Almost everything is quote-only
If you search for padel court lighting automation or padel gate access in the UK, you find plenty of vendors and almost no prices. The padel-specific booking platforms, their hardware partners and the automation specialists all market the same feature set and all end at a "request a quote" form. That is not an accident. Pricing that depends on court count, existing wiring and installation labour is convenient to keep private.
It leaves venue operators with no benchmark. This is ours, from public sources, read in September 2026.
The one published price list: tennis gate access
The clearest figures in the market come from the tennis side, where the LTA's own guidance prices a full PIN-code gate system.
| System | One-off | Ongoing | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry tier gate | about £4,500 installed, or £2,500 to convert an existing gate | about £380 a year maintenance plus a separate annual code-licence fee | PIN entry for bookings, no floodlight control |
| Premium tier gate | about £6,100 installed, from £4,200 modular | about £700 a year per gate | PIN entry plus floodlight automation |
| Budget alternative trialled by one club | about £150 for a smart padlock | £2 a month | One-time booking codes by email |
Those systems are in use at well over a thousand UK tennis venues, and a padel court uses the same kind of perimeter gate, so they transfer directly. A four-gate padel site converting everything would be looking at somewhere between £10,000 and £25,000 in gate hardware alone at those rates.
Generic access control, priced per door
Outside sport, cloud access-control vendors price per door per month, typically in the £30 to £65 range with reader hardware at £225 to £450 a door on top, plus installation. Those systems are built for offices and gyms, and none of them read a booking. To make one open for a padel booking you also need a booking platform that talks to it, which is where the monthly cost of the platform itself comes in.
Booking platforms
The UK booking platforms that mention lighting or access control price the platform, not the automation. One lists a flat £80 a month. Another lists £25 a month per bookable facility on a public-sector framework and mentions lock and light control as a feature with no separate price. The largest padel platform charges the club by tier on request and the player a service fee per booking.
The value side
The number that puts all of this in proportion is the cost of a person on the desk. At the 2026 National Living Wage with employer costs, an evening shift of five hours is roughly £72. Seven evenings a week is about £2,200 a month. A venue that can open early, close late or run without a desk at all is comparing automation against that figure, not against another vendor's monthly fee.
For comparison, one court's LED floodlights draw around 1.5 kW. At typical 2026 commercial rates an hour of lights left on costs roughly 40 pence per court. Lighting automation earns its keep on electricity; gate automation earns it on staffing.
What we did with this
We had been pricing lighting automation at under £10 per court per month and had not priced gate access at all. Against the figures above that was wrong, and we changed it. Our prices are now on our pricing page: lighting from £39 a month, lighting and gate access from £99 a month, and a one-off £899 per gate for the access hardware, against the £2,500 to £6,100 the tennis market pays per gate. We publish them because a venue owner who has just filled in three quote forms deserves one straight answer.
Questions to ask any vendor
- What is the price per court per month, and what is the one-off per gate?
- What happens at the gate when the internet is down?
- How do coaches, staff and a booking the system cannot recognise get in?
- Who controls entry, and can the venue withdraw it in a hurry?
- Is there a log of every open, and can the venue see it?
The last four are the ones nobody's brochure answers.
