PB Vision pickleball: what the AI rating actually is (2026)

PB Vision is pickleball video analysis that turns a complete recorded game into six skill ratings and shot stats. It is not DUPR.

You record a complete singles or doubles game, upload it, and the product turns that file into shot-by-shot stats, six skill ratings, highlights, coaching cues, and 3D shot paths. That is the claim on pb.vision as of this review. It is not a live coach standing behind you. It is not a court camera you own.

We have not used PB Vision. Nobody on this site uploaded a rec game, sat through processing, or compared the rating to a session we played. This page is a sourced spec sheet for rec players who keep seeing the name and want to know what the AI rating actually is, what it costs, and what the help center says you have to film. If a claim could not be checked on a live page, it is left out.

Try-it and subscribe links on this page are PB Vision referral links (?rf=MNBVQ565). If you subscribe through one, PB Vision's ambassador program credits referral-bonus minutes to both parties: 240 minutes when the referred person subscribes annually, or 20% of that (48 minutes) on a monthly plan, per their subscriptions and ambassador help article. We do not claim a dollar commission; we do not have a primary source for cash. Help-center and App Store links are citations, not referral links. Full language on our affiliate disclosure.

What PB Vision is (and is not)

On the product homepage, PB Vision's AI "turns a complete game video into stats, ratings, highlights, and moments you can review." The listed tools include Shot Explorer (filter by shot type or quality), 3D trajectories for drops, drives, and lobs, court coverage and partner / left-vs-right splits, serve and return depth, automatic highlights, rally-only export with dead time removed, and shareable game links that friends can open for free.

Recording is a phone on a tripod, or a visit to a PB Vision-enabled facility. The homepage marketing also says you can "record on your smartphone or visit a local PB Vision-enabled facility," and that the first game analysis is free with no credit card required.

What it is not:

• Not DUPR. DUPR is a results rating built from match scores. PB Vision is a performance rating built from what the camera saw inside one recorded game. Their own skill-ratings help page is explicit: the two systems measure different signals, so the numbers can disagree. We already cover DUPR in how DUPR works and the practical signup flow in how to get your DUPR rating.
• Not a live coach. Coaching cues and highlights come after the video processes. Most videos finish in about 30 minutes, depending on server load, per their framing FAQ and DUPR-linking article. Nobody is talking you through the third shot while you are still on the court.
• Not a camera you buy and leave on the fence. The rec-player path is your phone. Facility cameras exist as a separate club / Court Insight workflow. This page is about the phone-and-upload product.
• Not a drill analyzer, despite homepage wording. The marketing block on pb.vision currently says the tracker recreates "Doubles, singles, and drills." The help center disagrees with that last word. Framing guidelines, the clubs article, and a dedicated FAQ all say drills are not supported: upload complete standard games. Treat the help center as the current product rule and the homepage line as marketing that has not caught up.

The iOS app is listed under developer Pickleball Vision AI Inc. On 2026-08-30 the App Store listing showed version 3.5.4, 4.6 out of 5 from 134 ratings, and in-app purchases matching the web plans with one price mismatch called out in the cost section below.

How a rec player actually uses it

If you already film rec games, start with our how to film and review your pickleball games guide for the cheap-tripod basics. PB Vision adds a stricter framing contract on top of "point a phone at the court."

Their how to record article splits courts into two setups:

• Fenced court: a photography spring clamp plus phone mount on the fence. Their copy says to start the recording before you mount the phone so orientation is correct and you can still reach the button. Shoot extra wide, often the 0.5x lens.
• Open or indoor court without a nearby fence: a tripod. Their help copy says if you do not already own one, "expect to pay $40+ for one that can be moderately stable with the weight of a cell phone." That is manufacturer help text, not a product we tested.

The framing and court alignment rules, restated in the clubs article, are the ones that decide whether the AI can even run:

• One complete game per video, first serve to paddle tap.
• Full court, all four corners, all players visible, including when a team is serving. Corners must not be blocked by the net.
• Landscape only. Stable mount. No handheld. Camera at least 5 feet high.
• 1080p / 30fps on Starter. 4K / 60fps uploads need Premium. Disable image stabilization and HDR.
• Do not strip the dead time between rallies. PB Vision uses that idle time and will misread a rally-only export (including some SwingVision exports) as one continuous rally.
• Videos 30 minutes or less. Trim multi-game sessions into separate files. Skip warmups, incomplete games, and drills.
• If you record inside their Android or iPhone app, CourtFocus is a lock-on indicator that confirms the court is centered before you hit record.

Ask the other three people before you hit record. Their how-to-record article says the same thing. A 25-minute doubles game is a long time to point a camera at people who did not consent.

If the file is coming from outside the app, they want H.264 .mp4, landscape, rear camera, under 5 GB. Their upload troubleshooting page is the conversion and error-message reference. Auto-refunds exist when the AI decides there was significant camera motion, the court was not visible, or the file is not a pickleball match. Hiding a processed video does not give minutes back.

Try the first game analysis on PB Vision (referral link). First upload is free up to 25 minutes; marketing says no credit card. After that first video processes, you need a subscription to upload more. Details in the next cost section, and in our affiliate disclosure.

The six ratings versus DUPR

PB Vision currently scores an overall rating plus six components: Kitchen Game, Ball Control, Defense, Offense, Court IQ, and Targeting. That list is on the homepage, the clubs article, and the skill-ratings explainer (Version 3.2, dated August 14, 2026 on that page).

The App Store listing still describes a different six: Serve, Return, Offense, Defense, Consistency, and Agility. PB Vision's own skill-ratings page says those older labels were folded in: Serve and Return now feed Ball Control and Targeting; Agility feeds Kitchen Game movement; Consistency is spread across execution and error signals. Offense and Defense kept their names with tighter definitions. Treat the live six on pb.vision and the help center as the current product. Treat the App Store skill names as copy that may be stale. Do not collapse them into one list.

What the current six mean, in their words, shortened:

• Kitchen Game: getting to and staying in the kitchen: dinking, patience, transition-zone movement, partner spacing.
• Ball Control: whether you produce the intended ball (speed, height, quality) across serves, returns, and rally shots. Not a power score.
• Defense: resets, speedup and overhead defense, recovery, turning defense back into neutral.
• Offense: creating and converting attack chances. Attacking more is not automatically a higher rating.
• Court IQ: shot selection and timing: when to attack, when to wait, unforced-error discipline. Execution versus judgment.
• Targeting: placing the ball on purpose: depth, direction, opponent position, variety.

Scale, from the same skill-ratings article: 2.0 to 8.0, currently capped at 5.5 because that is the upper limit they say the model can assess reliably. Overall is not a simple average of the six components. A single-game rating is a snapshot. Swings of around 0.5 from your profile level can be normal with a short history. The profile rating uses up to 90 recent rated doubles games, with more weight on recent play. Their clubs article says roughly 10 representative games are a stronger club-placement signal than one or two isolated results. Do not upload only the games you won.

DUPR still measures who won and by how much. PB Vision measures how you played on the video. You can play well in a loss (higher PB Vision, lower DUPR) or win a sloppy game (the reverse). That gap is expected. For what a 3.0 actually looks like on the court, see pickleball skill levels explained. For the jump many rec players are actually chasing, see how to break out of 3.0.

There is a real DUPR hook, and it is narrower than the marketing sometimes sounds. PB Vision and DUPR have a Phase 1 integration documented in linking to DUPR and submitting games:

• Unrated DUPR players ("NR") can record one doubles game, get it analyzed, and submit the result for an initial AI-assisted DUPR rating.
• If you already have a DUPR rating, you can still link and submit. DUPR captures that as informational data. It does not change your existing DUPR number today.
• Doubles only. Singles do not show Submit to DUPR. Each player submits from their own linked account; tagging someone does not push a rating onto their DUPR profile.
• No extra fee for the integration. Standard PB Vision minutes still apply after the free first video.

Two systems, one upload. A PB Vision number is still not a DUPR, even when DUPR will stamp an unrated profile from that video.

Cost: free trial, Starter vs Premium, minute math

Prices below are examples from live pages on review day. Check live before you subscribe. Web help and Apple IAP already disagree on one annual Premium figure.

Free trial. One video upload up to 25 minutes. Unused free minutes carry over if you subscribe. After the first video processes successfully, you need a subscription to upload more. Homepage marketing: no credit card. There is an onboarding bonus if you subscribe within a few days of the first-video tutorial; they do not publish the bonus size on that help page, so we are not inventing one.

Starter Pass (web help, 2026-08-29): $19.99 per month for 100 minutes, or $99.99 per year for 1,200 minutes. Includes the auto DUPR-style PB Vision rating and skill breakdowns, shot-by-shot, coaching tips and highlights, lifetime trends, Excel / JSON / LLM-ready export, the advanced player (bookmarks, draw, crop, export), rally-only and highlight MP4 export, and up to 10 GB storage.

Premium Pass (web help, 2026-08-29): $49.99 per month for 400 minutes, or $396 per year for 4,800 minutes. Starter plus unlimited storage, 4K+60fps uploads, better per-minute value, API access, early beta. The App Store IAP list on 2026-08-30 showed Starter $19.99, Starter $99.99, Premium $49.99, and Premium $399.00. That is $396 on the help article and $399 on Apple. We are not picking a winner. Check the store you will actually pay through.

Minute math. Minutes come off processed length, rounded up to the nearest second, with a 5-minute minimum per video. Their example: a 39-second clip uses 5 minutes; a 5 min 3.1 s video uses 304 seconds. Unused minutes roll over while the subscription is active. You need an active subscription to spend minutes, including referral-bonus minutes. If the sub lapses, the minutes wait until you reactivate. Removing or hiding a video does not return minutes.

Minute packs (web help and App Store IAP, matching on review day): 60 minutes $9.99; 300 minutes $39.99; 1,200 minutes $99.99. Their copy translates those as about 5 / 25 / 100 games, which is consistent with the 5-minute minimum if most rec games run longer than five minutes and you are not packing two games onto one file.

Refunds. No subscription refund once a video has been processed with subscription minutes. Try the free upload first. Apple and Google purchases refund through those stores. Auto minute refunds: significant motion, court not visible, not a pickleball match, up to an auto-refund pool (subscribers also get a 5% bonus pool of automatic refund minutes). First-time framing failures may get a one-time courtesy refund after review; they tell you to follow framing guidelines after that.

Available on desktop browser, Android, and iPhone.

See current PB Vision plans (referral link). Prices move; the help article is the page to re-check.

Who it is for, and who should skip it

Worth a look if: you already want video of your rec games, you can mount a phone at 5 feet with all four corners in frame, and you care more about "what did I actually do in this game" than about a ladder number. Unrated players who want an initial AI-assisted DUPR from one doubles video are the Phase 1 DUPR-integration audience. Clubs that want a recorded-performance input for placement, with a human still reviewing odd results, are the audience of their clubs article. A club can start with one Starter or Premium account; tagged players can make a free account to view that shared game, and need their own subscription only for ongoing uploads.

Skip it, or wait, if: you will not follow the framing rules (handheld, portrait, corners cut off, sun behind the far team). If you wanted a drill library: not currently. If you wanted the AI to prove last Saturday's clinic "worked" because overall rating moved between two games: they tell clubs not to do that. If you already have a DUPR and you are shopping this as a way to move that DUPR: Phase 1 will not change it. If you wanted a live coach or a permanent court camera, this is the wrong product.

Testimonials on pb.vision, labeled here as testimonials on their site, not independent reviews:

• Cap Mac / Junkyard Pickleball, on their homepage, writes that they switched from SwingVision and that PB Vision has been "taking me from a DUPR 4.0 to 4.5." That is their testimonial. It is not our comparison of the two apps, and it is not a result we measured.
• Jeremy Pollack, listed as Community Ambassador, describes automated video analysis and "actionable insights." Same caveat: on their site.
• Ryan Wills, Coachella Valley Scorpions Team Manager and Assistant Coach, is quoted about partnering with a company investing in analytics and video at amateur and pro level. Partner language, not a rec-player review.

We are not going to rank PB Vision against SwingVision. The only SwingVision facts we will stand on are (1) that Cap Mac quote lives on PB Vision's homepage, and (2) PB Vision's framing FAQ warns that a SwingVision export with dead time already stripped will look like one long rally. Record a full game, or export one that still has the pauses.

Caveats we will not sand off

• We have not run a session. No upload, no rating of our own, no Albuquerque court named as a test site. If this page ever becomes a playtest, it will say so.
• Framing is the product. Their troubleshooting and refund rules exist because a lot of videos fail. Motion, missing court, not-a-match, and "Oops! We hit a snag" are documented failure modes. The AI does not owe you a rating on a bad file.
• Minutes do not come back on hide. A processed game you later regret still costs the minutes.
• Drills are not supported, help center vs homepage marketing as noted above.
• One game is a snapshot. Their own clubs and ratings pages tell you not to treat overall rating movement across two games as proof of anything. Profile rating needs a mix of wins, losses, and close matches; they suggest on the order of 10 representative games for a stronger placement read.
• Skill-name drift. App Store copy and the live six-skill model are not the same list. Cited above, not collapsed.
• Premium annual price drift. $396 on the help article, $399 on Apple IAP, same review window.

Bottom line

PB Vision is a phone-video AI that scores how you played inside one recorded pickleball game, on six skills, and can optionally hand an unrated player an AI-assisted DUPR from that doubles file. It is not DUPR for people who already have a DUPR. It is not a coach. It is not a camera kit. It is picky about framing, it bills in minutes with a five-minute floor, and the first 25-minute upload is the free way to find out whether your court setup even works.

If that is what you wanted, start with the free upload, follow their four-corners / 5-foot / landscape rules, and only then look at Starter versus Premium. If you wanted a results rating, log matches in DUPR instead, starting at how to get your DUPR rating.

Try PB Vision with the free first-game analysis (referral link; see how that link works). Re-check prices on their subscriptions page the day you subscribe.