golfity vs Golfshot: Stats and Strokes Gained Compared

Golfshot has been on the App Store since 2009, which makes it one of the oldest golf apps still under active development. It is a GPS rangefinder first. Open it on the tee, get front, middle, and back yardages, take the suggested club, hit the shot. golfity vs Golfshot is a fair comparison to run, because both work on a phone with no extra hardware and both are free to download.

The split shows up after you putt out. Golfshot’s core question is how far. golfity’s core question is how well. One gives you a number before the swing, the other gives you the value of that swing afterwards through a strokes gained breakdown.

What Each App Is Built Around

Golfshot is a mapping product. Tens of thousands of courses are drawn with aerial imagery and hazard carries, and the app pushes distances to your watch so you barely have to reach for a phone. On top of the maps sit club recommendations and a voice caddie. Most of that lives in Golfshot Plus, the premium tier at roughly $50 a year, and the free version is thin by comparison.

golfity is an analytics product that keeps your scorecards as a side effect. Every shot you log runs through a strokes gained engine built on the research Mark Broadie published in Every Shot Counts. There are no course maps and no satellite yardages. You tell the app how far you had and what lie you were in, and it tells you what that shot was worth against a golfer of a chosen standard.

Keep that in mind for everything below.

golfity vs Golfshot on Strokes Gained

Golfshot does report strokes gained inside its premium tier, so this is not a case of one app having the feature and the other not. The difference is how far the analysis goes and what you can do with it.

A yardage tells you what to attempt. Strokes gained tells you what the attempt cost. Here is what an approach breakdown looks like for a 15-handicap after 20 logged rounds in golfity:

This golfer thinks he has a long iron problem, because long irons feel awful. The data says the round dies between 100 and 150 yards, in the zone where he takes a full wedge or a 9-iron and expects to be close. Golfshot will tell him he has 128 yards to the pin, accurately, every single time. It will not tell him that 128 yards is the distance where he leaks strokes.

Benchmark choice is the other gap. golfity lets you measure against PGA Tour, scratch, or a 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 handicap. For a 22-handicap, a wall of red numbers against tour professionals is technically correct and practically useless. Measuring against other 22-handicaps shows which part of your game is genuinely behind your own level. There is a longer case for that in why comparing to a 10 handicap can be better than comparing to a pro.

Where Golfshot Is Better

Course knowledge, and it is not close.

If you play the same muni every Saturday, you know the carries by heart and a golf gps app adds little. If you travel, play corporate days, or enter club opens on courses you have never seen, having the layout drawn on your screen with the bunker at 240 marked is worth paying for. golfity does not do this. There is no map, no aerial view, and no distance to the front edge.

Golfshot’s watch integration is also more mature. Glancing at your wrist for a yardage is faster than pulling out a phone, and for golfers who play in fourballs that keep a good pace, that matters.

The related question of which type of app you actually need is covered in golf GPS app vs golf stats app.

What Logging a Round Looks Like

Both apps are manual. Neither uses grip sensors or club tags, so the comparison is about how many taps you make and what you get back.

Golfshot can auto-fill distances from GPS, which saves typing. You confirm the club and the result, and the app handles the yardage. That is a real convenience, and it is the strongest argument for the GPS-first approach on the data side rather than the strategy side.

golfity asks you for the distance and lie of each shot, which takes 3 to 5 minutes spread across 18 holes. On a day when you do not want the extra taps you can skip club and accuracy detail and still get complete strokes gained numbers. The trade is straightforward: you type the yardage yourself, and the analysis on the other end goes deeper and does not sit behind a paywall.

Cost Over Three Years

The free tiers are not comparable. Golfshot’s free version gives you basic GPS and scoring, with the strokes gained views, club recommendations, and detailed course maps reserved for Plus. golfity’s free tier includes the four-category strokes gained analysis, club stats, round history, and CSV export. The paid tier adds extras instead of unlocking the analytics.

Who Should Pick Which

Choose Golfshot if your problem is distance. You play unfamiliar courses, you want a mapped hole in front of you before every tee shot, you like a watch telling you 163 to the middle, and you are happy to pay around $50 a year for it. Its stat tracking will tell you your fairway and GIR percentages, and the premium strokes gained view will give you a category summary.

Choose golfity if your problem is not knowing where the shots go. Shot-level strokes gained on the free tier, benchmarks set to your handicap rather than to Scottie Scheffler’s, club-by-club breakdowns, and data you can export and keep.

Running both is a perfectly sane setup. Golfshot in your hand on the tee for the yardage, golfity for the shots once the hole is over. It costs you the Golfshot subscription and a few extra taps.

Before you commit either way, put one recent round through the strokes gained calculator and see whether the weak category is the one you expected. It usually is not. For a wider view of the field, including Arccos, Shot Scope, 18Birdies, and The Grint, see our honest comparison of the best golf stats apps in 2026.