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Search "basketball sub app" and you get lists that put very different things side by side. Some of these run in your hand during the game. Some print a schedule before it and can't be changed once a player fouls out. A few aren't built for basketball at all — they're soccer apps that happen to mention it.

So on 4 August 2026 we opened each vendor's own pricing and store pages and read the terms off them. Two things came out of that:

• Not all of them fit basketball's clock. CoachAny's own App Store listing describes it as being for "any team sport played in halves on a running clock". Basketball is quarters on a stopped clock, and that difference decides whether the minutes it shows you are real.
• One widely-linked app no longer exists. Basketball Pocket Coach still has a live product page linking to the App Store; that listing returns 404 in the US, Australian, UK and Canadian stores. It's not on this list, and if a roundup sends you there, that's why.

Pick by what you need

• You want something in your hand during the game — HoopTime, The Hoops Geek, SubTime, SubHero or CoachAny. These five track minutes live.
• You want a plan printed before tip-off — SmartSubstitution, EqualSubs or the Playing Time Calculator.
• You coach basketball and nothing else — HoopTime, The Hoops Geek and SmartSubstitution are basketball-only.
• You coach three sports in one season — SubTime covers soccer, basketball, lacrosse, field hockey and rugby.
• You don't want to create an account — the Playing Time Calculator, and EqualSubs until you want to save a lineup.

At a glance

"Live" means it tracks minutes while the game is running. A pre-game tool is not a worse tool — it's a different one, and a printed sheet doesn't go flat at half time.

The List

1. HoopTime (free tier · paid from $9.95 per 6 months) — Basketball-only, in the browser, and the clearest of the eight about where free stops: the free tier manages one team and generates rotation plans but saves no game history and has no season logic. Basic is $9.95 per 6 months (3 teams, saved history, one season up to 30 games); Pro is $29.95 per 6 months. Paid plans carry a 7-day trial, and you can open a sample team and reach the planner before creating an account — rare in this category. It generates the plan first, then lets you swap players and mark injuries during the game.
2. The Hoops Geek — Substitution Manager (free forever tier · paid from $8.25 per month, billed annually) — Runs on phone, tablet and laptop, tracks how much every player has played, and lets you follow a planned rotation while adjusting for fouls and matchups. It publishes exact free-tier limits: 5 plays, 1 playbook, 3 rotations, 3 practice plans, 100 MB of uploads, and shared plays are ad-supported. Solo is $99 a year, Team/Club $198, with a 14-day refund. The substitution manager is one part of a larger coaching suite — plays, playbooks, practice plans — so those three free rotations are competing with everything else you make.
3. SubTime: Game Management ★ 4.7 · 680 ratings (free · in-app purchases $2.49–$34.99) — By a wide margin the most-reviewed app here, and the only one with enough ratings for the score to mean anything. It tracks playtime and bench time, subs players in and out, generates a rotation for equal playing time, and handles attendance and stats. The free boundary is stated plainly: "Paid subscription is required to record games longer than 40 minutes", plus live game sharing and advanced auto-planning. It covers soccer, basketball, lacrosse, field hockey and rugby, and lets you define your own sport — breadth, not basketball focus.
4. SubHero (free download · $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year) — Real-time playing time, substitution notifications, unlimited teams, customisable rotation patterns and offline use, for "soccer, basketball, and other team sports where substitutions matter". The subscription prices are published; what the free download includes is not stated anywhere we could find. Listed January 2025 and still without enough ratings to show a score.
5. CoachAny ★ 3.4 · 12 ratings (free · no in-app purchases) — The only live tracker here with nothing gated at all: no subscription, no in-app purchase. It tracks minutes and tells you when to sub. The catch is in its own description — it is for "any team sport played in halves on a running clock", and the listing even notes "Not all sports have keepers, e.g. basketball". For quarters and a stopped clock you'll be doing arithmetic in your head. Last updated June 2024.
6. SmartSubstitution (free · no in-app purchases) — Basketball-specific, and free with nothing held back. It generates optimised substitution plans for equal share or custom target percentages per player, which is the one thing on this list that handles "this player needs 60%" without a spreadsheet. It's a planner rather than a courtside tracker. Version 1.0, February 2026, two ratings — too few to read anything into.
7. EqualSubs (free · web · account only to save) — Generates a printable substitution schedule for equal playing time, showing who is on and off at each interval. No install and no account for the basic generator; signing up (free) saves a lineup and unlocks designating starters and finishers. A sheet of paper survives a dead phone battery, which is not nothing on a Saturday morning.
8. Playing Time Calculator (free · web · no account) — Enter squad size, players on court and game length, and it returns a rotation schedule. No account at all, and an optional "official game" mode to track averages across a season. It also covers baseball/softball and volleyball, so it isn't tuned to basketball — the plainest tool here, and the fastest.

Where the courtside tracking happens — one off the ranking

CourtClock is a live substitution tracker that runs in the browser with no account and nothing to buy. You type in jersey numbers, tap a player and then a bench player to sub, and each player's shift fills a gauge as it runs. The bench is sorted least-played first, so the top card is whoever should check in next, and there's an undo for the sub you got wrong. It installs to the home screen and keeps working without signal, which is what a school gym usually offers.

Keep the list on your own board

Save all eight (plus CourtClock) to your board in one go, so when the season starts and you're deciding what to actually use on the sideline, you're not searching again.

FAQ

What is the ranking based on?

Three things, in order: whether you can use it during the game, whether it fits basketball's clock, and how much you get without paying — plus whether the vendor says where free stops. Live basketball-specific tools with published terms sit at the top; pre-game generators sit at the bottom because they do a different job, not a worse one. This is not a performance ranking — we did not run a season on each.

Why eight?

Because eight had terms we could verify at the source. Basketball Pocket Coach was dropped: its App Store listing returns 404 in the US, Australian, UK and Canadian stores, so we could not confirm it still exists. Player Rotation was left out as a generic positions app with a single rating.

What does "not stated" mean?

That we could not find the number on the company's own pricing, store or help pages. Figures circulate in blog roundups but are uncited and disagree with each other. This list doesn't repeat a price it couldn't source.

Do star ratings mean anything here?

Only for SubTime. At 680 ratings its 4.7 is worth something; CoachAny's 3.4 comes from 12 ratings and SmartSubstitution's from two. Ratings are shown where they exist and ignored where the sample is too small to read.

How current is this?

Read from each vendor's own pricing and store pages on 4 August 2026. Prices in this category change without announcement — check the page before you subscribe.

What is the board?

This list exists as a real, public SaveBoard board, so reading it and keeping it are the same action. Open it as-is, or copy it into your own account and add whatever your club already uses.