Dartfish and ShotTracker Cost in 2026

Programs shopping both usually have not yet separated two different questions. Dartfish answers "how do I make our existing video teachable." ShotTracker answers "how do I get real spatial data out of a gym that has none." Buying the wrong one for your actual question is the most common and most expensive mistake in this category.

What each one actually costs

The $45,000 figure is dated third-party reporting from 2021 and should not be treated as a current quote. It is useful only as an order-of-magnitude signal that ShotTracker is a venue purchase, typically made by a college athletic department or a well-funded academy, not a coaching software line item.

Dartfish: video analysis you can actually buy today

Dartfish has been in performance video since long before automated cameras existed, and it is used across many sports, not just basketball. The product is a tagging and comparison environment. You bring footage from whatever source, then build an event list, cut clips against it, draw on frames, sync two clips side by side, and package the result for an athlete or a staff meeting.

The tiering is straightforward. Mobile is the phone-first capture and review tool for individual coaches. The 360 tiers add desktop import and multi-device motion evaluation, which is where technique work lives. Live S is the tier most team-sport coaches land on, because it supports live tagging during a game rather than post-hoc review. Pro S is the top tier for programs running live video and data together during competition.

Two things to be clear about. First, prices are listed in euros and vary by plan page, so a US program should confirm the dollar figure and any regional differences before budgeting. Second, while the standard plans are published, Dartfish explicitly points organizations and academic institutions toward a sales conversation for tailored deployments. So a single assistant coach can subscribe transparently, while an athletic department covering twelve sports will still be quoted.

What Dartfish measures is whatever you tell it to. That is its strength and its cost. The tagging taxonomy is yours to build, and the quality of the output is a direct function of how disciplined your staff is about coding possessions consistently. Programs that assign one person to own the tag list get enormous value. Programs that let three coaches invent their own event names get an unsearchable archive.

ShotTracker: measurement, not video

ShotTracker is a fundamentally different product that people mistakenly shop against video tools. It does not record video at all. It measures.

The system has three parts, per the company's own documentation. A sensor-enabled ball, available from Spalding, Wilson, Nike, and Under Armour with additional manufacturers in progress. Player sensors, which the company describes as smaller than an empty box of Tic Tacs at 1.60 by 1.15 by 0.57 inches. And anchors, ultra-wideband sensors installed in the rafters that map the court in three dimensions and track ball and player positions simultaneously.

The output is automatic and immediate: shot charts, box scores, optimal lineup data, and possession-level statistics streaming live to an app during practice or a game. No one is charting on a clipboard, and no one is entering data afterward. For a program that has never had reliable practice statistics, this is transformative in a way that is hard to appreciate until you see a shooting chart from a Tuesday workout that nobody had to compile.

Installation is a real project. ShotTracker says two days, three at most, depending on gym size and number of courts, with a specialist attending the first practice to verify everything is calibrated. That is not a DIY afternoon, and it is why the pricing is a conversation.

The company raised $11 million in January 2021 in a round led by Evertz Technologies and Verizon Ventures, with earlier backing that included Magic Johnson and the late David Stern. At that time it was reported to be deployed at more than 60 NCAA men's and women's programs. The customer profile has always skewed toward college and elite academy rather than typical high school.

Who each one is actually for

Choose Dartfish if you already have footage and your problem is turning it into feedback. Individual sport coaches doing technique work, multi-sport athletic departments that need one tool across programs, and any staff that wants to start this week for under 100 euros a month. The 15-day trial means you can validate the workflow before committing a budget cycle.

Choose ShotTracker if you have a dedicated facility, a budget that can absorb a capital install, and a genuine need for automatic spatial data you cannot get any other way. College programs, national team environments, and academies with year-round use of a single gym are the fit. If your team shares a gym with three other programs and a rec league, the economics get much harder.

Choose both if you are a well-resourced college program. They genuinely complement each other. ShotTracker tells you a lineup shot 31 percent from the right wing over 40 practice possessions. Dartfish lets you cut and show the twelve clips that explain why.

The recurring costs nobody quotes

Both products carry ongoing expenses that sit outside the headline number, and they are different in kind.

Dartfish's recurring cost is human. The subscription is predictable and small, but the tagging work is not free. A staff that codes 30 games a season at 45 minutes each has spent 22 hours before anyone watches a clip. Budget a graduate assistant, a video coordinator, or an honest share of an assistant coach's week, and understand that if that person leaves, the tagging standard leaves with them unless it is documented.

ShotTracker's recurring cost is physical. Sensor-enabled balls wear out and get lost like any other ball, and replacements have to come from a supported manufacturer, so you cannot simply buy whatever is on sale. Player sensors need charging and inventory management across a roster that changes every year. Anchors mounted in the rafters need occasional recalibration, particularly after any facility work that touches the ceiling. And a multi-court facility multiplies the anchor count, which is one of the variables the company points to when it says pricing depends on your situation.

Both also carry a quieter cost: adoption. A tool that only one coach on staff can operate produces analysis nobody else trusts. Whichever you buy, plan for a second person to learn it.

The honest limit on both

Here is the thing neither vendor will say in a demo. Dartfish gives you more organized footage. ShotTracker gives you more numbers. Neither one gives you a decision.

A shot chart tells you where shots came from. It does not tell you which coverage produced them, what the opponent will run out of a timeout, or how to adjust your pick-and-roll defense before Friday. A tagged clip library tells you what happened. Turning that into a game plan is still a person, on a Sunday night, doing the synthesis by hand. That step is the actual bottleneck in most coaching staffs, and adding measurement capacity upstream makes it larger, not smaller.

HoopBrief works exactly there, and it is not a substitute for either product. It has no hardware, no rafters, no ball, and no install. Pricing is public at $9.99 per month for Starter and $999 per month for Pro, with no quote call to find out. It reads NBA play-by-play and tracking data and produces a decision-ready matchup brief in about five seconds, which is the synthesis step that Dartfish and ShotTracker both hand back to you. If you need to capture or measure, buy one of them. If you need the read, see the plans.