Bowling Score Calculator

Tap the pins you knock down on each roll. Strikes, spares, bonuses and the tenth frame are all handled for you.

Roll input:

Total 0

Track your games

Snap a photo of the scoring screen and the score tracker turns it into an editable copy of every game, keeps your average, and can run a whole league.

How the scoring works

This calculator applies the tenpin rules in USBC Playing Rules Rule 2: a strike scores 10 plus the pinfall of your next two rolls; a spare scores 10 plus your next one roll; an open frame scores the pins you knocked down. The tenth frame grants bonus rolls so a strike or spare there can be completed, which is why a perfect game is twelve strikes, not ten, and why 300 is the maximum.

Why the running total lags behind

After a strike or spare the frame is not finished: its value depends on rolls that have not happened yet. That is why a scoring screen leaves the box blank for a frame or two and then fills in a bigger number. The calculator does the same thing. A strike followed by two more strikes is worth 30 for that one frame, the most any frame can score; a strike followed by two gutter balls is worth only 10.

Three things the tenth frame does differently

A strike on the first ball earns two more balls; a spare on the first two earns one more. An open tenth frame ends the game after two balls.
Those bonus balls count only as bonus pins for the tenth frame. They do not start an eleventh frame, so a strike on the bonus ball does not earn its own bonus.
If the first ball is a strike and the second knocks down some pins, a third ball at the remaining pins can score a spare mark (“X 9 /”), which is where the common 10th-frame confusion comes from.

When the calculator and the screen disagree

Center scoring systems apply the same rules, so a disagreement almost always means a mark was entered differently: a foul (scored as zero pins for that ball under Rule 5a), a split that was mistaken for a spare, or a frame that was skipped. Use the Undo button here to walk back to the frame in question. If you keep score by hand on a retro score sheet, write the running total only after the bonus balls are known, exactly as the calculator does.

For the rules behind every case, with worked examples, see how bowling scoring works; for the official text, see Rule 2 (“Scoring”) and Rule 5a (“Fouls”) in the USBC Playing Rules.