Best Football Score App for Android and iPhone

Any app on this page gives you the big leagues’ live scores for free. They part ways on how far below those leagues they go, on how much they show besides the score, and on what sits between you and it: ads, news, video or other sports. Follow a smaller league and Forza Football may have it when FotMob does not. Add tennis, basketball or cricket and it is Sofascore for the statistics or Flashscore for the widest spread of competitions.

FotMob or Sofascore

FotMob if football is all you follow, Sofascore if you also want other sports or deeper statistics such as heatmaps and player comparisons. Both are free with ads and have in-app purchases.

FotMob, from FotMob AS, does football and nothing else. Its listing claims more than 400 competitions and names the Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, MLS, the Champions League, Liga MX, the Women’s Super League and the Championship among them. Beyond the score it lists expected goals, shot maps, player ratings, live text commentary and TV schedules. Goal notifications and alerts for your clubs and players are in the app’s main feature list. The purchases shown on its App Store page are for removing ads and for memberships. The Android version also runs on Wear OS watches.

Sofascore covers more than 25 sports, and its listing goes furthest on statistics. It describes heatmaps, shot maps, momentum charts and side-by-side comparisons of players and teams, with profiles for over 150,000 players. You can set notifications for goals, kick-offs, final scores, red cards and substitutions. The purchases on the App Store are ad removal and two paid tiers.

One thing to know before you tap through its permission screens on Android. The Google Play listing discloses an optional shopping feature that uses the Accessibility service to see the shop pages you open in Chrome and show coupon codes. It needs your permission. It has nothing to do with football, and we would leave it off.

Flashscore, the broadest of them

Flashscore, from Livesport s.r.o., lists more than 30 sports and 6,000 competitions by its own count. The football list changes with the store you open it from. On the Nigerian store it starts with the NPFL, and on the UK and Indian stores it runs from the Premier League down to League Two. It sends alerts for line-ups, match starts and goals, and lets you follow individual players. On Android it is free with ads and has nothing to buy. On the App Store a banner-free version is sold inside the app. Its Google Play page opens for Nigeria, India and the UK but not for the United States.

LiveScore, if you never want to be asked to pay

LiveScore, from LiveScore Limited, has been doing this since 1998, according to its listing, and it keeps the offer simple. Scores, fixtures, tables and news for football come first, with tennis, cricket, basketball, hockey and American football behind them. The listing names the Premier League, the Champions League, LaLiga, Serie A, the Bundesliga, the Eredivisie and the FA Cup, and says it follows more than 1,000 football matches a week.

You switch on notifications for the teams you mark as favourites and manage them in settings. Neither store shows an in-app purchase, so there is no paid tier for alerts to hide behind. It is free with ads on Google Play and on the App Store.

A football score app with no ads

Apple Sports is free, with no advertising and nothing to buy on its App Store page. It needs an iPhone on iOS 18 or later, and Apple’s page on Google Play has no Android version. Scores update on the Lock Screen through Live Activities, and a widget shows fixtures on the Home Screen.

Its coverage is a fixed list, and Apple prints it in full. The football part includes the Premier League, the Champions League, LaLiga, Serie A, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, MLS, the Saudi Pro League, the Egyptian Premier League, the South African Premiership and the Indian Super League. If your league is on the list, this is the only app here with no ads and nothing to buy. If it is not, use FotMob.

On Android, the official Premier League app carries no ads label, and nor does the BBC’s own BBC Sport app in the UK. FotMob, Sofascore and Forza Football sell ad removal, going by their App Store pages.

Forza Football, for smaller leagues and the women’s game

Forza Football, from Forza Football AB, does football only and claims the widest coverage here, more than 1,450 leagues and cups. It makes a point of the women’s game: its listing names the NWSL, Liga MX Femenil and the Women’s Super League. Push notifications can be set per match, team, tournament or player. It also lists video highlights, line-ups and a TV guide for your country. It is free with ads, and the subscription on the App Store removes them.

OneFootball, BBC Sport and ESPN, for reading more than checking

OneFootball, from Onefootball GmbH, is a news app with scores attached, free with ads. Its listing is about news, transfer coverage, video highlights and, for people in the US or the UK, live streams of selected matches. The TV guide works in eight countries: Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the UK and the USA. The listing does not mention goal alerts, and the purchases on the App Store include passes for individual matches and competitions. Choose it for reading, not for the fastest score.

BBC Sport is a news app with live scores, text commentaries and tables across sports, and a page for each Premier League club. Its listing says you can set notifications for more than 400 football teams. The international version, from BBC Studios Distribution Ltd., is free with ads and has nothing to buy. In the UK the BBC publishes its own version.

ESPN is on both stores and still shows scores, but its listing is now mostly about streaming, which needs a paid subscription and varies by region. Stats Zone, the FourFourTwo app, no longer turns up in a search of either store.

Official apps for one competition

These are narrow by design, and each is free. If you follow one competition, get its own app.

• Premier League: live scores, tables and alerts for line-ups and goals, with Fantasy Premier League built in. It shows in-app purchases.
• UEFA Champions League: minute-by-minute updates, push notifications for goals, kick-offs and line-ups, live audio commentary and next-day highlights. Free with ads.
• FIFA Official App: a match centre for club and international football, with alerts for match starts, goals and team news. Free with ads.
• MLS: scores, play-by-play commentary and highlights for MLS and the cups its clubs play in. Free with ads.

Are goal notifications free?

As far as the listings show, yes. Each one that mentions alerts presents them as part of the free app, and LiveScore, BBC Sport and Apple Sports have nothing to buy at all. Where there are in-app purchases, the ones the App Store names are ad removal, memberships and match passes.

If you would rather hear a match than read it, see radio apps for Android, which covers the apps that carry sports stations. For something to listen to between matches, see our guide to BBC podcasts.