BG Stats alternatives: the board game score tracker apps worth comparing

Why people look for a BG Stats alternative

BG Stats is the default in this hobby for good reasons, and most people who go looking for something else are not unhappy with its quality. They are running into one of four things.

• It costs money, and some features arrive through additional purchases. For a hobby app that is a fair price, but "free" is the single most common word in these searches.
• The effort/payoff ratio. This is the complaint you see most often from people who logged religiously for years: the data goes in, and nothing ever comes back out that feels worth the typing.
• It is built around one person. Your plays, your collection, your statistics. If what your group argues about is who is winning, that is a different question and a different tool.
• It is a native app for one phone. If half your group is on iPhone and half on Android, or nobody else wants to install anything, that matters.

The options at a glance

The short version: keep BG Stats for the archive, use RivalBoard if the question your group actually argues about is who is winning, add GeekGroup if the analysis of your BGG data is what disappoints you, and use a scorepad if you only need tonight. Running two of these at once is normal, not a failure to choose.

BG Stats — still the right answer for a personal archive

If what you want is a record of everything you have ever played — with expansions, roles, play time, locations, and per-game statistics that go back years — BG Stats is the most complete tool available, it syncs both ways with BoardGameGeek, and nothing else in this list comes close on that job.

Its custom scoring sheets deserve a specific mention: for point-salad euros where the end-game count is a chore, they are the reason plenty of people keep the app installed even after they stop logging everything.

The limitation is the one in its design, not a flaw: it is built for one person. Your friends do not see your statistics, and if you stop logging, nothing about game night changes.

Pick it if: you are the archivist, you use BGG seriously, and you want your plays on your BGG profile.

RivalBoard — a shared leaderboard for the group

This is ours, and it exists for the second and third reasons in the list above: the payoff of logging arriving immediately, and arriving for everyone. One person creates a group and shares an invite link; after a game, whoever is nearest the phone logs it; the standings update for every member at once — wins, win percentage, current streaks and head-to-head records between any two players.

• Guest players work without an account, so the friend who will not install anything still appears in the standings — and can be linked to a real account later if they change their mind.
• Any game: a built-in catalogue plus BoardGameGeek game data and cover art when you search, plus your own custom and house-rule games.
• Logging a match takes about fifteen seconds, which is roughly the attention span available when everyone is already standing up to leave.
• A push notification tells the rest of the group when someone logs a game. That is the part that keeps the habit alive.
• Free, no ads, no paid tier. Runs in any browser, as an Android app on Google Play, and installs to the home screen on iPhone.
• Existing history can be imported from a BG Stats JSON export, and any group exports to Excel.

Where it is the wrong choice, plainly: it does not manage a collection, it has no custom scoring sheets, and it does not sync your BGG collection or plays — it only uses BoardGameGeek as a game database, for names and cover art. If any of those three is what sent you looking, one of the other apps here will serve you better.

Pick it if: you play with a regular group and want everyone looking at the same standings.

GeekGroup — a free companion for data you already have

GeekGroup (geekgroup.app) works on the plays and ratings already sitting in your BoardGameGeek account and presents them in ways BGG itself does not. It is free, needs no migration, and it is what experienced BGG users tend to recommend when someone says the analysis side of their logging is disappointing.

The catch is significant, though: it assumes you are already logging plays on BGG. It does not record anything itself, so if the reason you are here is that logging feels like wasted effort — or that nobody else in your group logs at all — GeekGroup makes the data prettier without touching the underlying problem.

Pick it if: your plays are already on BGG and the missing piece is seeing them properly.

Board Record — scoring sheets by category and round

Board Record covers much of the same ground as BG Stats — play logging, BGG sync, statistics — with a stronger focus on building scoring sheets for games where points come from several sources and get counted in rounds.

It is still a personal tracker, so it inherits the same shape as BG Stats: one person logging, one person looking. If your objection was the price or the interface it is worth a look; if your objection was that the app is built around you alone, it is not.

Pick it if: the end-of-game arithmetic is your real problem and you want a modern logger around it.

BG Catalog and MyBGG — free collection managers

Both are free apps built around your BGG collection: browsing what you own, logging plays, basic statistics. They are lighter than BG Stats and answer the objection about price rather than the one about design.

Lighter also means fewer features and shallower statistics than the paid option, and like everything else in this section they are personal archives, not group tools.

Pick them if: you want the BG Stats shape of thing without paying, and can live with less.

ScorePal and Score Counter — just a scorepad

Sometimes the honest requirement is a digital replacement for the pad of paper: add players, add and subtract points, see who is ahead, close the app. These do that with no account and no setup, and they are free.

What you give up is history. There is no lasting record, so there is no leaderboard and no way to answer who has been winning since March — which, if that is the argument your group keeps having, means you will be back here in a month.

Pick them if: you want tonight's score and nothing else.

Before you switch anything

Migrating trackers means re-entering history, so it is worth being sure the new one survives contact with a real game night. We wrote up what to check in what to look for in a board game score tracker app, and if you are still deciding between an app and the group spreadsheet, paper vs spreadsheet vs app covers that comparison.

Frequently asked questions