Ten years of Upsi

In 2016, three disc golfers with coding skills started building the app they felt was missing from the game. The idea was simple: bring disc golf friends together, make scorekeeping smoother, and make rounds more fun to play together.

Ten years later, more than 100,000 disc golfers around the world play with Upsi.

The way here wasn’t a straight line. Some of what we tried didn’t last, and a lot of what did started with a disc golfer asking for it.

To mark the anniversary, Upsi Black is €10 for a year until Sunday 13 September. Details at the end.

Things we tried

We once tried to build a disc golf smartwatch app that measured the speed of your throw from your wrist. It went well past an idea: a working prototype, test throws, collected data, and an Indiegogo campaign to see whether anyone else wanted it. The accelerometers available at the time couldn’t keep up with a disc golf throw — instead of capturing the movement, the readings essentially flatlined. Years later we still get messages asking when the watch app is coming.

Sometimes an idea isn’t bad. It’s just early.

For a while, you could also buy discs through Upsi. That started in 2019; by 2020 we were working directly with manufacturers, and there was even a limited Upsi disc you could buy to support the app. In the end we could make a bigger difference building the app you take to the course than selling the equipment you carry there, and the shop closed.

How Upsi Black started

In 2021, one of the things disc golfers kept asking for was surprisingly small: could Upsi have a black theme?

So we built one. People were also looking for a way to support the app, so we put the theme behind a subscription. That was the beginning of Upsi Black. From 2022 onward it grew into something much larger.

Plenty of the rest arrived the same way. Game modes. Putting statistics. Course maps. Rankings. Ratings. Guest players. Doubles rounds. Because the team has always been small, those messages don’t disappear into a giant feedback system — they reach the people writing the code.

The open handicap system was the first of its kind in disc golf, and it launched as an Upsi Black feature. In 2026 we made it free for everyone, and it stays free. A handicap works best when everyone on the card has one.

From Tali to Worlds

In 2016, for one of our very first videos, we asked a few people from the Tali disc golf community to come throw with us. During the warm-up the very first throw hit the metal on hole 12, the cameras weren’t properly rolling yet, and of course we couldn’t repeat it no matter how many times we tried.

That was the size of Upsi then. Nine years later the Pro Worlds came to Finland — the first ever held outside North America — with Upsi as an Official Partner. Today Upsi is an Official Partner of the PDGA.

Ten years in one comparison

In 2017 we celebrated one million throws recorded in Upsi’s entire history.

This year alone, more than one million putts have been entered into Upsi’s putting statistics.

Thank you

Thousands of people have shaped this app. You’ve sent feedback and feature ideas, reported bugs, and told us when something didn’t make sense. Volunteers have added courses, updated layouts and verified the information other disc golfers rely on when they head out to play. And then there are all the rounds — every person who invited a friend, kept score, or simply opened Upsi again for the next one.

If there’s something you’d like us to build next, tell us. That’s how most of this got here.

Disc golf belongs to everyone. The first ten years are in the books, and here’s to the next round.

The anniversary offer

To mark the tenth year, Upsi Black is €10 for 12 months.

The offer runs until the end of Sunday 13 September 2026 (UTC) and applies to new subscriptions. Regional pricing may vary through the App Store and Google Play.

Get the anniversary offer →