Free Swimming scoreboard

Why score Swimming with ScoreZen

• ✓One-tap scoring, built for Swimming
• ✓Share the live score by QR code or link
• ✓Free for spectators — no app to install to watch
• ✓Keeps working if the connection drops
• ✓34 sports, tournaments and standings included

How Swimming scoring works

Swimming is not scored in points but by the clock: each swimmer's time is measured, usually to the hundredth of a second via the electronic touch-pad. Ranking runs from the shortest time to the longest. In relays it is the team's combined time that counts.

Match format

An event is a single race over a set distance (e.g. 50 m, 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 800 m, 1500 m). Major competitions are organised into heats, then semi-finals and finals depending on the number of entrants. The format (long or short course) affects the number of turns.

How to win

The winner is the swimmer (or relay) with the best time while complying with the rules of their stroke. Any technical infringement can lead to disqualification, which voids the result.

Recommended ScoreZen setup

For swimming, ScoreZen times the race automatically: start the clock, mark each swimmer's finish, and the lowest time wins. There is no score to enter and no point target. Compare finish times to rank the swimmers.

How a swimming result is actually produced

Swimming keeps no score: the clock is the score. Where automatic officiating equipment is installed, it records the time taken by each swimmer and, from those times, determines the winner and every placing (11.1.2); those times and placings take precedence over anything recorded by the timekeepers or the finish judges (11.1.3). Times are recorded to one hundredth of a second (11.1.4), and two swimmers on the same hundredth are given the same placing (11.1.2).

Pads get missed. When the equipment fails to record a place or a time for a lane, the referee collates what the equipment did capture together with the timekeepers' recordings and rebuilds the placings from there (11.1.6). Where no automatic or semi-automatic equipment is used at all, the race is hand-timed: two timekeepers per lane plus at least one reserve (2.10.1), each time taken to a hundredth (11.2.3). If the two watches disagree, the official time is their average, and a thousandth thrown up by that calculation is dropped without rounding (11.2.3.1); if one watch fails, the working one counts (11.2.3.2); if both fail, the swimmer may be offered a reswim (11.2.3.3). The older three-watch drill - two agreeing watches, or the middle of three - no longer appears in the regulations.

A disqualification erases rather than demotes: it appears in the official results, but no time and no placing is recorded or announced (11.3). A swimmer can touch first and end the day with nothing on the sheet. In a relay, the legal splits swum before the disqualified swimmer took over are still recorded in the official results (11.4).

And a time belongs to its pool: a 25 m course gives twice the turns and push-offs of a 50 m course, so World Aquatics maintains two separate record lists, one for performances in a 50 m pool (12.1) and one for a 25 m pool (12.2). The lists are not even the same shape - the individual medley is recognised over 200 m and 400 m long course, but over 100 m, 200 m and 400 m short course. A short-course time in a long-course list is a different race.

What the rulebook says, article by article

The start. Freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly and individual medley start with a dive (4.1): on the starter's command "take your marks" the swimmer takes up a starting position with at least one foot in contact with the front of the starting platform, and the position of the hands is not relevant (4.1.3). Backstroke and the medley relay start from the water, both hands holding the grips (4.2, 6.1). A swimmer who initiates a start before the signal may be disqualified; if the starting signal has already been given, the race runs on and the disqualification is applied at the finish (4.4, 4.4.1).

Underwater. In freestyle, backstroke and butterfly a swimmer may be completely submerged for a distance of not more than 15 metres after the start and after each turn, and the head must have broken the surface by the 15-metre mark (5.3, 6.3, 8.6). Breaststroke works differently: one arm stroke completely back to the legs, a single butterfly kick allowed at any point before the first breaststroke kick, and the head must break the surface before the hands turn inward at the widest part of the second stroke (7.1).

Touches. Breaststroke and butterfly need both hands, separated and simultaneous, at every turn and at the finish (7.7, 8.5) - separated only means the hands cannot be stacked one on top of the other; you do not need to see space between them, and incidental contact at the fingers is permitted. Backstroke finishes with a touch made while on the back (6.5). The individual medley runs butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle (9.1); the medley relay runs backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle (9.2).

Relays. Until the incoming team-mate touches the wall, the feet of the next swimmer must remain in contact with the starting platform (10.4.5), and exchanges start from the platform, never from a running start off the deck (10.4.4). The order of the team is specified before the race, and swimming out of it costs the team the race (10.4.2, 10.5). Everyone starts, stays and finishes in the same lane (10.2.2).

(World Aquatics, Competition Regulations, in force as from February 2026, Part Two - Swimming Rules: Articles 2.1.1, 2.3.7, 2.8.1, 2.10.1, 3.2.2 to 3.2.5, 4.1 to 4.4, 5.3, 6.1 to 6.5, 7.1, 7.7, 8.5, 8.6, 9.1, 9.2, 10.2.2, 10.4.2 to 10.4.5, 11.1 to 11.6 and 12.1 to 12.2.)

A meet day, from the entry list to the results sheet

Seeding. Entrants are ranked fastest to slowest on the times they declared at entry (3.2.2), and a swimmer who declares none is ranked at the end of the list, below the slowest, with no time (3.2.3). Heats then fill from the back - with three heats the fastest goes in the third and last one (3.2.4.3) - and inside a heat the fastest takes lane 4 in both eight-lane and ten-lane pools, the second fastest lane 5 to their left, the rest alternating right and left (3.2.5.1.3, 3.2.5.1.4). In a six-lane pool the fastest starts in lane 3 (3.2.5.1.2).

Places are decided across heats, not inside them. In a timed-final event the official times of every heat are ranked together, and swimmers on the same official time are tied (11.6), so winning heat 2 means nothing until heat 6 has swum. Small meets hand out a podium heat by heat, and the collated list contradicts them an hour later. Where heats feed semi-finals or a final, a tie for the last qualifying place is settled by a swim-off in events of 200 m or shorter (3.3.2.1, 3.4.2.2); over 200 m in a ten-lane pool the tied swimmers are simply given lanes 0 and 9 instead, and a swim-off is held only if more than three tie or no ten-lane pool is available (3.4.2.3, 3.4.2.4, 3.4.2.5).

Levels change the evidence, not the strokes. That staffing is what World Aquatics requires of competitions run under its regulations: at the Olympic Games and the World Championships, sixteen or twenty inspectors of turns depending on whether eight or ten lanes are used (2.1.1), because one is posted to every lane at each end of the pool (2.8.1), alongside judges of stroke and video review. A school gala has none of it - no pads, often a single watch per lane, and times that are a club record at best. Say which one you are running before anyone argues about a hundredth.

A disqualification travels on a card naming the event, the lane number and the infraction. The official who saw it reports it to the referee first; only once the referee confirms the disqualification does that official complete and sign the card (2.3.7). That is why a coach's version alone never overturns a result. Write it as reported, before the next heat goes, and note withdrawals immediately: by heat 9 nobody remembers why lane 3 was empty.

What ScoreZen changes for swimming

In ScoreZen, swimming is a race, not a scoreboard: competitors are lanes, the clock counts up from a common start, and you tap each swimmer as they touch. The ranking builds itself from the times, fastest first, and a swimmer you never tapped stays unfinished rather than being given an invented time. The Lengths counter starts empty and you set it yourself, because 200 m is eight lengths in a 25 m pool and four in a 50 m pool - ScoreZen will not guess a number it was never given.

A race is timed on the device that holds it, and TV mode throws that same race onto a second screen so the stand can read the lanes and the times from the back row. When it is over, ScoreZen renders the ranking as an image with a QR code on it, ready to drop into the club group or a story.

For anything built from fixtures - an inter-club relay challenge, a squads competition - ScoreZen runs the full tournament machinery: knockout with an optional third-place match, league with an optional return leg, groups then a final bracket, Swiss system, best-of-3 and best-of-5 series, and rotating teams where the partner changes every round. A single QR code covers the whole tournament: everyone scans the same code and finds their own fixture. Spectators are free, unlimited, and never need an account, and a match keeps counting without a network then resynchronises when the signal returns.

Around those fixtures, the Replay and the vertical story image are made to be shared, the club site can embed the widget, fixtures export to CSV, the read-only public API needs no key, the ICS feed fills everyone's calendar, and the transparent overlay drops the live score into OBS. The A4 score sheet still prints. 34 sports, 25 languages. Three trial matches are free for life, then one payment of €1.99, for life.

Frequently asked questions