UK players juggle three level systems: Playtomic's 0–7 results-based score, MATCHi's similar results-driven rating, and LTA grades for tournament play. They don't convert cleanly into each other, because they measure slightly different things in slightly different ways. And they share one blind spot: all of them score outcomes. None of them watch you play.
The UK now has around 1,000,000 padel players, on course to pass a million during 2026, playing across 1,825 courts — up from 69 in 2020 (LTA figures). Most of those players carry at least one level number. Many carry two or three, and the numbers disagree.
Which level systems will you actually meet in the UK?
Direct answer: three — Playtomic for open matches, MATCHi at MATCHi-booked venues, and LTA grades if you compete. They coexist because they were built for different jobs:
- Playtomic (0–7). A results-based rating: your competitive match outcomes, weighed against the levels of your opponents and partner, damped by a per-player reliability percentage. Casual matches don't count (Playtomic help centre). It exists to make open matches fair.
- MATCHi. The other major booking platform takes a similar results-based approach: your competitive results against rated opponents move your number. Same family of system, different platform, so the numbers drift apart — different match pools, different histories, different calibration.
- LTA grades. These belong to competition structure — they tier tournament entry so events are contested between comparable players. They're a competitive credential, not a description of your Tuesday game.
Can you convert between the scales?
Direct answer: not precisely — and any table claiming exact number-to-number conversion is guessing. The systems learn from different match pools and update differently, so the same player legitimately holds different numbers on each. What you can do is place yourself in a qualitative band and read each system through it:
| Band | What it looks like on court | How the rating systems tend to see you |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | Learning the walls; rallies end fast; serve and return are adventures | Low ratings, moving quickly as the systems calibrate |
| Improver | Consistent underarm serve; can rally, but the net feels dangerous and lobs are accidental | Lower-middle ratings, still volatile |
| Solid club | Holds a rally, takes the net sometimes, has a bandeja on a good day; the classic "intermediate" | The crowded middle of every scale — where most UK players sit |
| Strong club | Takes the net behind serve by habit, lobs deliberately, punishes short balls | Upper-middle ratings that move slowly |
| Advanced | Controls net exchanges, defends off the glass, wins on patterns not moments | The thin top end; often competing in graded LTA events |
If two of your numbers disagree, believe the band, not the decimals. The band is where the truth lives; the decimals are two algorithms disagreeing about the same evidence.
Why do all three systems have the same blind spot?
Because they all ingest the same input: results. Win or lose, against whom. That's it. Not one of them can see that your returns die at the net, that you surrender the net under every lob, or that you volley from below net height and call it attacking.
And at club level, that unseen detail is nearly everything. Around 65% of sub-elite points end on unforced errors (Ungureanu et al., 2022) — meaning your level, in practice, is your error pattern. A results-based number compresses that whole pattern into a single direction of travel. It can tell you you're stuck at the same rating; it cannot tell you why. Playtomic's system is the one UK players ask about most, and its quirks — including levels that drop after wins — make complete sense once you see how the Playtomic level actually works.
An honest caveat: this isn't a flaw the platforms could easily fix. Extracting individual performance from a doubles scoreline is genuinely impossible — the information isn't in the result. Matchmaking systems are doing the best that results data allows.
So what should a UK player actually do with their levels?
Use each for its job. Use Playtomic or MATCHi to find fair matches — that's what they're for, and they're good at it. Use LTA grades if you want structured competition. And for the question none of them answer — what do I fix? — measure the thing they can't see: the match itself. Our behavioural self-diagnostic in What padel level am I? is a free place to start.
The step beyond self-diagnosis is having every rally actually watched. That's the job PADEXA was built for: film your match on your phone, and the AI watches every rally, then gives you the one fix costing you the most points — with clips from your own match as evidence. First match free at padexa.ai.
If you want to keep pulling this thread: the bigger picture on your padel level, then why am i not improving at padel?.
Sources
- LTA — UK padel participation and court figures (2026).
- Playtomic Help Centre — level system documentation.
- Ungureanu, A.N., Lupo, C. & Brustio, P.R. (2022). Padel match analysis: notational and time-motion analysis during official Italian sub-elite competitions. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(14).
More numbers: 45 padel statistics every player should know.