Looking at Dartfish? Here is how coaching teams work now

What Dartfish pioneered

Tagging events against a timeline, synchronised multi-angle video, structured analysis workflows a whole staff could share, and a data layer underneath it all. Federations and national programmes built their analysis practice on it, and a lot of what looks obvious in newer products is a simplified version of something Dartfish did first.

If you are searching for "dart fish" because someone at a coaching course mentioned it, that is the context: a professional-grade suite from the era when analysis meant a desktop and an analyst.

What has changed since

• Footage captures itself. Nobody films any more. A camera on a pole covers the pitch unmanned, which removed the job that used to gate the whole workflow.
• The coach is on a phone, not at a desk. The heavy suites assume a person who sits down with the match on Monday. Most coaching staff outside the professional game do not have that person, and never did.
• Athletes expect to receive things. A review room where twenty players watch clips has largely lost to each player getting their own thing on their own phone. That is a distribution change more than an analysis one, and the old suites were not built for it.
• Pricing moved to self-serve. myDartfish plans are billed yearly; the company states it does not offer monthly payment. Dartfish does not publish a list price, so a comparison against tools that do is not straightforward — you will need to ask them.

The alternatives, honestly

Grouped by the job rather than ranked, because they are not competing for the same one.

• LongoMatchOpen source, tagging and match breakdown. The closest thing to a free Dartfish for event coding.
• KinoveaFree, Windows only, superb at frame-by-frame technique. Not a squad tool.
• Catapult and HudlThe paid heavyweights. Full analysis suites with the staffing assumptions to match.
• Veo, Trace, SpiideoCapture rather than analysis. They solve filming, not breakdown.
• OnForm and CoachNowAthlete-facing: sharing video and feedback with individuals, mobile first.
• SidetalkThe audio layer. Records what you say while coaching and turns it into per-player feedback.

How to pick between them

Almost every bad purchase in this category comes from one mistake: buying a tool for a job you are not actually doing. A club that wanted its players to get individual feedback buys a tagging suite, uses it twice, and concludes that video analysis does not work for them.

Decide which of the three layers you are short of — capturing footage, breaking it down, or getting it to the athlete — before you look at a single feature list. The buyer’s guide walks through that properly.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Dartfish cost?

Dartfish does not publish a list price, so any figure you find on a comparison site is second-hand and may be out of date. What the company does state is that myDartfish plans are billed yearly; the company states it does not offer monthly payment. Ask them for a current quote — verified August 2026.

Is Dartfish still used?

Yes. It remains in use in federations, national programmes and university sport, particularly where a dedicated analyst is part of the staff. It is a mature product, not a dead one.

What is the best free Dartfish alternative?

For event tagging and match breakdown, LongoMatch. For technique and frame-by-frame work, Kinovea. Both are open source and neither is a straight replacement for a full suite — but between them they cover most of what a club actually uses one for.

Do I need a full analysis suite at all?

Most clubs below the professional game do not. A suite pays for itself when someone is employed to use it. Without that person it becomes an expensive way to store footage nobody watches, and you would get more from solving distribution — getting specific feedback to each player — than from more analysis capability.