Bowling Score Calculator
Enter the pins for each ball and the scoresheet fills itself in, with strike and spare bonuses, the 10th frame and your best possible score.
Chart: running score by frame
Settings: players and names
How to use the bowling score calculator
For each ball, tap the number of pins knocked down, X for a strike or / for a spare. Only the buttons that make sense for that ball are enabled, so you cannot enter more pins than are standing. The calculator moves to the next frame by itself and, with more than one player, to the next bowler.
Made a mistake? Press Undo to take back the last ball, or tap any ball on the scoresheet and pick the right value: every frame after it is recalculated. Tap a player's name to enter balls for that player. Open Settings to add up to 6 players and name them. Print blank sheet prints an empty 10-frame score sheet with your bowlers' names, and Print sheet prints the current game. Share link copies every ball entered, and Chart shows each running score frame by frame. Everything is saved in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere.
For golf, the golf score counter keeps a scorecard with par per hole; for anything else, the score keeper totals rounds for any number of players.
Keyboard shortcuts
- 0 to 9: pins knocked down
- X: strike
- /: spare
- Backspace, U or Ctrl+Z: undo
- Esc: cancel editing a ball
- F: full screen
How bowling scoring works
A game has 10 frames. In each frame you get two balls to knock down all 10 pins.
- Strike (X): all 10 pins with the first ball. The frame scores 10 plus the pins from your next two balls.
- Spare (/): all 10 pins with two balls. The frame scores 10 plus the pins from your next ball.
- Open frame: pins left standing after two balls. The frame scores the pins knocked down. A dash (-) means no pins on that ball.
- 10th frame: a strike earns two more balls and a spare earns one more, so the 10th frame can have up to three balls.
A frame's running total appears once its bonus balls have been thrown, which is why a strike shows no total straight away. The highest possible score is 300: twelve strikes in a row.
Questions
Why does my strike frame not show a score yet?
A strike's score depends on your next two balls, and a spare's on your next ball. The running total for that frame appears as soon as those balls are entered. The Score next to your name counts everything so far, including bonuses already earned.
What does Max mean?
It is the highest score you can still reach if every remaining ball knocks down all the pins standing. It starts at 300 and drops as the game goes on.
How do I fix a ball I entered wrong?
Tap that ball on the scoresheet, then tap the correct value on the pad. All later frames are recalculated. If the change makes later balls impossible (for example turning a 2 into a 9 when the next ball was 5), those later balls are removed and you can press Undo to put everything back.
What is the highest score in bowling?
300, which is a perfect game: a strike in each of the first nine frames and three strikes in the 10th.
More scores and games tools
Put this bowling score calculator on your website
Free for classrooms, clubs, blogs and shops: paste this code into any page. It works the same inside your site, and counts stay in each visitor's own browser. For a dark version, add ?theme=dark after /bowling-score-calculator/ in the code.