Quick answer: Very few. My Just Play gives 14 days, Dartfish gives 15 days, Pixellot has offered a couple of free games, and HoopBrief's scout tool is free with no account and no card. Synergy Sports, Hudl's team tiers, Hudl Sportscode, Hudl InStat, Spiideo, and ShotTracker all require a demo or sales conversation before you can see the product working on your own situation.
| Tool | Try before buying? | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| HoopBrief scout | Free, no account, no card | A generated scouting answer immediately |
| My Just Play | 14-day free trial | Full individual product |
| Dartfish | 15-day trial | myDartfish tiers |
| Pixellot | A couple of games, varies | Capture on a real game |
| Hudl (team tiers) | Demo request | Guided walkthrough |
| Synergy Sports | Demo request | Guided walkthrough |
| Hudl Sportscode / InStat | Demo request | Guided walkthrough |
| Spiideo / ShotTracker | Demo request | Guided walkthrough |
Verified 30 July 2026. Trial terms change, and enterprise vendors sometimes grant pilots that are not advertised, so it is always worth asking.
Why this matters more than it sounds
A demo is not a trial. In a demo you watch a salesperson operate the product on data they chose, against an opponent they chose, at a pace they control. You learn what the tool can do in expert hands on a good example. You do not learn whether it helps *you*, on *your* opponent, in the ninety minutes you actually have on a Sunday night.
That difference is why so many programs buy software they stop using by January. The purchase was made on a demo that went well.
How to run a trial that actually tells you something
Use the trial on a real opponent in a real week. Not a sample dataset, not last year's championship game, not the example the vendor suggests. Specifically:
1. Pick the next opponent you genuinely do not know. That is the case the tool has to earn. 2. Time yourself. From opening the tool to having something you would hand a player. If that number is longer than what you do now, the tool has not helped. 3. Show one output to a player. If they cannot act on it, the tool produced analysis for coaches to admire rather than instruction anyone can use. 4. Do it twice. The first run is always slow because everything is unfamiliar. The second run is the real measurement.
The tools you cannot trial, and what to ask instead
For the quote-only products, ask for three things in the demo and treat refusal as information:
- Run it on my next opponent, live, now. Not their example. Yours.
- What does it cost for a program my size? If nobody will say a number, you cannot budget, and that is a real cost.
- What happens to my data if we cancel? Especially for anything holding your film archive.
Free is not always a trial
Worth separating two things that get conflated. Basketball-Reference is free forever and genuinely excellent for any statistical question, but it is a reference site, not a scouting tool: it tells you what happened, not what to do about it.
HoopBrief's scout is free with no account because the funnel data says people will not pay for analysis they have not seen. Ask it about a matchup and it answers in about five seconds. If the output is not useful to you, you have lost nothing and given up no email address. If it is, pricing starts at $9.99 a month.
That is the same standard this article applies to everyone else in the table: let people see the thing before asking them to pay for it.
For what each of these tools costs once the trial ends, see what a high school program should budget.