Padel rules & scoring.

Padel borrows its entire scoring system from tennis. Inside a single game the points are called, in order: 0 (love), 15, 30, 40, game. The jump from 40 straight to "game" only happens if your opponent is on 30 or below. If both sides reach 40, the game goes to deuce.

These names — 15, 30, 40 — trace back to medieval French tennis, where points were said to move around a clock face. Padel was invented in Acapulco in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera, who kept the tennis scoring because his court was half a tennis court with walls on the back and sides. The scoring was the one thing he didn't reinvent.

Everyone on the court should know the point score at the start of every point. The server announces it before hitting, always calling their own pair's score first. So "30-15" from the server means the serving team has 30, the receiving team has 15.

When the score reaches 40-40, the game is at deuce. From deuce, you have to win two points in a row to take the game. The first point from deuce is called advantage — specifically "ad-in" if the serving side wins it, "ad-out" if the receiving side wins it.

• — Advantage means you are one point away from winning the game.
• — If you win the next point from advantage, you win the game.
• — If you lose it, the score returns to deuce and you start over.
• — Some social leagues use "no-ad" scoring where a single sudden-death point decides at deuce.

This is identical to tennis. There is no padel-specific twist on how games end — deuces can drag on, and a single game can theoretically last indefinitely. Our live demo at the bottom of this page uses a simplified first-to-4 count, not the full deuce system, because the goal there is showing tap-to-score in action rather than simulating a full match.

Games are grouped into sets. A set is won by the first pair to 6 games with a margin of at least 2. So 6-4, 6-3, 6-0 all win a set. 6-5 does not — play continues to 7-5 or reaches 6-6. At 6-6, almost all padel is now decided by a tiebreak played to 7 points, win by 2, using plain counting numbers (1, 2, 3…).

A padel match is a best-of-3 sets contest. The first pair to win 2 sets wins the match. Professional WPT (World Padel Tour) and Premier Padel matches are all best of 3. You will almost never see best of 5 in padel.

This is the single biggest rule difference from tennis, and the reason padel feels so distinctive. A padel court is enclosed: glass at the back, glass or mesh at the sides. After the ball bounces once on the floor on your side, you can let it continue into your own back wall or side wall and then play it off the rebound.

• — Bounce on floor first, then you may use your walls: legal.
• — Ball hits your wall without bouncing on the floor first: out (and you lose the point).
• — Your shot can rebound off the opponent's wall into their court — still in play.
• — The opponent can then take that rebound off their wall and return it — still in play.
• — A shot you hit that clears the net, hits the opponent's wall, and goes directly back over without bouncing: you lose the point (the ball never touched their floor).

The walls transform the game. In tennis, a deep lob is often a winner. In padel, a deep lob can come back off the glass in a perfectly playable slow bounce — and a well-practised padel player will attack it. Rallies are longer, more patient, and often end on a smash followed by a wall rebound chase.

The padel serve is always underhand. You stand behind the service line, bounce the ball on the floor yourself, and then strike it at or below waist height. The ball must cross the net and land in the diagonally opposite service box, exactly as in tennis. You get two attempts per point — a first serve and, if that's a fault, a second serve.

• — Bounce the ball first — you are not allowed to hit it out of the air.
• — Contact must be at or below waist height.
• — Ball must clear the net and land in the opposite service box.
• — A serve that touches the net and lands in is a "let" — replayed, no penalty.
• — A serve that lands in the service box but then hits the opponent's side-wall mesh before bouncing is a fault.
• — A serve that lands in the correct box and then bounces into the opponent's glass back wall is fine and in play.

Because the serve is underhand and relatively low-powered, the server rarely "wins the point from the serve" as in tennis. The game is about constructing points, not ace counts. This makes padel genuinely beginner-friendly compared to tennis, which is part of why it has grown so fast in Europe, Latin America, and now the UK and US.

A padel court is 20 metres long and 10 metres wide, divided in half by a net (88 cm tall at the centre). It is surrounded on all four sides: glass back walls, and then either glass or wire mesh on the sides. The lines you care about are the two service lines (3 metres from the net) and the centre service line dividing each half.

Padel is nearly always played as doubles — four players, two per side. Singles padel exists but is uncommon and uses a narrower court. Unless specified otherwise, "padel" means 2-on-2.

Most padel rallies end on one of these outcomes: the ball bounces twice on your side before you can return it, the ball goes out (hits the wire or glass on the full without bouncing on your court), or a player commits a fault.

• — Double bounce — the ball bounces twice on your side: you lose the point.
• — Ball out — the ball leaves the enclosed court entirely (e.g. over the back glass): point to the other team.
• — Direct wall hit — you volley your own wall before the ball bounces on the floor: you lose the point.
• — Net touch — you or your racket touches the net during a rally: fault.
• — Over-the-net hit — you reach over the net to make contact before the ball has crossed: fault.

Lets are simpler in padel than many people assume. A serve that clips the top of the net and still lands in the correct service box is replayed, full stop. That is the main "let" you will encounter.

Read our full tennis rules explainer for context — then flip these four switches in your head and you are playing padel:

• — Serve must be underhand, at or below waist height.
• — Walls on all four sides are in play after the ball has bounced on the floor.
• — Court is smaller and enclosed, so lobs are weapons, not losers.
• — Almost always doubles, rarely singles.

Everything else — 15/30/40/deuce, sets to 6, tiebreak to 7 at 6-6, best of 3 — is identical. If you want to try padel scoring right now, open the RALLY scoreboard or read our padel app page.