An honest comparison
Team Selector vs the club platforms vs the lineup builders
There are three kinds of app a grassroots coach ends up looking at, and they do three different jobs. This page is here so you pick the right one, even if it isn't ours.
The three kinds, in a sentence each
Club platforms run the whole club: chat, calendar, availability, live scores, league tables, player profiles, sometimes a club website. Everyone gets a login, including parents, and you pay monthly. MatchCore is a current UK example.
Lineup builders are mostly made for fans: drag Premier League badges onto a pitch, screenshot it, argue about it. Some are lovely. Most have no idea what U9 5-a-side is, and none of them know your squad.
Team Selector is a coach's tool. Your squad lives on your phone with ratings and positions, and the app picks the team, balances training and makes the team sheet graphic. No accounts, no parents, no server, pay once.
| What matters on a Sunday | Team Selector | Club platforms | Lineup builders |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who it's for | The coach, on the touchline | The whole club and its parents | Fans, mostly |
| Price | Free to try on iPhone, then £3.99 once (£3.99 on Android), every update included | Monthly, typically £4 to £100 depending on plan and club size | Free with ads, or small one-off or subscription |
| Accounts | None. Open it and go | Everyone, including parents | Usually optional |
| Where your players' data lives | Only on your phone. Nothing collected | On their servers, under their privacy policy | Varies |
| Picks a lineup for 3v3 to 11v11 | Yes, with the FA FutureFit format for the age group | Some do, 5 to 11-a-side | Mostly 11-a-side |
| Auto-picks your strongest team from who's available | Yes, respecting positions and locks | Some | No |
| Balanced training teams (2 to 4 sides) | Yes, ability and positions | Rarely | No |
| Matchday availability and a subs cap | Yes | Yes, via parent RSVPs | No |
| Share a team sheet graphic | Yes, pitch and team list, with your badge and kit | Some | Yes, that's the point of them |
| Chat, calendar, RSVPs | No. WhatsApp does that | Yes | No |
| Live match clock, scores, league tables | No | Yes | No |
| Club website, sponsors, shop | No | Often included | No |
| Languages | English, German, French, Italian, Spanish (Spain and Latin America) | Usually English | Varies |
| Works with no signal on a muddy pitch | Yes. Nothing to load | Mostly needs a connection | Varies |
So which one should you get?
Get a club platform if your club wants one system for everything and someone is willing to run it. The monthly fee is real, and so is the admin, but the parent RSVPs and live scores are things Team Selector will never do. We mean that: they're out of scope on purpose.
Get a lineup builder if you want to post your Fantasy XI on a Friday. Enjoy it. It's not a coaching tool and it isn't pretending to be.
Get Team Selector if you're the coach, you've got a squad of 12 to 20, you play 5s, 7s, 9s or 11s, and what you want is the team picked properly, the training groups fair and the team sheet in the group chat before you've finished your tea. Pay once, keep it forever, and nothing about the kids ever leaves your phone.
You can also use both. Plenty of coaches run their club's platform for the admin and use Team Selector for the football.
Try before you buy
The free Team Balancer on this site runs the app's real training splitter in your browser, no download. And the app itself ships with a full Demo Team so you can see every feature before you add a single player.