Padel vs pickleball: the differences, and which one you should try
Both are booming, both are easy to start, and people confuse them daily. They are different sports with different courts, balls, rackets and rhythms. Here is how to tell them apart and which suits you.
Side by side
Court. Padel: 20 by 10 metres, enclosed in glass and mesh, the walls in play. Pickleball: 13.4 by 6.1 metres, the size of a badminton court, open, with a seven-foot no-volley zone (the kitchen) in front of the net. Ball. Padel: a depressurised tennis ball. Pickleball: a hard perforated plastic ball that barely bounces. Racket. Padel: a solid foam-core racket with holes, around 360 grams. Pickleball: a flat paddle, lighter and thinner. Serve. Both underarm; padel after a bounce, pickleball from the air or a drop. Scoring. Padel uses tennis scoring. Pickleball plays to 11, win by two, and only the serving side scores.
How they feel
Pickleball is quick hands at the kitchen line: short, fast exchanges, a lot of dinking, points over in a few shots. Padel is a longer game. The walls keep the ball alive, so a point can be fifteen or twenty shots, and the winner is usually the pair that moved the other pair off the net rather than the pair that hit hardest. Padel asks more of the legs; pickleball more of the wrists.
Which one for you
Come from tennis and want your groundstrokes and your overheads to count: padel, with one warning, that the walls will punish a tennis player's power for a month until the brain accepts that the ball comes back. Come from squash or badminton: padel too; the wall reading and the short racket are yours already. Want a game you can play at seventy with a new knee: both work, pickleball is gentler on the legs, padel is gentler on the shoulder. Have four friends and ninety minutes: padel is built for it; pickleball is easier to find in the United States, padel easier everywhere else. Want to watch a professional tour with stadiums and TV: padel's Premier Padel is the bigger show; here is where it is on this week.
The honest differences in cost
Pickleball is cheaper: a paddle from 40 euros, courts often free in public parks. Padel courts must be built and booked, so an hour costs 30 to 60 split four ways, and a racket 60 to 300. Padel is also the one with a wall around it, which is why it is booked out at nine on a Tuesday night in half of Europe.
Try padel first
Read what padel is, book one open match at your club's beginner level, and rent a racket. Then come back here: the level test will tell you where you stand after three games, and the daily puzzle will start teaching you the decisions before you have the shots.