Free Handicap Tracker in Your Pocket
Settle Up Golf calculates your index automatically from every round you post. Free on iOS, Android, and web.
A free handicap engine built into Settle Up Golf. Every round you post feeds it, using the same 8-of-last-20 math the World Handicap System uses.
Tracking a handicap honestly is harder than it should be. You can pay for a GHIN subscription, which gives you the official number but costs around $40 a year and requires posting scores through the GHIN site or a club. You can keep a spreadsheet, which works for about three weeks before you forget the slope rating from that one round at your cousin's course. Or you can just guess. Most casual golfers guess.
The result is that a lot of side bets get played with handicaps that have nothing to do with current play. Steve has been claiming he is a 14 since 2019. Mike refuses to update from his low-20s. Nobody wants to ask. The bets stop being fair.
The Settle Up Index is a fix for the casual side of that problem. It is a WHS-style handicap calculator built into the Settle Up Golf app, free, automatic, and accurate enough for any group bet you care about. Every round you post inside the app feeds a differential into your index, and the math runs in the background using the same formula the World Handicap System uses.
The World Handicap System calculates your handicap index from a rolling window of your most recent 20 acceptable scores. It throws out the worst 12 and averages the best 8 differentials. That is the headline. The actual machinery underneath is a four-line calculation per round:
That math does three useful things at once. It controls for course difficulty (slope and rating), it ignores your blowup holes (net double bogey cap), and it weights your recent good play more than your recent bad play (best 8, not average of all 20). Done right, your index is a fair representation of the score you can reasonably expect to shoot on a course of average difficulty.
The catch is that the math only works if someone is doing it for you. That is where most casual golfers fall off. GHIN does it if you pay. The Settle Up Index does it inside the app, for free, on every round you post.
The way it works inside the app is simple. Finish a round, including the course and tee you played, and the app calculates the differential and stores it against your profile. The differential drops into your 20-round window, the oldest round drops out if the window is already full, and the index recalculates. Open the Menu, tap Profile, and the new number is already there.
Three details matter for accuracy:
You can also tap the index to open the differential modal. It lists every round in your 20-round window, marks the 8 that are counting, and shows the differential math line by line. Excluded rounds appear at the bottom with a strikethrough. Click any round to jump straight into its scorecard.
| Feature | GHIN | Settle Up Index | Spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | ~$40 per year | Free | Free |
| Official handicap | Yes (USGA) | No | No |
| Auto from rounds | Manual posting | Yes, automatic | Manual entry |
| WHS-correct math | Yes | Yes | Depends on you |
| Course rating + slope lookup | Yes | Yes (shared DB) | Manual |
| Per-round exclusion | Limited | One toggle per round | Delete the row |
| Works for side bets | Yes | Yes | Yes, with arguments |
The short version: GHIN is the official body of record. Settle Up Index is the casual version that does the same math without the subscription, and it lives where you are already entering scores.
This part matters. The Settle Up Index is built for the side-bet end of the game. It is not a replacement for GHIN if you need an official number.
Use GHIN when: you are entering a member-guest, a club championship, a one-day tournament that requires posted scores, or any event with USGA-conforming rules. The official body of record is the safest answer when an organizer asks for a handicap and they will check.
Use Settle Up Index when: you are playing your Saturday foursome, running a buddy trip, hosting a casual Calcutta with friends, or just want a number that reflects what you are actually shooting right now. The Settle Up Index updates after every round you post in the app, so it is usually more current than a GHIN that has not been updated in two months.
The two numbers should be close. If they are far apart, look at which one is stale. GHIN updates only when someone posts a score through the GHIN system. Settle Up Index updates every time you finish a round in the app. If you have played 12 rounds in the last six weeks and posted 2 to GHIN, your GHIN number is the lagging indicator.
If you are starting from scratch, post a round in the app. Pick the course, pick your tee, enter your scores hole by hole, and finish. Your first differential lands on your profile within seconds. Open the Menu, tap Profile, scroll to the Handicap section, and there it is.
Below the index you will see a Sync Index to Player button. Tap it to push the current Settle Up Index value into your player record. After that, every new round and tournament you join uses the synced value to calculate your course handicap, which means stroke holes get assigned against the right number and net scores in your bets land correctly.
You can sync as often as you want, or not at all. The app does not auto-overwrite your manual handicap, so the timing is up to you. Most players sync once a month or before a big game. Some never sync and just let the manual value sit there. Either way works.
If you want to walk through the in-app flow step by step, the Settle Up Index how-to guide covers it.
To get a feel for what the app is doing, here is one differential calculated by hand. Say you shoot 86 at a course with Course Rating 70.1 and Slope 128. Your Adjusted Gross Score (with net double bogey caps applied) comes out to 84.
Score Differential = (84 - 70.1) x 113 / 128 = 12.27
That 12.27 is the differential for the round. The app stores it, drops it into your 20-round window, and recalculates the average of your best 8. If 12.27 is one of your 8 best, it counts. If it is your 9th-best or worse, it sits in the window but does not affect the index. Plays both ways: a great round (low differential) replaces a worse one and pulls your index down; a blow-up round (high differential) does not affect your index unless your best 8 already includes worse rounds.
The 0.96 bonus for excellence multiplier gets applied to the average of your best 8. Average of best 8 differentials times 0.96 equals your handicap index. That is why your index is usually a notch lower than your raw best-8 average suggests.
Not every round is a valid handicap round. Scrambles do not count. Rounds where you played out of a different bag with no rangefinder do not count. Rounds you started but did not finish should probably not count.
Every round in your app history has an Exclude from stats toggle. Flip it on for any round you do not want counted. The app removes that round from your 20-round window (sets its included_in_index flag to false) and the next-most-recent eligible round slides into the window to take its place. Index recalculates immediately.
This is a manual call, on purpose. The app does not try to guess whether a round was a scramble or a real stroke-play round. It counts everything until you tell it otherwise. Keep your index clean by tagging anything that does not represent your real game.
Settle Up Golf is free on iOS and Android, and the Settle Up Index works the moment you post your first round. No subscription, no club membership, no GHIN number required. If you already have a GHIN number, paste it into your profile and the app keeps both numbers available so you can compare them.
For the full step-by-step inside the app, see the Settle Up Index how-to guide. For the foundational concepts behind handicaps and how strokes get applied in bets, read Golf Handicap Explained.
See our step-by-step guide: How to use Settle Up Index →
Settle Up Golf calculates your index automatically from every round you post. Free on iOS, Android, and web.