iPing App: Does It Still Work in 2026?

Short answer: the iPing app still exists, it is still free, and PING updated it as recently as April 2026. But it is almost certainly not the app you are looking for.

Most golfers searching for it remember the original — the free consumer putting app that launched in 2011, clipped onto your iPhone and told you about your stroke. What is on the App Store today is iPING 2.0, and PING’s own listing is blunt about who it is for: authorised retailers and club fitters. If you are a golfer at home wanting to measure your putting, you will download it, find you cannot use it, and add to the pile of one-star reviews. Here is exactly what changed, and where to go instead.

What the iPing App Is Now

Still live, but rebuilt for the fitting bay

The app is published by PING, Inc., sits in the Sports category, costs nothing, and shows a current version of 3.5.1 dated 29 April 2026. It first appeared on 18 June 2011. So this is not abandonware — someone at PING is still maintaining it.

What has changed is the audience. The listing describes iPING 2.0 as a tool that “provides authorized PING club fitters and retailers a precise and easy-to-use tool to ensure golfers experience a tour-level putter fitting”, and then says it plainly further down: at this time the app is intended for use by authorised PING retailers and club fitters only, with accessories and technical support available to those fitters rather than to the public.

That last part is the bit that catches people. The app reads your stroke through the iPING cradle, a clip that holds the phone on the putter shaft. No cradle, no data. And the cradle is now routed through the fitter channel.

What it measures

Give it a cradle and a fitter, and the technology is genuinely good. It captures five metrics through the stroke:

• Closing angle — how much the face rotates through the stroke, which classifies you as straight, slight arc or strong arc
• Impact angle — where the face is pointing at the moment it meets the ball
• Tempo — the ratio of your backstroke to your through-stroke
• Lie angle — whether the putter is sitting toe-up or heel-up at impact
• Shaft lean — forward or backward press through the ball

Those feed a fitting algorithm that recommends stroke type plus the length, loft, lie and weight of the putter that suits you. There are five modes, including Guided Fit, Single Putt and a Live Loft and Lie readout, all built around a shop workflow rather than a practice green.

Why it rates 2.1 stars

The US App Store has it at roughly 2.1 out of 5 from 94 ratings. That number looks damning and mostly is not about the software.

It is an expectations problem. Golfers go looking for a putting app they remember fondly from over a decade ago, find something with the same name, download it, and discover a fitting instrument they have no cradle for and no authorisation to use. That is a frustrating five minutes, and it ends in a one-star review. PING has not hidden any of this — it is in the listing — but nobody reads the listing before tapping Get on a free app.

What to Use Instead

Before picking a replacement, it is worth being honest about what you actually wanted, because two very different needs get bundled together here.

If you wanted your stroke measured, you want a current putting sensor. Capto and similar devices do what iPING did for consumers, they are still sold to the public, and they are not gated behind a fitter. Expect to pay for the privilege — this is proper hardware, not a free download.

If you wanted a putter fitted, book the fitting. That is what iPING 2.0 is for, and it works. Find an authorised PING fitter and you will get the whole thing done properly in half an hour, with the cradle in the fitter’s hands where PING intends it.

If what you really wanted was to know whether your putting is getting better — and for most golfers that is the honest answer — neither of the above does that. A perfect closing angle tells you nothing about whether you are holing more from six feet than you were a month ago.

For the current apps worth having on your phone for putting specifically:

Best Putting Apps in 2026 →

Measure the outcome, not just the mechanics

Here is the thing about stroke data. Face angle and tempo are inputs. They matter, and a fitter using them to hand you the right putter is a good use of half an hour. But your scorecard does not record closing angle. It records putts.

Most golfers do not need more information about their stroke — they need to know whether the work is paying off. The average 15-plus handicapper three-putts more than three times a round. Fix that and you have found strokes no putter fitting will give you.

That is the gap Scoring Zone fills. It scores putting practice instead of analysing it: drills like the Five-Foot Circle, where you make ten in a row or reset to zero, and Lag King, where you hit ten putts from 40-plus feet and count how many finish inside three feet. Every session produces a number, and those numbers feed a Putting Handicap you can watch fall. No cradle, no fitter, no hardware.

Stop guessing. Start measuring — just measure the thing that ends up on the card.

For the full home setup, from mat to scored session:

Best Putting Practice System →