Yards vs 18Birdies

The short answer

18Birdies and Yards solve different halves of the same problem. 18Birdies is a full-featured golf app: GPS, scoring, handicap tracking, social rounds and games, with an AI swing analyser and green maps on the paid tier. It is a round companion. Yards is a pre-round planner. 18Birdies costs $99.99 a year, $19.99 a month or $7.99 a week for Premium, with a free tier that includes GPS and scoring. Yards is $14.99 once per course or $49.99/yr for every mapped course.

Where 18Birdies is the better buy

• Everything during the round. Live GPS, scoring, side games with your group, handicap tracking and a swing analyser. Yards does none of that.
• Coverage. Their GPS works on effectively every course. Yards only helps on a course somebody has mapped in full.
• The free tier is genuinely usable for scoring and yardages.

Side by side

What you are comparing	18Birdies	Yards
Built for	Playing the round	Planning it beforehand
Price	$99.99 a year	$49.99/yr, or $14.99 once per course
Live GPS and scoring	Yes	No
Club recommendation	Yes, from your tracked history	Yes, simulated from your bag and handicap
Shows the cost of a miss	Strokes gained after the round	Before the shot, per aim point
Printable yardage book	No	Yes

The verdict

They are not really substitutes. 18Birdies is what you open on the tee; Yards is what you read the night before. If you only want one subscription and you play casually, theirs does more. If you want a plan for a course you have not played, ours is the one built for it.

What Yards does not do

It does not track your shots automatically, read greens, give you live distances on the course, analyse your swing, or work on a course nobody has mapped. It runs the strategy for a mapped hole against your handicap and your clubs, before you play. That is the whole product.

Other comparisons

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18Birdies pricing and features were read from their own page on 4 September 2026 and are quoted as published. Prices change; check theirs before deciding. If anything here is wrong or out of date, email support@yardsgolfbook.com and it will be corrected.