Top 10 free science fair judging tools

Two of these are ours, Peabody's own, and each row says so. Every other row is what that tool's own page, or a review of it, showed on 30 October 2026, with prices as we found them, so check before you rely on one. Science Buddies wouldn't let our reader in, and ScoreJudge's row is the company's own claims.

How it's ordered: In the order fair night needs them: signing judges up, then scoring and the tally, then a rubric and a guide, then the forms a high school fair asks for.

The ten, in order

SignUpGenius (free plan): Time-slot sign-ups with automatic reminders, good for getting judges to the night. The catch: ads on the free plan are the top complaint in Capterra's reviews, and paid plans start at $11.99 a month (an aggregator's figure).
Peabody's judges' printables (ours): A judge sign-up sheet to pass round, a schedule that puts judges in pairs with a run of entry codes and a time for each (extra judges become standbys), and a table tent for every code, on Letter or A4. No account, and nothing is sent. The catch: it's paper, so there are no emailed reminders.
Peabody's fair night tally and judge cards (ours): Entry codes instead of names, a judge card on each judge's phone with the six-row rubric, and a tally that averages each entry's judges, ranks within each grade band and shows ties without breaking them. Up to 480 entries and 9 judges, on the organiser's device, with nothing sent. The catch: scores come back from each judge as a file or typed lines, not live.
Google Forms and Sheets, the PTA way: Free. One PTA's guide takes entries through Google Forms, keeps a master sheet and judges' sheets with the students' names hidden behind an entry code, has judges score online, and sends the top project in each grade on. The same guide shows the chores: missing entry folders to fix, data to clean up by hand, and every sheet set to anyone with the link.
Judgify (Basic plan): Basic is free: 100 submissions an event, 5 categories, 5 MB uploads and one private judging round. Pro is $699 an event plus an onboarding fee. It's built for awards; its home page doesn't name science fairs or schools, and reviewers call it complex once there are many categories.
ScoreJudge (free plan): Judges score on their phones with no login, a leaderboard updates live, and there's a free plan for small school fairs. These are the company's own claims, as is its figure that adding up scores by hand takes 30 to 90 minutes. Paid plans list no prices.
VanCleave's printable judging rubric: Free, from author Janice VanCleave's site: three parts (presentation, display and log book) marked 1 to 4, for 24 points, with two good things and one suggestion for each child, and a note that judges need no science background. One sheet, not a system.
Science Buddies' judging guides: Judging guides, scorecards and rubrics, free for educators, and a full school-fair planning guide with a judge scorecard. Its site wouldn't let our reader in, so this is from search summaries, and the copy of the planning guide we could read is dated 2008.
Society for Science's Rules Wizard: Free, with no login on the page we opened. It says which international fair forms a project needs when it involves people, vertebrate animals, microorganisms, tissue or hazardous chemicals. Built for high school research (the international fair is for grades 9 to 12), not an elementary fair.
isef.app: Free: it walks a student through the international fair's form packet and collects signatures online from parents, teachers and the review committee, with no fair account needed. For high school fairs that follow the international rules; it handles the forms, not the scores.

👨‍👩‍👧 For grown-ups and teachers: how much to help, the safety rules, and running a school fair. Science fair v0.16.1 · Checked 6 November 2026.