Award Force and ScoreJudge both describe themselves as judging software, and both let a panel score entries against weighted criteria. Past that, they are built for different events: Award Force runs the whole lifecycle of an annual awards program, ScoreJudge runs the hour in which the judging actually happens. This page covers what each one does, what each genuinely costs, and which event shape each fits.
What Is ScoreJudge?
ScoreJudge is a browser-based platform for real-time competition judging. The organiser creates a competition, defines the scoring criteria and their weights, adds the entries, and shares a private link with each judge. Judges score from a phone, tablet, or laptop — no account, no app install. The public leaderboard updates as scores arrive, so the ranking can be projected on the venue screen during the event itself.
It offers three judging modes rather than one. Panel is the standard weighted-criteria scoring a judging panel expects. Audience opens voting to the room, with unlimited voters on Pro. Ranked is Eurovision-style: each judge submits an order of preference rather than a score, which suits taste-driven contests where numbers feel arbitrary.
Built for:
- Hackathons, demo days, and pitch competitions
- Talent shows, bake-offs, chili cook-offs, and community contests
- School and university judging events
- Corporate innovation showcases and internal awards judged live
Setup takes about five minutes. The free plan covers 3 judges, 5 entries and 25 audience voters on 1 competition — small, but a real competition rather than a locked preview. Paid plans lift those limits and Pro covers 200 competitions, so a recurring program is one subscription rather than a fee per event.
What Is Award Force?
Award Force is an Australian award management platform, founded in 2013, and one of the mature names in the dedicated judging-software category. It covers the entire lifecycle of an awards program: a configurable entry form builder, contestant file uploads, entry moderation, multi-round private judging with weighted rubrics, qualifying and top-pick modes, galleries for showcasing winners, and reporting built to survive scrutiny.
Pricing is annual and published. Growth is $3,250/year for up to 10,000 annual entries with a 10 MB per-file limit. Pro is $6,500/year and adds branding, a custom domain, multi-currency, multiple languages, email broadcast, HD video hosting, API access, and unlimited file size. Premier is custom-quoted for programs beyond 10,000 entries, with a dedicated account manager and SLA. A $2,300 one-time onboarding fee applies in the first year across all tiers, and it buys a real implementation — templates, branding, judge training, support. There is no free tier; you start with a demo.
Built for:
- National and industry awards bodies running an annual program
- Corporate "best of" and excellence award programs
- Creative and design awards with portfolio submissions
- Grants and scholarship programs with formal evaluation stages
Unlimited managers, judges and entrants are included on every tier, and integrations run to Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Zapier, Make and DocuSign — the shape of a tool that sits inside an organisation's existing stack rather than beside it.
Feature Comparison
Setup, onboarding, and how you buy
This is the widest gap, and it is structural rather than incidental. ScoreJudge is self-serve: sign up, create a competition, add entries and criteria, send judge links. Nobody is in the loop, and the free plan means you can run a small competition before you decide anything.
Award Force starts with a demo, and paid tiers carry a $2,300 first-year onboarding fee on top of the subscription. For a national awards body configuring entry forms, categories, round structures and branding, that fee buys work you would otherwise do badly yourself. For a Friday-evening talent show, it is the entire budget several times over.
Submissions and file uploads
Award Force collects entries: contestants complete a configurable form, upload files (10 MB per file on Growth, unlimited on Pro), and an organiser moderates before judging opens. ScoreJudge has no submission stage at all — the organiser types or pastes in entries, which is what live events need, because the "entry" is a team that is about to walk on stage.
If your contestants need to send in a PDF, a portfolio, or a video before the event, that is not a ScoreJudge gap you can work around. It is the wrong tool for that event.
Live leaderboard versus published results
ScoreJudge exists for the live moment. As each judge submits, the public leaderboard moves, and the whole design assumption is that it is on a screen the audience can see. The winner is known the second the last score lands.
Award Force runs judging inside its judging suite and publishes results once a round closes, through results management and winner galleries. For an awards program whose reveal is a black-tie ceremony months later, showing a live ranking would be a bug, not a feature. Neither model is better — they belong to different events.
Multi-round judging
Award Force handles shortlisting, semifinals and finals inside one program, with different judges and criteria at each stage. That is a genuine capability, and it is the single most common reason to pick it over a lighter tool.
ScoreJudge runs one scoring round per competition. Staged events are handled by running each stage as its own competition, which works but is manual — you carry the finalists across yourself. If your program has formal rounds, Award Force is the better fit and it is not close.
Judge experience
Award Force judges sign in to the judging suite and work through an entry queue, often over days. The environment is richer, which is appropriate when a judge is reviewing fifty portfolio submissions.
ScoreJudge judges get a private link. There is no password to reset at 6pm on the night of the event, and no onboarding for someone who will judge one contest and never log in again. The tradeoff is a simpler judging screen — fine for scoring ten live pitches, thin for reviewing a thousand entries.
Scoring rubrics, ranked voting, and audience votes
Both tools support weighted criteria and total scores across judges automatically; ScoreJudge caps criteria at 15 per competition, which is generous for a live rubric and restrictive for a detailed submission review. Both export a full CSV so prize decisions have an audit trail.
Both also support public voting, but differently. Award Force's people's-choice voting can require voters to register and can be combined with VIP judging — built for integrity across a public campaign that runs for weeks. ScoreJudge's audience voting is built for a room: the audience votes on their phones during the event and the result appears on the same leaderboard.
Ranked-choice voting is ScoreJudge-only. Judges submit an order of preference rather than points, which is the honest format for contests where a numeric score is a fiction — best costume, best performance, favourite entry.
Branding, integrations, and enterprise controls
Award Force wins this outright and it is worth stating plainly. Custom branding, a custom domain, multiple languages, multi-currency entry fees, API access, Salesforce and HubSpot integrations, dedicated account management and SLA on Premier — ScoreJudge has none of it. For an awards program that is a visible part of a brand, that list is not a luxury.
Use Case Comparison
Which tool is better for a national industry awards program?
Award Force. Entries arrive over weeks, they need moderation, judging runs in rounds, the program carries the awards body's branding, and the result has to withstand scrutiny from entrants who paid to enter. That is the product's home ground.
Which tool is better for a hackathon or demo day?
ScoreJudge. The teams are in the room, the judging takes ninety minutes, the organiser is a volunteer, and there is no budget line at all. Judges score on their phones as teams demo, the leaderboard moves on the screen behind them, and the winner is announced as the last team sits down. See hackathon judging software for the full walkthrough.
Which tool is better for a corporate "Innovator of the Year" program?
It depends on where the judging happens. If employees submit nominations over a month and a panel reviews them privately, Award Force. If shortlisted teams present at an all-hands and the panel scores live, ScoreJudge — and you can add an audience vote for a people's-choice award in the same session.
Which tool is better for a school talent show or science fair?
ScoreJudge, without much hesitation. The organisers are teachers and parents, the tool has to work without IT support, and $3,250 a year is not a conversation anyone is going to have. The leaderboard on the auditorium screen is also, frankly, the bit the students care about.
Which tool is better for a creative or design awards program?
Award Force. Portfolio uploads, large media files, moderated entries and multi-round jury review are exactly what it was designed around, and Pro's unlimited file size matters when entries are video.
Pricing
Award Force publishes its pricing: Growth at $3,250/year (up to 10,000 annual entries, 10 MB per file), Pro at $6,500/year (unlimited file size, branding, custom domain, multi-currency, multiple languages, API), and Premier by quote for larger volumes with a dedicated account manager and SLA. A $2,300 one-time onboarding fee applies in year one on every tier. There is no free plan — evaluation is via demo and trial. Realistically, year one on Growth is $5,550.
ScoreJudge is self-serve with a permanent free plan: 3 judges, 5 entries, 25 audience voters, 1 competition. Plus is $19/mo and Pro is $39/mo, with annual and one-time options — the one-time pass exists precisely for organisers running a single event who do not want a subscription. Pro covers 200 competitions with up to 1,000 entries each. No onboarding fee, no per-event fee. See ScoreJudge pricing for current plans and limits.
The gap is large enough that price alone should not decide it. A tool that cannot collect submissions is not cheaper than one that can — it is a different product.
The Bottom Line
Award Force is a mature, well-built platform for running an awards program, and the price is reasonable for what that involves: entry collection, moderation, multi-round judging, branding, integrations, and reporting that survives an audit. If your program has a submission stage and a sponsorship budget, it belongs on the shortlist alongside Judgify and the other award-management tools.
ScoreJudge is deliberately narrower. It does not collect entries, it does not do rounds, and it will never carry your custom domain. What it does is make the judging itself work in front of an audience — five-minute setup, judges scoring from their phones, a leaderboard moving on the venue screen, and a winner the moment the last score lands. For hackathons, pitch days, talent shows, and school competitions, that focus is the product.
Still shortlisting? See ScoreJudge vs Judgify for the other head-to-head, the Award Force alternatives guide for the wider market, or what is judging software? for the category overview.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | ScoreJudge | Award Force |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Browser-based real-time competition judging software for live events. | Enterprise award management platform covering the full submission-to-winner lifecycle. |
| Who is it for | Hackathons, pitch competitions, talent shows, school events, and any contest where the judging happens live. | National industry awards bodies, corporate award programs, and organisations running annual submission-based awards. |
| Core capability | Judges score on their phones during the event; the leaderboard updates in real time on the big screen. | Collects and moderates entries, runs multi-round private judging, and produces audit-grade reports. |
| Free tier | Yes — 3 judges, 5 entries, 25 audience voters, 1 competition. | No — demo and trial only. |
| Paid pricing | $19–$39/mo (Plus/Pro), with one-time and annual options. | Growth $3,250/yr; Pro $6,500/yr; Premier custom quote. |
| Billing model | Monthly, annual, or a one-time pass for a single event. | Annual subscription. |
| Onboarding fee | None | $2,300 one-time in year one, on every tier. |
| Self-serve signup | Yes — card or free plan, no sales contact. | No — pricing is published, but you start with a demo. |
| Setup time | Around 5 minutes — add entries, add criteria, share judge links. | Days to weeks — entry forms, categories, judging rounds, branding. |
| Judges need an account | No — each judge gets a private scoring link. | Yes — judges work inside the Award Force judging suite. |
| Live leaderboard during event | Yes — updates in real time as judges submit. | No — results are managed and published after a round closes. |
| Custom scoring rubric with weighted criteria | Yes — up to 15 criteria per competition. | ✓ |
| Ranked-choice / Eurovision-style voting | Yes — a dedicated ranked judging mode. | No — scoring, qualifying and top-pick modes. |
| Submissions / entry collection forms | No — the organiser adds entries directly. | Yes — configurable entry form builder with moderation. |
| File uploads from contestants | ✗ | Yes — 10 MB per file on Growth, unlimited on Pro. |
| Multi-round private judging | No — a single scoring round per competition. | Yes — shortlisting, semifinal and final rounds in one program. |
| Public / audience voting | Yes — a dedicated audience mode, unlimited voters on Pro. | Yes — people's choice voting, with optional voter sign-in. |
| Integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom branding and domain | ✗ | Yes — on Pro and above. |
| CSV export of all scores | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works on any device, no app install | ✓ | ✓ |
Which One Should You Choose?
Choose Award Force if...
- You run an annual awards program where contestants submit entries weeks before the result
- Contestants need to upload files, portfolios, or video as part of entering
- You need multiple private judging rounds — shortlist, semifinal, final — inside one program
- The program needs its own branding, custom domain, multiple languages, or multi-currency entry fees
- You need enterprise controls: SLA, dedicated account manager, audit-grade reporting, CRM integrations
- The budget is a program or sponsorship budget, not an organiser's own pocket
Choose ScoreJudge if...
- The judging happens live and you want a leaderboard on the big screen during the event
- You want to set up a competition in minutes without a demo call or an onboarding fee
- A per-year contract is the wrong shape for a one-evening or one-weekend event
- Judges should be able to score from a phone without creating an account
- You want to try the tool on a real competition before spending anything
- You are organising a hackathon, pitch day, talent show, bake-off, or school competition
- You need ranked-choice voting, or an audience vote alongside the judge panel
Frequently Asked Questions
"Is ScoreJudge a replacement for Award Force?"
Only for a particular shape of event. Award Force is built around a submission lifecycle — entrants upload work, organisers moderate it, judges score over days or weeks, reports come out at the end. ScoreJudge is built around the live judging moment. If your awards program has a real submission stage, ScoreJudge is missing the first half of what you need. If your contestants show up and perform, pitch, or demo in person, the submission half was never the point.
"How much does Award Force cost?"
Growth is $3,250/year for up to 10,000 annual entries, Pro is $6,500/year and adds branding, a custom domain, multi-currency, multiple languages and API access, and Premier is custom-quoted for larger volumes with a dedicated account manager and SLA. A one-time onboarding fee of $2,300 applies in the first year on every tier. See awardforce.com/pricing for current figures.
"How much does ScoreJudge cost?"
There is a free plan covering 3 judges, 5 entries and 25 audience voters on 1 competition. Plus is $19/mo and Pro is $39/mo, with annual and one-time options. There is no onboarding fee and no per-event fee. See scorejudge.com/pricing/ for current plans and limits.
"Does Award Force have a free tier?"
No. Award Force offers a demo and a trial, but there is no permanent free plan — the entry price is the Growth tier at $3,250/year plus the $2,300 first-year onboarding fee. ScoreJudge's free plan is permanent and runs a small competition end to end, which is the practical way to evaluate it.
"Does Award Force show a live leaderboard on the venue screen?"
No. Award Force judging happens inside its judging suite during a round, and results are published through its results management once the round closes — deliberate, because for an annual awards program the reveal is the ceremony. ScoreJudge publishes a public leaderboard that updates the moment a judge submits, designed to be projected during the event.
"Do judges need to create an account?"
On Award Force, yes — judges sign in to the judging suite, which suits a panel working through entries over several days. On ScoreJudge each judge gets a private scoring link: one tap and they are scoring, with no password and no app install. That matters most when judges are guests recruited days before the event.
"Can I collect entry submissions with ScoreJudge?"
No. ScoreJudge judges entries you already have — the organiser adds them before the event. There is no entry form builder, no contestant file upload, and no moderation queue. If you need those, Award Force, Judgify or Submittable are the right category of tool.
"Which tool supports multi-round judging?"
Award Force. It runs shortlisting, semifinal and final rounds inside one program, with different judges and criteria per round. ScoreJudge runs a single scoring round per competition; the workaround for a staged event is to run each stage as its own competition, which is more friction than a real multi-round platform.
"What does ScoreJudge do that Award Force does not?"
Three things: a real-time public leaderboard built for a venue screen, ranked-choice voting as a first-class judging mode (Eurovision-style, where each judge submits an order rather than scores), and a five-minute self-serve setup with no onboarding fee. Award Force covers far more of an awards program's lifecycle — these are the parts it is not trying to be.
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Information about Award Force was accurate as of September 2026. Visit https://awardforce.com for latest details.