ABOUT RACE TRACKER

A free bracket maker and timer for small races.

A glowing finish-line banner stretched across a quiet park path at dusk, with traffic cones and a small water table beside it.

Why this site exists

Most race-timing software is built for marathons and chip-timed triathlons — expensive, signup-gated, and far heavier than what a school sports day or a neighborhood 5K actually needs. The small end of the market has historically been served by a paper bracket, a stopwatch, and somebody shouting splits across a parking lot.

Race Tracker is the in-between thing. It runs single and double-elimination brackets, times trials with lap splits, and gives spectators a link so they can watch results update without installing anything or making an account. It's free, it doesn't ask anybody to sign up to view a race, and it works on whichever phone the volunteer at the finish line happens to have on them.

If you're organizing a charity fun run, a pinewood derby, a school field day, a co-ed kickball tournament, or anything else where paying a per-runner fee to a timing platform feels absurd — this is for you.

What we believe

Free should mean free. No per-event fees, no racer caps, no premium tier locking the useful features.
Spectators shouldn't need accounts. Share a link, they see the results. That's the whole flow.
Privacy isn't a sales pitch. We collect the minimum needed to save races to your account — see the privacy policy for exactly what and why.
Phones are the finish line. The interface is built for a volunteer one-handed on a phone, not a laptop in a timing trailer.

An empty school gym set up for a community event: rows of folding chairs facing a stage, a chalkboard on an easel showing a tournament bracket diagram, magenta banners hanging from the rafters.

Tips for running a small race

Things we've learned the hard way from the events that shaped this tool:

Pin the spectator link before the race starts. Print a QR code on the registration table. Half your audience finds out the race is happening from the person standing next to them.
Test your phone's auto-lock setting. A timer page that goes to sleep mid-race is the single most common way a finish line falls apart. Set auto-lock to "never" before the first heat.
Name racers, not numbers. "Lane 4" gets confusing fast when the announcer needs to call a winner. A first name and a bib color is plenty.
Open the bracket on a second screen. The person timing trials and the person managing the bracket should almost never be the same person. Keep them on different devices.
Save early, save often. Hit save after each heat — not at the end of the day. Battery dies, phones get dropped, and a saved race survives both.

Top-down flatlay of race-day organizer gear on a wooden table: a stopwatch with a glowing cyan readout, a clipboard, a stack of pink race bibs, a measuring tape, and a marker.

Get in touch

Questions, feature requests, or war stories from your last event? Reach out at contact@linearmotionjunctionbox.com. Bug reports with a spectator link attached get fixed fastest.

Start a race →