Golf tee time apps: which ones charge booking fees

Quick answer

One disclosure before the picks. GameCaddie builds five golf apps of its own: BallCaddie, PracticeCaddie, FitCaddie, MyBagCaddie, and ZenCaddie, all live. None of them books tee times, nothing on this list is ours, and there are no affiliate links on this page.

Why these picks

The filter was the number at checkout. Tee time apps advertise the green fee and add the platform’s cut at the end, so two apps showing the same $42 twilight rate can end up $14 apart on a foursome. Every fee figure below came off the company’s own terms page or app store listing in August 2026.

The second filter was coverage you can verify. Marketplace apps quote worldwide course counts, which sounds bigger than it plays in practice: 9,000 courses worldwide is a fraction of the roughly 16,000 golf courses at 14,000 facilities in the United States alone, per the National Golf Foundation’s end-of-2025 count. So each pick below is judged on the one booking job it wins, and the network claim is treated as marketing.

TeeOff: the same course count, none of the fees

TeeOff is the default pick for most golfers, because it charges nothing to reserve. Its homepage title reads no booking fees on tee times at 9,000+ golf courses worldwide, and its app listing repeats the promise: no booking fees, every golf course, every tee time.

TeeOff’s about page says it is one of the golf family of brands that are part of Versant Media, the same group behind GolfNow and GolfPass. Both sites advertise the same 9,000+ course figure, and GolfNow lists TeeOff among its partner brands.

So the two apps come from one company and quote one course number, and only one of them charges you to book. Install TeeOff first.

GolfNow: the biggest deal pile, with a fee attached

GolfNow is where the discounts live, and where you pay for the privilege. Its Hot Deals section carries the steepest markdowns on off-peak and last-minute slots, and its app claims tee times at 9,000+ golf courses worldwide with over 3 million golfers using it.

The fee is published on a terms page most golfers never open. GolfNow’s VIP savings calculator terms state $3.49 on each Hot Deals round and $2.49 on each non-Hot-Deals round, and the GolfNow FAQ confirms fees are “charged per player, per tee time” with a range that depends on location.

Run the math before you book. Where those published rates apply, four players on a Hot Deal is $13.96 in fees on top of the green fee, which erases a good chunk of the discount that pulled you in. Your market may differ, so read the checkout total rather than the search screen.

GolfNow Rewards softens it a little. The same terms page says points accrue on Hot Deals spend and on the convenience fees themselves, and that 100 Rewards points equals one $10 promo code redeemable on Hot Deals rounds.

Supreme Golf: the price check before you commit

Supreme Golf is a comparison layer, and it earns its spot by charging you nothing to use it. Its App Store listing says it lists tee times from GolfNow, TeeOff, Golf18 Network, Birdie Bug, Groupon, LivingSocial, North Texas Golf and others in one search, and states plainly: “We don’t add fees. The price you pay at our partner sites is the price you pay at Supreme Golf.”

That promise covers Supreme Golf’s own cut and stops there. It hands you off to a partner to finish the booking, so a GolfNow-sourced time still carries GolfNow’s per-player fee. What Supreme Golf gives you is the view of who is cheapest for the same slot.

At iOS 13 or later, it also has the loosest requirement on this list, so an older iPhone runs it fine.

Chronogolf by Lightspeed: booking direct at your home course

Chronogolf fits the golfer with one regular course rather than a rotation. It is the consumer side of Lightspeed’s tee sheet software, so it books you straight into the club’s own system, shows prepaid round packages and, at member clubs, displays who is already on the sheet.

The catch is coverage. Chronogolf only reaches clubs that run Lightspeed, so the app is either exactly right or completely useless depending on where you play. Check whether your course appears before you bother installing it.

Course-direct booking is also the honest answer to the fee question. Courses generally do not add a per-player convenience fee to their own booking page, and the pro shop can bend on price in a way a marketplace cannot.

GolfPass: a $119 membership that mostly pays back in credits

GolfPass+ Annual costs $119 a year after a 7-day free trial, and it is worth it only if GolfNow is already your habit. The membership page lists $120 in tee time promo codes, member-only rates on select tee times, tee time protection with flexible cancellation, GolfPass points and up to 12 months of Peacock Premium streaming.

The fee waiver is smaller than it looks, and the two official numbers disagree. GolfPass’s membership page says waived booking fees on 12 bookings; the GolfNow FAQ says convenience fees are waived on your first 10 bookings, up to 4 players each, per membership year. Plan on the smaller number.

Even at the generous end, 12 bookings of 4 players at the $3.49 Hot Deal rate is about $168 in waived fees, and a realistic twosome booking standard times saves closer to $60. The $120 in promo codes carries the price.

There is a higher tier, GolfPass+ VIP, which the FAQ says waives convenience fees on all bookings. GolfNow does not publish a plain VIP price on the membership page, so ask before you upgrade.

TeeTime Golf Pass: a discount card with an app attached

TeeTime Golf Pass works differently from everything above: you buy an annual pass and get member-only rates the general public cannot see, with no booking fees. The Super Pass lists at $99.99 a year for 1,100+ courses, and the five US regional passes list from $39.99 to $69.99 (the Ontario pass is priced in Canadian dollars). Sale pricing runs often, so the list price is rarely what you pay.

Check the map before the price. The regions are Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Upper and Lower Midwest, Northeast and Ontario, so a golfer in Arizona or the Pacific Northwest gets nothing from it.

The company claims members save $500 or more per season, which is a marketing average with no published methodology behind it. Treat it as a directional claim and check how many courses you already play appear in your region’s list.

What a booking fee actually costs over a season

The fee is small per round and stops being small in a season. At GolfNow’s published $2.49 rate on standard times, a golfer booking twice a month for a six-month season pays about $30 in convenience fees for themselves alone. Organize the foursome every time and you are handling $119.52 in fees.

That is 52 cents more than a $119 GolfPass membership, and about the same money as a Super Pass, for the privilege of tapping a button. Booking those identical rounds on TeeOff costs zero.

None of this touches the green fee, which is what you weigh when you pick a course. Fees only tell you which screen to book the same round on.

The honest mismatches

• You play one course, most weekends. The pro shop or the course’s own site beats every app here on price and on flexibility. Marketplaces earn their keep when you are playing somewhere new.
• You play small municipals or rural nines. 9,000 courses worldwide leaves a lot of golf uncovered. Call ahead.
• You want a GPS and scorecard too. GolfNow bundles a basic GPS, but the dedicated apps are better at it. Our iPhone roundup and free GPS app comparison cover that job properly.
• You book fewer than 10 rounds a year online. GolfPass hands back $120 as tee time promo codes you have to book to redeem, so at that volume most of them expire unused and the $119 stays spent. Use TeeOff and pay nothing.
• You think a booking app will lower your scores. It moves you around the tee sheet, nothing more. Your handicap index is the actual scoreboard, and it moves on practice hours.

Free or paid?

Free wins for most golfers. TeeOff, Supreme Golf and Chronogolf are all free with no per-booking fee, which covers the entire job of getting a tee time reserved.

Paying earns its keep in exactly two situations. You book through GolfNow at least monthly and want the fees waived plus $120 in credits back, which makes GolfPass at $119 a year roughly break even before the Peacock streaming. Or you play inside one of the six TeeTime Golf Pass regions often enough to use member rates again and again, which you can test before buying by counting how many courses on your regular rotation appear in that region’s list.

Everyone else should book free and put the money toward a lesson.

The next step

Getting on the tee sheet is the easy part. What you do once you are standing on the first tee is a different problem, and each leak has its own fix: Find your ball in 90 seconds across 72 models, Build an AI practice plan around what your rounds show, Train your mental game if the opening tee shot is where your rounds go wrong, or Get every app at once.

For deeper dives

• What is a good golf handicap? The number all of this is trying to move.
• Best golf app for iPhone for the GPS and scoring side of a round.
• Best free golf GPS apps on what each free tier holds back.
• Best golf scorecard app for group scoring once the foursome is booked.
• Golf shot tracker apps for what happens to the data after the round.

Key takeaways

• TeeOff advertises no booking fees at 9,000+ courses, the same course count GolfNow advertises, and both are Versant Media brands.
• GolfNow’s own terms list $3.49 per Hot Deals round and $2.49 per standard round, and its FAQ says fees are charged per player, per tee time and vary by location.
• Four players on a Hot Deal is about $14 in fees before tax where those rates apply, which eats a real slice of the discount.
• Supreme Golf adds no fee of its own but hands you to a partner site, so the partner’s fee still applies.
• GolfPass+ Annual at $119 returns most of its value in $120 of tee time credits; the fee waiver is worth far less.
• The course’s own booking page is still the most reliable way to pay no convenience fee at all.