99 and monthly plans at £12.99 and £14.99. Intelligence 1 Year is listed at £99.99. The listing offers 14 days of Premium free.

18Birdies: social games and a busy price list

18Birdies leans on the social side: side games such as skins and Wolf, a feed of swing videos and chat, tournaments for a society or a group of friends. Its free version is fairly complete on distances.

• Free: a GPS rangefinder from anywhere on the course, stats and round history, a handicap tracker, automatic hole switching, nine side games and the social feed.
• Premium: 3D green maps for reading slopes, Caddy+ with club and distance suggestions based on elevation, temperature, humidity and wind, advanced statistics, shot tracking and strokes gained. A free trial is offered after download.

Price on the UK App Store, read in October 2026: the Yearly Premium Subscription is listed at £99.99, with another yearly entry at £105.99 and a cheaper yearly offer at £69.99. Monthly entries run from £9.49 to £19.99 and weekly ones at £6.99 and £7.99. Which one you are offered depends on when you sign up.

Golf GameBook: the society and roll-up app

Golf GameBook comes from the Finnish developer GameBook Oy and is built around the scorecard rather than the yardage. It is the app you see when a society day, a Sunday roll-up or a golf trip wants a live leaderboard, the correct playing handicap for everyone and the arithmetic done for twenty formats, including Ryder Cup-style team match play it calls Reds vs Blues.

• Free: the scorecard with or without handicaps, Stroke Play, live leaderboards and being added to games and tournaments set up by Gold members, according to the developer. The app also carries GPS course maps and a rangefinder for more than 42,000 courses.
• Gold Membership: the developer’s own description is that Gold unlocks the full set of features. Its comparison page sets the free version against Gold for game formats, tournament creation, statistics and an advert-free app, but the store listing does not say plainly which of those stay free, so open the app before you pay.

Price on the UK App Store, read in October 2026: Gold Membership listed at £59.99, alongside entries at £34.99 and £19.99. The developer’s own page offers a one-month plan and a 12-month plan, with a 14-day free trial on the yearly one only.

Garmin Golf: only if you wear the watch

Garmin Golf is a companion app for Garmin’s Approach watches and other compatible devices. The maps and the distances sit on the watch; the phone app keeps the record of each round.

• Free: shot maps of each hole on your scorecard when a compatible device is paired, course and performance stats after the round, weekly leaderboards at more than 43,000 courses, and events you set up for friends.
• Membership: Green Contours, with slope arrows and contour lines on compatible watches; Home Tee Hero virtual rounds with a Garmin launch monitor; cloud storage for swing videos.

Price on the UK App Store, read in October 2026: the Yearly Membership is listed at £89.99 and the Monthly Membership at £8.99. Without a Garmin device, there is no reason to pay for it.

The five apps at a glance

App	What you get free	What the paid tier adds	UK App Store price, October 2026
MyEG (England Golf)	Handicap record, general play registration and scores, Course Handicap, score verification	Nothing in the app; iGolf for golfers without a club	Free app; iGolf £47 a year (England Golf site)
Hole19	Front, centre and back yardages, hazards, scorecard, watch distances	Plays-like distances, shot tracking, club suggestions, stats	Premium Pro Yearly £69.99; Intelligence £99.99
18Birdies	GPS rangefinder, stats, handicap tracker, side games	3D greens, Caddy+ club advice, shot tracking, strokes gained	Yearly Premium £99.99 (other offers £69.99 to £105.99)
Golf GameBook	Scorecard with handicaps, live leaderboards, GPS maps	Full set of formats and tournaments, no adverts	Gold Membership £59.99
Garmin Golf	Round record and stats from a Garmin device, weekly leaderboards	Green Contours, virtual rounds, swing video storage	£89.99 a year or £8.99 a month

The middle column matters more than the last. For most club golfers, the federation app plus one free GPS tier covers handicap, scorecard and yardages without spending a penny. A yearly plan is for golfers who want their game picked apart.

What golfers are saying

The reviews on the UK App Store, the threads on British golf forums and the developers’ own replies return to the same handful of points.

What comes back in their favour:

• The free yardage is enough for most. Reviewers of Hole19 say that for GPS alone the free version is more than adequate, and Golf GameBook users single out being able to drag a point to a bunker or a corner of the green, which is what they use most on a course they have never played.
• Stats that point at the short game. Golfers who logged a season of rounds describe the same discovery: the shots go around the green and with the putter, not off the tee. That is the feature paying users name most often.
• The handicap in your pocket. Even critics of MyEG, My Scottish Golf and the Wales Golf app tend to concede that they do the essential job: the index is there on the phone, the general play card goes in on the day and the record is up to date.

What comes back against them:

• Features moving behind the paywall. The complaint that returns most across the GPS apps: something that used to be free, a leaderboard or a set of distances, appears in the paid tier after an update, and the free version keeps nudging towards the upgrade.
• Trials that become yearly charges. Reviewers describe being billed for a full year at the end of a trial they had forgotten, and finding several prices for what looks like the same plan. A trial renews unless it is cancelled in the phone’s subscription settings, not in the app.
• Battery, watches and signal. Phones and watches running GPS for four hours drain fast, and the store listings say so themselves. On the federation apps, reviewers in rural areas report slow loading, trouble connecting out on the course and frustration that the app wants you at or near the course to register a round.
• Course maps that lag behind the greenkeeper. Moved greens, new tees and reshaped bunkers after a course renovation, sometimes uncorrected for a long time. Developers reply that they depend on fresh aerial imagery before they can redraw a hole.

Nobody is quoted by name here, nothing has been counted, and none of these impressions is a measurement. They are simply the points that recur in public reviews and forum discussions.

Where the apps meet the British club game: general play, medals and the Local Rule

In Britain, an app on the course runs into rules that a casual golfer in a pay-and-play market rarely meets. Here is what changes for a club member, and for a golfer on iGolf.

• General play: register first, return the same day. A social round counts for handicap only if you declared it before teeing off, through MyEG or your club’s system. England Golf’s help pages say general play scores must be returned before midnight on the day of play, and a playing partner verifies the card. An intent left open with no valid reason can lead to a penalty score.
• Club competitions are a different channel. Medals, Stablefords and knockout matches go through the club’s own competition software and the committee, not through a GPS app. Fourball better-ball and match play rounds do not count for general play at all.
• The Local Rule on distance devices. Under Rule 4.3 of the Rules of Golf, published here by The R&A, you may use a phone or watch for distance and direction unless the committee has adopted Model Local Rule G-5, which prohibits distance-measuring devices. What the Rule never allows in a round that counts is a device that measures elevation changes, gauges the wind or other conditions, or suggests a club. On a Saturday medal, that means plays-like distances, Caddy+ style advice and slope-adjusted numbers must be switched off, or the app left on yardages only. A first breach costs the general penalty, two strokes in stroke play; a second is disqualification. The terms of competition on the notice board or the club’s website tell you whether G-5 is in force.
• Green maps need a second look. The Rules also limit green-reading materials during a round. Before relying on 3D greens or contour lines in a competition, ask the committee or the club’s handicap and competitions secretary.
• Links and rural courses. Out on the dunes or in the hills, phone signal can drop for whole holes. GPS itself works without signal, but an app that has not loaded the course, or a federation app waiting to register a round, may not. Open the course on the app before you leave the clubhouse.
• Rain, cold and the battery. From November to March a cold, damp phone gives up sooner than in July. A small battery pack in the bag and a dimmed screen solve most of it.
• Where to get them. All of these apps come from the App Store or Google Play, and subscriptions are billed through the store. The federation apps are free with your membership; iGolf and Scottish Golf’s OpenPlay are bought from the federations’ own websites. Check whether a plan renews monthly or yearly before the trial ends.

How to choose without paying for what you will not use

• Keep the federation app, add one GPS app. MyEG, My Scottish Golf or Wales Golf for the handicap; one free GPS tier for yardages. Try two of them over a month of rounds and keep the one whose map of your home course is right.
• Check your own course at home. Open each hole on the sofa: the shape of the greens, the tees you play from, the bunkers that were filled in last winter. If they are wrong, no paid tier will fix them.
• Price three seasons. A yearly plan at £60 to £100 adds up to the cost of a basic laser over three years. Pay only if you want shot tracking and analysis, not for yardages.
• Think of the medal, not the bounce game. If you play competitions, choose an app where plays-like distances and club advice can be switched off quickly, or simply keep them off all year.

The app that lasts the season answers one question quickly on a cold morning: how far to the front? The federation app already does the part that counts for your handicap.

How this page was put together

This is a presentation of products and a reading of public opinion, not a test. Nobody at Panxis Golf played a round with these apps or measured their accuracy for this page. Features come from the developers’ own descriptions on their UK App Store listings and websites: England Golf for MyEG, Scottish Golf for My Scottish Golf, Wales Golf for its app, Hole19, 18Birdies, GameBook Oy for Golf GameBook and Garmin for Garmin Golf.

Prices were read on 28 October 2026, in pounds sterling, on the UK App Store listings of MyEG, Hole19, 18Birdies, Golf GameBook and Garmin Golf. The iGolf price comes from England Golf’s iGolf website, read the same day. The App Store shows several entries for the same subscription and does not always state their duration; the durations given here are those named on the listing or, for Golf GameBook, on the developer’s own page. Prices change with promotions, so the figure shown in the app is the one that counts. The OpenPlay price of Scottish Golf was not checked and is not given.

The section on rules refers to Rule 4.3 of the Rules of Golf, which allows distance information by default, and to Model Local Rule G-5, with which a committee can prohibit distance-measuring devices, both published by The R&A and the USGA, and to England Golf’s guidance on general play scores under the World Handicap System. What golfers say was read in public UK App Store reviews, in British golf forums and in the developers’ replies, some only through search excerpts. Nobody is quoted by name, nothing is counted, and no impression is presented as a statistic. There is no commercial link on this page, no affiliate arrangement and no commission of any kind. If content on this site is ever paid for by a brand, it will carry an advertising label at the top of the page, before the first line.