Score the heat while the floor is still moving.
LiveJudge is dance competition scoring software, and it runs cheer, pageants, talent and gymnastics on the same engine. Judges score without looking down, results normalize across a panel that never agrees, and the room watches the leaderboard climb.
One element, several criteria. Not one blunt number.
Most rubrics ask a judge to reduce Technique to a single score. Yours does not have to. An element splits into as many criteria as it deserves, so Technique becomes precision, flair and crispness, each with its own slider and its own guidance, and the judge is made to think about them separately.
When a couple is on the floor a judge cannot be looking down. Heads-Up Mode swaps the sliders for tap buttons or deduction blocks, so scoring is a glance rather than a task, and the detail is still there when they want it.
Precision
8.2Controlled and deliberate, with a few positions arriving late.
Flair
7.6Confident styling that fits the dance, if a little safe.
Crispness
8.8Every move starts and stops where it should.
Drag any slider. The guidance and the score follow.
A bigger seat.
All the same features.
Hand a judge any tablet in landscape and LiveJudge opens a larger judging layout. Every element sits in a rail with its running subtotal, and the open element fills the screen with bigger sliders and room to read the guidance.
Turn it sideways
Any tablet in landscape gets the larger layout. Nothing to install or switch on.
All the same features
Slider and heads-up modes, written guidance, the same weighting and the same math.
Next, not back
Previous and Next buttons on every element, so heads-up judges never hunt for the list.
Preview it first
Tap Tablet View in Class Studio to see exactly what your judges will see.
A kind judge's 7.5 is not a grumpy judge's 7.5.
The judging screen shows 1-10 sliders for each evaluation criterion. Look at the difference between a bare 1-10 slider and a "judge guided" version of the same slider.
Without judge guidance, two judges evaluating the same thing might land on wildly varying scores.
Band 4 of 6Controlled and deliberate, with a few positions arriving late.
Both judges are reading the same sentence, so both land in band 4. They still do not agree exactly, and closing that last gap is what normalization is for.
Two judges watch the same routine from two chairs and come back a 9 and a 6. It happens again at nine in the evening, when an 8 given in the first heat of the morning has quietly stopped meaning what it meant. Neither judge is wrong. Nobody ever told them what a 7.5 is.
So LiveJudge tells them, on the screen, while they score. Any criterion can carry six written bands in your words, which is where your event says what clean placement actually looks like at a 4 and at a 9. The guidance under the slider rewrites itself the moment the score crosses into the next band, on precision, on flair, on crispness, each in its own words.
That holds a panel to one scale from the first heat to the last, before a single algorithm runs. Normalization still settles the judge who marks hard. It simply has far less left to fix.
Six bands, your words
Write what a 4 looks like and what a 9 looks like once, when you build the rubric. Judges mark to your definition instead of the one in their head.
It rewrites as they score
Move the slider and the sentence underneath changes to the band the score just landed in. Every criterion carries its own.
No panel briefing required
A guest judge flown in for finals reads the same standard as the panel that has scored all weekend, while they score rather than beforehand.
Then the math runs
Anchored marks arrive closer together, so normalization and the high/low drop are correcting a smaller gap, not rescuing the result.
Judge 4 grades everyone hard. Every opinion counts equally here, which drags this contestant down.
A five-judge panel is five different scales.
One judge lives between 7 and 9, another uses the whole card, and a third marks the first heat hard and warms up by the fourth. On paper those habits decide placements. Try it on the left: one performance, four judges, and the fourth marks everyone hard. Switch the method and watch the result move.
Pick the method your event uses from Raw average, High/low drop, Z-score, and Olympic-Z. Raw marks are preserved underneath, ties are flagged automatically, and every placement carries an audit trail and a CSV export, which is what you want in your hand when a studio owner asks how their couple finished fourth.
Prelims, semis, finals, and who has not scored yet.
Run as many rounds as the format needs: sum them, average them, or score the final on its own. Set advancement once, top eight after prelims, and it applies itself. The console shows which couples are still short, so you never open an awards ceremony on an incomplete card.
Scoring Admin
RecalculateExport Scores| Rank | Couple | Judges | Round score Provisional |
Final score Provisional |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | #18Reyes & DuvalSable Dance Co. | L. Marchetti93.10K. Osei90.40D. Ferrara94.60 |
92.70 | 92.703 of 3 rounds in |
| 2 | #05Okafor & LindqvistNorthline Studio | L. Marchetti89.20K. Osei88.80D. Ferrara90.10 |
89.37 | 89.373 of 3 rounds in |
| — | #27Bennett & RuizRuiz Dance Works | L. Marchetti86.50K. Osei85.90 1 more judges needed |
Not scored | Not scored |
| — | #11Tran & WhitmoreWhitmore Academy | Nobody yet 3 more judges needed |
Not scored | Not scored |
The room follows along.
Your event gets a branded page and a QR code. Spectators browse every couple, division and heat on their own phones and watch standings move as scores land. Competitors get an official score report afterwards, and for a dancer that report is the feedback the weekend was actually for.
Let the room pick a favorite.
Open a Crowd Favorite ballot for the finals and the ballroom votes from the same phones they are already watching on, with a live countdown so nobody misses the close.
Set how many votes each person gets, geo-fence to a quarter mile so only people in the venue can vote, and put a sponsor on the ballot if one is backing the night. Blend the crowd's result with the judges' at whatever weighting you choose and the audience award means something without overruling the panel.
Every couple in tonight's final. One vote each, from anyone in the ballroom.
You have 1 vote left on this ballot
The ballot your audience sees, on their own phones.
What directors ask us first.
Our judges cannot look at a screen mid-heat.
Then they should not have to. Heads-Up Mode replaces the sliders with tap buttons or deduction blocks, so a judge scores by feel and keeps their eyes on the floor. The detailed sliders are still there for divisions where a judge has time to use them.
Can one element hold several criteria?
Yes, and that is the point. Technique can be precision, flair and crispness, each scored separately with its own guidance, and the element's score comes from them. Most paper rubrics collapse that into one number and lose the reason behind it.
We run prelims, semis and finals.
Run as many rounds as you need. Choose whether scores sum, average, or whether only the final counts, and set advancement once so the top N carry forward automatically.
How do you stop one harsh judge deciding a placement?
Choose the method from Raw average, High/low drop, Z-score, and Olympic-Z and a strict panel and a generous one land on equal footing. Raw marks stay underneath and ties are flagged rather than silently broken.
Do you handle divisions, ages and levels?
Yes. Classes are yours to define, each with its own rubric, judges and standings, all inside one event. A couple entered once can be reused across every event you run.
Does this work for cheer, pageants, talent and gymnastics?
Yes. They are the same shape: a panel, a weighted rubric, multiple rounds and a room that wants standings. Only the rubric changes.
What do competitors get afterwards?
An official score report per entry with every judge's marks, per round, per element, and the weight beside each, printable from their own phone. It is ready the moment results go final.
What does it cost?
Pay-as-you-go. No subscriptions, no per-seat license, and no credit card to start. Events with 10 contestants or fewer are free. Bigger ones pay $3.49 a contestant, never more than $299 an event, plus 2.5% of anything you sell through our checkout. Full detail is on the pricing page.
Other events on the same engine.
Every judged event is a rubric, a panel and a room. See what else LiveJudge runs, including pitch and academic competitions, science fairs and car, motorcycle and RC shows, or go straight to pricing and the FAQ.