How Much Does Tee Sheet Software Cost in 2026?

When a golf course operator starts shopping for tee sheet software, the sticker price is almost never the real price. Hidden fees, barter requirements, and booking commissions can quietly cost a course tens of thousands of dollars a year — sometimes more than the software subscription itself.

This post breaks down what you actually pay for the major platforms in 2026, so you can make a clean apples-to-apples comparison.

The Main Options and What They Charge

foreUP

foreUP is one of the most widely used tee sheet platforms in the country, and it's genuinely full-featured — point of sale, tee sheet, pro shop inventory, F&B, the works. The price reflects that scope.

Expect to pay $400–$800 per month depending on which modules you add and how you negotiate during onboarding. That's $4,800–$9,600 per year just for the software. Implementation fees, training, and add-on modules can push first-year costs significantly higher. foreUP does not publish pricing publicly, so you'll need to go through a sales demo to get exact numbers for your course.

foreUP does not have a barter requirement. What you see is roughly what you pay. That's worth noting.

Lightspeed Golf

Lightspeed acquired the Chronogolf platform a few years back and rebranded it under the Lightspeed umbrella. It's a solid cloud-based option with good reporting and POS integration.

Pricing runs $300–$700 per month, again depending on features and negotiation. Like foreUP, Lightspeed doesn't publish a rate card, so expect a demo process before you get real numbers.

No barter. Monthly SaaS fee, paid in dollars.

Jonas Club Software

Jonas targets private and semi-private clubs more than daily-fee public courses. Pricing is firmly in the "call for a quote" category, and implementation costs are typically in the five-figure range. If you're a public or semi-public course, Jonas is probably not the right fit — and definitely not the right price.

GolfNow

Here's where it gets complicated.

GolfNow's tee sheet (formerly EZLinks) is often pitched as low-cost or even "free" to smaller courses. And on paper, there's no monthly software bill. But GolfNow's model has a built-in cost that most operators underestimate until they sit down and do the math.

The GolfNow Barter Model: The Hidden $94,500

GolfNow's standard arrangement requires courses to provide barter tee times in exchange for distribution on the GolfNow marketplace. Historically this has been structured as roughly 2 tee times per day that GolfNow can sell and keep the revenue from.

Here's the math:

• 2 tee times per day × 300 operating days per year = 600 tee times annually
• At a rack rate of $50 per round (4 players × $50 = $200 per tee time), that's $200 × 600 = $120,000 in gross tee time value
• At a more conservative $157.50 average (midrange daily fee), you're still looking at $94,500 per year in revenue you never see

And that's before you account for the fact that GolfNow often discounts those barter times to fill them, which can train local golfers to expect discounted rates. Once bargain hunters flood your tee sheet, you can't easily reset price expectations.

Research from the NGCOA found that Brown Golf's properties saw 39.6% of rounds go to zero-revenue GolfNow barter slots. That's nearly two out of every five rounds generating no revenue for the course.

What Happened When Courses Left GolfNow

Windsor Parke Golf Club left GolfNow and switched to a commission-free platform. Their results were not subtle.

Revenue went from $81,000 to $393,000. That's not a rounding error — that's a fundamentally different business.

Missouri Bluffs saw a 36.3% increase in green fee revenue after ending their GolfNow relationship.

These aren't cherry-picked outliers. They're consistent with what happens when a course stops ceding nearly two tee times a day to a third party and starts owning its own demand.

TeeAhead Pricing

TeeAhead's tee sheet software takes a different approach to pricing entirely.

• Founding year: $0 — Courses that join during the founding partner window pay nothing for the first year.
• After founding year: $349/mo — That's $4,188/year, flat. No barter. No commissions. No per-booking fees.

That's it. There's no hidden marketplace you're required to distribute through, no barter tee times, no revenue share on bookings.

Total Cost of Ownership: A Side-by-Side

Here's an honest look at what a daily-fee public course might actually spend over 3 years across platforms, assuming a $50/round rack rate and 600 barter tee times per year where applicable:

| Platform | Annual Software Fee | Annual Barter Cost | 3-Year Total | |---|---|---|---| | GolfNow (barter) | ~$0 | ~$94,500 | ~$283,500 | | foreUP | ~$7,200 | $0 | ~$21,600 | | Lightspeed | ~$6,000 | $0 | ~$18,000 | | TeeAhead (founding) | $0 yr 1, $4,188 after | $0 | ~$8,376 |

The "free" platform isn't free. It's the most expensive option on the table.

Why Courses Don't Realize the Barter Cost

Part of the problem is that barter tee times don't show up as a line item on any invoice. There's no charge to dispute, no bill that arrives in your inbox. The cost is invisible — which is exactly why it persists.

Most operators know roughly how many GolfNow rounds they're running, but they don't sit down and multiply that by their average green fee and compare it to what they'd make if they owned those tee times directly. When they do, the numbers are usually jarring.

The NGCOA reported that 100+ courses left GolfNow in Q1 2025 alone, which is a strong signal that more operators are finally running those numbers.

What to Look For Beyond the Price Tag

When you're evaluating tee sheet software, price matters — but so does:

• Data ownership: Do you own your customer data, or does the platform? This affects your ability to run email marketing, loyalty programs, and direct booking campaigns.
• Booking commissions: Some platforms charge per-booking fees on top of SaaS fees. Read the fine print.
• Marketplace lock-in: Platforms with their own consumer marketplace (like GolfNow) have a structural incentive to drive traffic through their own funnel, not yours.
• Integration quality: Does it connect with your existing POS? How's the payment processing?

See a full breakdown of the barter model and what the math looks like for different course types, or check our damage calculator to estimate what your course might be giving up right now.

The Bottom Line

If you're comparing tee sheet software in 2026, don't start with the monthly fee. Start with the total cost of ownership — software fees, barter costs, commissions, and the opportunity cost of not owning your own customer relationships.

When you do that analysis, the "free" platforms almost never win.