TidyHQ vs PlayHQ
Last reviewed December 2025
PlayHQ runs up the federation — competition, registration, results. TidyHQ runs inside the committee — memberships, finances, governance, comms. The two coexist in most clubs we work with. The question worth asking before signup is who can see what.
Where TidyHQ wins
What your club runs separately from anyone above you. Members, finances, communications, events, meetings, documents — they stay inside your tenant. Peak bodies see only what your committee elects to send through TidyConnect: who holds what role, your answers to specific Project Tasks, scoped comments. The line between affiliation and oversight is yours to draw.
Where PlayHQ wins
Affiliation flow. If your peak body runs PlayHQ, your competition registrations, season fixtures, results, and federation-required member fields belong there — that's the system of record above your club. PlayHQ's design reflects who pays for it: the peak body's view comes first, the club's second.
Best for
Clubs that need the registration flow PlayHQ provides but want their members, money, minutes, and documents under the committee's control. Most AFL, netball, cricket, and rugby clubs we work with run both — PlayHQ for the season, TidyHQ for everything that surrounds it.
Feature comparison
Built for
TidyHQ
The committee that runs the clubPlayHQ
The peak body that runs the competitionWho funds it
TidyHQ
Your club, directlyPlayHQ
Typically the peak body via federation affiliationPeak body sees member contact details by default
TidyHQ
✗ Stays inside your tenantPlayHQ
Structural visibilityPeak body sees club financials by default
TidyHQ
✗ Stays inside your tenantPlayHQ
Structural visibilityPeak body sees custom fields & admin notes by default
TidyHQ
✗ Admin-only fields are privatePlayHQ
Structural visibilityPeak body sees audit logs / who edited what
TidyHQ
Sanitised activity signal only, via TidyConnectPlayHQ
Structural visibilityFederation integration model
TidyHQ
TidyConnect — consent-scoped per ProjectPlayHQ
Native parent-tenant — visibility default-onYear-round membership lifecycle
TidyHQ
Renewals, tiers, family membershipsPlayHQ
Season-bound competition registrationsNative Xero / MYOB integration
TidyHQ
Two-way syncPlayHQ
Committee governance (minutes, agendas, tasks)
TidyHQ
Action items assigned to rolesPlayHQ
Member event ticketing (non-competition)
TidyHQ
With member-only pricingPlayHQ
✗ Competition flow onlyEmail + SMS to full membership
TidyHQ
With status segmentationPlayHQ
Limited to competition workflowsOnline shop with member pricing
TidyHQ
PlayHQ
Document storage
TidyHQ
25 GB, private by defaultPlayHQ
Headline price (paid by national body, not the club)
TidyHQ
N/A — clubs pay TidyHQ directlyPlayHQ
$10 AUD per registration (Reg + Competition) or $7 AUD per registration (Reg + Dashboard Only); Enterprise contact salesTransaction fee absorbed by the participant / member
TidyHQ
1% + 20c (+ Stripe gateway fee)PlayHQ
1.99% participant service fee + $0.30 per transaction (passed to the player or parent)Merchant fee absorbed by the sporting organisation
TidyHQ
✗ No additional merchant surchargePlayHQ
1.99% merchant payments fee on every transactionAdditional club-level costs (websites etc)
TidyHQ
Included in TidyHQ subscriptionPlayHQ
Not transparently disclosed on the pricing page; clubs pay extra on top of the national-body feeFree tier for clubs
TidyHQ
Full features, no expiryPlayHQ
No free tier; national body pays per-registration, clubs pay extra for websites and add-onsKey differences
Your peak body is an affiliation partner, not a parent
When the peak body owns the software, they own the relationship. PlayHQ's default is structural visibility — your peak body sees member records, registrations, finances, custom fields, comms, and audit logs without asking.
TidyHQ defaults the other way. Peak bodies see what your committee chooses to share through a TidyConnect Project. The platform takes a hand in the politics either way. We picked the side where the committee draws the line.
The promise your committee made to members holds
Every member who hands over a phone number, a health flag, a payment, a complaint, did it on the committee's word. The promise has a perimeter the committee drew. Software either respects that perimeter or quietly redraws it.
Most clubs only notice a redraw when something goes wrong — a peak body uses contact details for a campaign the club didn't endorse, or pulls financial data into a benchmark report. By then the trust is already spent.
Software that respects your constitution
Incorporated association law in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK is clear: committees owe their fiduciary duty to members, not to affiliation partners. A committee that lets a third party rummage through member data without authorisation isn't being collegial — they're potentially in breach. We don't want to be the reason a volunteer treasurer ends up in front of a tribunal.
Your club outlasts the platform
Most clubs predate the peak body they currently affiliate with. Many will outlast the current iteration of that body. Sporting bodies merge, demerge, rebrand, lose funding, restructure. Through all of it, the club stays — same field, same shed, same families. A club that's been going since the 1920s shouldn't operate as a tenant in a system built around whichever governance entity holds the licence this decade. The data is the club's.
From committees we work with
“Our league shifted platforms twice in three years. Each time we lost some integration with the rest of our admin. TidyHQ stayed put. We run the federation flow wherever the league tells us to and the actual club admin in TidyHQ — about five minutes a week of CSV import, and the books, the committee minutes, and the member list stay where the committee can see them.”
— Committee member, junior and senior AFL club
“It's not the saviour we'd hoped for, honestly. We're using two systems and there's still some double entry between them. The trade-off is what TidyHQ holds — the member list, the finances, the meeting records — is ours. We've made peace with the seam, and the committee knows where things live.”
— AFL and netball club committee, Victoria
“First question the committee asked when we considered the change was whether the state body could see our books. The answer was a hard no for us. Turned out with TidyHQ they can't. That made the decision easy.”
— Suburban football club secretary, regional Victoria
What PlayHQ does well
Affiliation flow. If your peak body runs PlayHQ, your competition registrations, season fixtures, results, and federation-required member fields belong there — that's the system of record above your club. PlayHQ's design reflects who pays for it: the peak body's view comes first, the club's second.
We think honest comparisons build more trust than pretending competitors don’t exist. Try both and see which one your committee actually uses.
Is TidyHQ right for you?
TidyHQ is the better choice if…
- Your committee wants member data, finances, and comms inside the club — not inside the federation
- You run a year-round membership lifecycle, not just season registration
- You need Xero or MYOB sync for your treasurer
- You run AGMs and committee meetings and want minutes and action items in the same place as members and finances
- You have non-competition revenue — events, shop, sponsorships — and need ticketing and shop tools
- Your club is incorporated and the committee has fiduciary duties that run to members, not to affiliation partners
PlayHQ might be better if…
- •Your entire club operation is competition flow — no membership lifecycle outside the season, no governance to manage, no separate finances to track
- •You're a single-team squad whose committee work is light enough to live in shared docs and group chats
- •Your peak body has built workflows that depend entirely on PlayHQ and your club has no separate administrative life beyond what the federation already sees
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about using PlayHQ vs TidyHQ for membership organisations.
Only what your committee accepts into a TidyConnect Project. That includes who holds what Role in connected orgs, whether you accepted or rejected an invitation, your answers to specific Project Tasks, and any task comments your committee scopes to "project organisers and my club". Plus a sanitised activity signal — enough for them to know the club is active without exposing who did what.
Member contact details, finances, comms, events, meetings, documents, shop transactions, and internal tasks stay inside your tenant by default.
No. Most clubs we work with run both. Your peak body decides what runs in PlayHQ — typically competition registrations, fixtures, and results. Your committee decides what runs in TidyHQ — year-round memberships, finances, communications, governance, events, and documents. They serve different layers of the same club.
PlayHQ's published pricing is what the national peak body pays, not what your club pays. As of 2026, the two main tiers are $10 AUD per registration (Registration + Competition Management) or $7 AUD per registration (Registration + Dashboard Only), with Enterprise tiers above 50,000 registrations on contact-sales pricing. On top of that, the platform charges 1.99% as a participant service fee plus $0.30 per transaction (paid by the player or parent), and 1.99% as a merchant payments fee (paid by the sporting organisation). Clubs typically pay additional costs on top — websites, add-ons — that PlayHQ doesn't transparently disclose on the pricing page. That's why we don't show a club-side pricing calculator for PlayHQ on this page: there isn't a clean number to compare to.
Not yet. We're in conversations with PlayHQ about a direct integration and there's an open feature request in our public feedback portal that customers can vote on. Until then, clubs typically move registration data between the two systems via CSV export from PlayHQ and import into TidyHQ. One AFL club built a Google Sheet that handles the data split — junior players, parents, senior players, volunteers — in about five minutes per cycle. We're happy to point new customers at the same approach.
That depends on what your affiliation agreement says, what your constitution says, and what state association law in your jurisdiction requires. We're not your lawyer. What TidyHQ does is structural: it doesn't hand over your member list automatically just because you're affiliated. If your committee chooses to share data through a TidyConnect Project, it's a decision your committee made — not a default the platform made for you.
In every jurisdiction we serve — Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom — the committee's fiduciary duty under association law runs to members, not to affiliation partners. A platform that lets a peak body rummage through club data without authorisation can put the committee in breach of those duties. We don't think a software default should put a volunteer treasurer in front of a tribunal. Affiliation is a partnership, not a parent-child relationship, and the platform should reflect that.
Sources
Claims in this comparison are based on publicly available information. Verify current pricing and features directly with each provider.
- 1TidyConnect — how clubs federate with peak bodies— Consent-scoped Project-based federation model. The architecture underneath the autonomy claim.
- 2TidyHQ core values— Why the committee draws the line on what leaves the club.
Related comparisons
Other Sport Federation Platforms alternatives we’ve written about.