PubTriviaPubTrivia as a Sporcle alternative
Sporcle Live sends a host to your venue; PubTrivia is software you run yourself. Different problems, different answers. It depends on whether you want to host.
These are not the same kind of thing
Sporcle does not sell you software. It sends you a person. They describe a network of 500+ local quiz hosts running 3,000+ pub quizzes a month, and the venue pays on results: in their words, you only pay when people show up, eat, drink and play.
PubTrivia is software. Somebody at your venue runs the night and we are not in the room.
So the real question is not which is better. It is whether you want to host your own quiz night or have somebody else turn up and do it, and those are different problems with different right answers.
What a supplied host actually buys you
More than most venues credit. A professional host brings the questions, the equipment, the performance and the experience of having done it two hundred times, and they absorb the part of the job that most publicans find hardest, standing at the front for two hours.
They also bring a crowd of their own in some cases, because a host working a circuit has regulars who follow them.
What it costs is control and margin. You run the night they run, on their format, with their questions, and a share of the upside goes to them.
| PubTrivia | Sporcle | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs the night | You do, from any device. The software handles the questions and the scoring. | One of their hosts, who turns up and runs it. |
| What you pay | A fixed monthly subscription, whatever the turnout. | Performance-based: in their words, you only pay when people show up. |
| Whose format it is | Yours. Your rounds, your pacing, your packs. | Theirs, run to their template. |
| Available everywhere | Anywhere with a browser and a connection. | Depends on whether they have hosts near you, so worth asking before you plan around it. |
| Effort on the night | Somebody at the venue has to run it, though not mark anything. | Essentially none. That is the product. |
| Keeping the audience if you stop | The night is yours; nothing leaves when a supplier does. | A host with a following may take some of it with them. |
Go with Sporcle if you do not want to host
That is a completely respectable position and it is most of why their model exists. If nobody at your venue wants to stand at the front for two hours a week, no software solves that, and a page pretending otherwise would be wasting your time.
The things to establish before you commit: whether they cover your area, what the commercial terms actually are, and what happens to the night if the host moves on.
Go with software if the quiz is yours
If somebody at the venue is willing to run it, whether that is a manager, a regular or you, then software changes the job from two hours of preparation and a night of marking into twenty minutes of reading a pack and tapping through it.
That is also the version where the night belongs to you: your format, your local round, your regulars, and nobody else's cut.
If you are the host rather than the venue, the freelance quizmaster page is the one written for you.
If you are hosting it yourself
One free session, all five packs, no card. Enough to find out whether running it yourself is as much work as you think.
Start free, no card neededKeep reading
- Best quiz appsSix ways to run a quiz night, from a supplied host to desktop software to pen and paper: what each one is for, what it costs, and which suits your venue.
- Freelance quizmastersFor hosts paid to run quizzes: your packs travel between venues, each venue keeps its own tables and codes, and session history is what you show a landlord.
- PubsRunning a weekly quiz in a pub: filling a midweek night, hosting from behind the bar, the same teams every week, and no answer sheets to mark at the bar.
- PricingPubTrivia pricing in your own currency: two plans, one free session to try it, and no card needed to start. What each plan includes and when you outgrow it.