Karate Club Software UK (2026)
A UK karate club runs two sets of records whether it wants to or not. There is the club’s own: who is on the roll, who paid this month, who has the mat hours for the next grading. And there is the association’s: licence numbers, renewal dates, kyu and dan grades recorded against a governing body that has its own forms, its own fees and its own deadlines.
Every management tool in this comparison handles the first set well enough. None of them integrates with the second. That is the single most useful thing to know before you spend money, and no vendor is going to lead with it.
Quick Verdict
Martialytics is the strongest fit for most UK karate clubs — purpose-built for martial arts, GBP-native from £69/month for 50 students, with a grading readiness view built off attendance and time in rank. That maps cleanly onto a kyu ladder where eligibility depends on mat hours since the last grade.
But go in expecting to keep your association admin separate. Whichever tool you pick, licence renewals and grade submissions to your governing body will remain a parallel job. Choose on how well the club-side grading works, not on a hope that federation paperwork disappears.
What a Karate Dojo Needs That Generic Software Misses
The kyu-to-dan ladder as a real progression. Ten or more kyu grades, then dan grades on a different footing entirely, with different eligibility rules and usually a different examining body.
Kata by grade. Your syllabus attaches specific kata to specific grades. Software that tracks “rank” but not what a student should know at that rank leaves the syllabus in your head or on paper.
Licence and association records. Most UK clubs sit under a governing body — KUGB, ESKA, UKSKO, Shotokan Connect and others — and a student generally needs a current licence to grade at all. KUGB, for example, requires a current licence and regular training at an affiliated dojo for grading eligibility.
Grading fees separate from monthly fees. A grading is a one-off charge on top of mat fees, often collected at a different time and sometimes passed straight through to the association.
Worth knowing — the associations are digitising, and it does not help you as much as you would hope. UKSKO has been phasing out paper licence books and moving grading records into member accounts on its own licensing app. ESKA has moved kyu grading applications online through the ESKA Portal, removing paper forms and cash collection at clubs. This is good for members, but it means the association’s digital system and your club’s digital system are two separate places holding overlapping data. Neither talks to the other, and nothing in this comparison changes that. Budget the double entry rather than assuming a tool will remove it.
Licence Costs to Factor In
Association licence fees sit outside your software subscription and are typically annual, per student. As an indication of the range, UKSKO publishes licence fees of £55 for adults and £38 for juniors at 10th to 2nd kyu, rising to £65 for adults and £55 for juniors at 1st kyu and dan grades. Other associations set their own. These are the student’s cost rather than yours, but you will usually be the one collecting and reconciling them, which is admin your software should at least be able to record.
Check this before anything else if you are a UK club: how the tool takes money. Most of these platforms are American and route payments through card processors. A great many UK clubs collect monthly fees by Direct Debit, commonly through GoCardless, because it is cheaper than card fees and fails less often on recurring payments. None of the tools in this comparison has confirmed GoCardless support, and Martialytics documentation lists it explicitly as not yet compatible. Confirm the migration path with the vendor before you commit, not after.
How the Tools Compare for a Karate Club
| Tool | Grading readiness | Association integration | Entry price | Currency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Martialytics | Traffic-light readiness view | None | £69/mo (50 students) | GBP |
| Kicksite | Belt rank promotion | None | $49/mo (≤25 students) | USD |
| Zen Planner | Testing and rank classification | None | $99/mo (Studio) | USD |
| Gymdesk | Belt/rank and skills tracking | None | $75/mo (≤50 members) | USD |
Prices are approximate and change — verify current plans on each vendor’s website. USD-priced tools cost a moving amount in pounds depending on the exchange rate. “Not confirmed” means we could not verify the feature from the vendor’s own published material, not that it is absent.
The Decision Framework
Who This Is NOT For
This page is for people running a karate club with a roll, a syllabus and monthly fees. It is not for:
Instructors teaching a small group in a hired hall — at fifteen students on standing orders, none of these tools repays its cost.
Associations and governing bodies — managing licences and gradings across many clubs is a different problem, and these club-level tools do not solve it.
Anyone looking for syllabus or kata content — this is about admin software only.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does any karate club software integrate with KUGB, ESKA or other UK associations?
We found none. Every tool in this comparison manages your club’s own records, and every association we looked at runs its own separate system — increasingly a digital one, as with the UKSKO licensing app and the ESKA Portal. Plan on maintaining both. If a vendor tells you otherwise, ask them to name the association and show you the integration.
Can software track kata by grade?
Some tools support skills or curriculum tracking that you can configure to hold kata against each kyu grade — Gymdesk includes skills tracking, and Zen Planner records technique milestones. None ships with a Shotokan or Wado syllabus preloaded, so expect to set your own syllabus up once at the start.
How should I handle grading fees separately from monthly mat fees?
Look for one-off or event-based charging rather than only recurring billing. This is worth testing during a trial: Martialytics reviewers report there is no true one-off card payment option, and that taking a single payment switches the auto-renew to whichever card was used — awkward if grading fees are a once-a-term charge on a different card.
What does karate club software cost in the UK?
Realistically £60–£200 per month for a club of 50 to 150 students. Add payment processing of roughly 1–2% plus the card processor’s own fee, and remember association licence fees sit on top of all of it as a per-student annual cost.