BallHawk vs Trace: What Soccer Parents Should Know

Publish: Friday, August 14, 2026 SEO title: BallHawk vs Trace: AI Sports Filming Compared for Soccer Parents Meta description: Trace records the whole game and delivers highlights later. BallHawk follows the play live. Here's the honest comparison for soccer parents.

You didn't sign up to be the team videographer. You signed up to watch your kid play soccer. But somewhere along the way you became the parent with the camera, and now every Saturday is a choice between watching the game and recording it.

Trace and BallHawk both exist to end that choice. They go about it in almost opposite ways, and the differences matter more than the marketing on either side suggests. Trace is a dedicated AI camera that records the field broadly and creates personalized player footage after the game. BallHawk turns your iPhone into a camera that physically follows and frames the action while the game is happening.

We build BallHawk, so read this knowing where we stand. We've also spent years filming real youth games, and an honest comparison is more useful to you than an ad. You'll check everything we say anyway.

We have not run a controlled side-by-side test against Trace. Trace features, pricing, and turnaround times in this article come from Trace's current official pricing, support, and product materials. BallHawk descriptions reflect the preproduction system we are currently building and testing.

One difference to know up front: Trace is available today. BallHawk is preparing for its Kickstarter launch.

Apollo Streams is not affiliated with Trace. Information and pricing were checked on August 10, 2026. Products, prices, and plans can change.

The short version

How Trace works, fairly stated

Trace's model is clever and proven with soccer clubs. A multi-lens camera goes up on a tall tripod at midfield and records the entire game in a wide view. Nobody touches it. After the game you upload the footage, Trace's software finds the players, and each family gets a playlist of moments with their own kid front and center. Trace is particularly established in soccer and also supports basketball, with recording options expanding into additional sports.

There's real appeal in that. Zero effort during the game. Every family on the team can get their own highlights from one camera. Nobody's phone is tied up. For a club trying to cover every kid on the roster, that model makes a lot of sense.

It's worth understanding the participation side, though, because Trace is built around the team more than the individual family. Trace now lets individual families subscribe rather than requiring one parent to collect money from the entire team. But the system is still structured around team participation. Trace requires at least seven families or staff members on the team's roster to keep recorded video access unlocked, offers team discounts beginning at seven Pro subscriptions, and makes full-game downloads available to club subscriptions or teams with at least seven paid subscriptions.

To be precise about what that means: joining the roster doesn't cost anything, and those seven roster spots don't all have to be paying subscribers. But being on the roster also doesn't unlock Trace's main recorded product. Paid Basic or Pro PlayerFocus subscriptions are what cover recorded game access, personalized highlights, PlayerCam, and the other post-game features. The roster requirement keeps recorded access active; paid subscriptions are how families unlock the full PlayerFocus experience.

The rest of the tradeoffs are built into the design itself, and they're worth understanding before you subscribe.

What you're carrying to the field

Trace's current system uses a 16-foot tripod that collapses to roughly four feet, plus three sandbags for outdoor setup, placed at midfield. That height is a legitimate advantage. Sixteen feet up, one camera can see broad portions of the pitch well enough for the software to find every player later. The whole system is built around that view, and it works.

BallHawk's philosophy is the opposite: get closer and move. The tracking system is small, the camera is a compatible iPhone, and the optional 9-foot carbon fiber tripod is designed to pack into the BallHawk backpack with the rest of the gear. One system is engineered to stand tall and see everything. The other is engineered to go over your shoulder, set up fast, and physically follow the play.

Neither is wrong. They're different strategies. Trace gets high and sees broadly. BallHawk gets closer and moves.

Tonight vs tomorrow

Trace's highlights arrive after the game, and the workflow explains why. Record the game, then get the camera connected to the internet and upload the file. Trace says a typical 90-minute soccer game can contain roughly 16GB of data, and its support materials give an example where a 10 Mbps upload connection takes close to four hours just to move the file. After upload, processing can take up to roughly 12 more hours, with games typically back by the next day. None of that is a flaw. It's what a capture-first, process-later system has to do.

Sometimes that's fine. Sometimes the moment is Saturday night, when your kid wants to show Grandma the goal, and the goal is still sitting in a processing queue.

BallHawk's approach, with Apollo Streams Capture, is that highlights are marked the moment they happen. The person watching presses one button when the play is worth keeping, and when the final whistle blows, the highlights already exist. No upload wait, no processing queue. The game ends and the goal is ready to send.

To be fair to Trace: their model requires no one to press anything, ever. BallHawk's instant highlights assume someone is at the game with the controller in reach. Most parents are at the game anyway, but it's a real difference in philosophy. Trace automates the post-game process and delivers later. BallHawk keeps a human in the loop and can deliver tonight.

A wide recording vs actually seeing the play

Trace's camera captures the whole field, and its software then creates player-focused views from that recording. Give this its due: PlayerCam automatically spotlights your athlete with up to 4x zoom, so Trace can produce a much closer view of your kid than the raw wide shot suggests. The real distinction isn't whether Trace can get closer. It's when and how. A wide source recording can be digitally reframed afterward, and the zoom can only go as far as the recorded pixels allow.

BallHawk frames the action while it is happening. The gimbal physically turns to follow the play, and with Capture it tightens framing and zoom as the play develops, using three camera views. It isn't finding your kid in the recording afterward. It's pointing the camera at the play as the play unfolds, and it can be manually redirected the instant sports do something unexpected.

The same difference shows up live. Trace can livestream, and that's genuinely useful for families far from the field. But Trace's own livestream documentation describes it as a simplified fixed-camera stream, without panning and zooming, with the player-focused processing happening after the game. BallHawk's live broadcast is the tracked view itself: the camera follows the play, the framing changes as it develops, and camera views and zoom can change during the game. Trace captures broadly now and reframes afterward. BallHawk follows and frames the play while it happens.

Here's why that matters. When your kid takes the shot that wins the game, both systems should have the moment somewhere. The question is what the footage lets you relive: the first touch, the defender closing, the shot, the keeper's dive, the ball hitting the net, your kid's reaction. Trace is working to make sure the moment exists in the recording and can be spotlighted afterward. BallHawk is working to make sure you can actually see the moment, live and again later. That's the difference between documenting that something happened and experiencing it again.

Neither approach is free of tradeoffs. Tracking cameras can be fooled by sudden changes in play, which is why BallHawk includes manual controls to redirect, pan, tilt, and zoom immediately when automation reads the play wrong. That's a design philosophy, not an apology: sports are chaotic, so BallHawk automates the filming and keeps a human override within reach. A capture-everything camera keeps its distance by design and trusts software to close the gap afterward. Decide which tradeoff fits your family.

What it costs over time

The simple version is that Trace is a subscription and BallHawk is a purchase. That's true, but the more useful difference is the business model underneath.

Trace lowers the upfront barrier by leasing you the hardware. The camera and tripod come with the plan and remain Trace's equipment, returned per its lease model when the subscription ends. What Trace monetizes is PlayerFocus access, family by family. Current individual pricing: Basic at $180 per year or $25 per month, and Pro at $300 per year or $40 per month, with monthly plans adding a $99 one-time equipment lease fee. Annual plans include the equipment lease. Trace also promotes team pricing: seven PlayerFocus Pro subscriptions for $1,400 per year, which works out to $200 per subscriber with the camera lease included, and adding four more subscriptions brings the advertised price down to about $175 per family. The structure tells you the strategy: one camera, many participating families.

There's another wrinkle. Trace makes full-game downloads available to club subscriptions or teams with at least seven paid subscriptions. So even if your family pays for Pro, some team-level capabilities still depend on broader participation. Two or three seasons in, the subscription is the product.

BallHawk flips the model. You purchase and own the tracking hardware, and the camera is the compatible iPhone you already have. Basic use doesn't require an Apollo Streams subscription. It's an Apple DockKit-compatible gimbal, so it works with the iPhone Camera app and a broad range of compatible camera, video, and streaming apps, with no Apollo Streams account required for basic recording and AI tracking. The optional Apollo Streams Capture subscription is where the sports production platform lives: sports-specific tracking, one-button highlights, zoom control, scoreboards, streaming, and distribution on the Apollo Streams Network. BallHawk includes a 30-day Capture trial, and when it ends, the gimbal keeps working with compatible apps. And what Apollo doesn't monetize is your audience: the people watching your games don't each need their own Apollo Streams subscription. The broadcaster's optional Capture plan covers the production.

One more difference that compounds: Trace's camera stays Trace's hardware. With BallHawk, the camera is your iPhone, so upgrading your phone can also upgrade the camera in your sports filming system, without replacing the tracking hardware.

Final Kickstarter pricing for BallHawk hasn't been announced, so a full cost comparison isn't possible yet. When the campaign launches, run the math against a few years of subscription fees and decide for yourself.

Who gets to watch

Start with what's free on each side, because this is where the models separate.

With Trace, watching an available livestream can be free: roster members can tune in without buying PlayerFocus. The subscription line sits after the game. Recorded games, personalized highlights, and PlayerCam run through paid PlayerFocus plans, with Basic supporting up to 2 email accounts and Pro up to 4. That covers a household, but when grandparents, aunts, and college coaches enter the picture, additional access can mean another subscription. And as covered above, full-game downloads are available to club subscriptions or teams with at least seven paid subscriptions.

With BallHawk, the split runs between the broadcaster and the audience, not between game types. The broadcaster decides whether to pay for Capture's production tools. The audience pays nothing: games and highlights streamed through Capture live on the Apollo Streams Network, and family, friends, grandparents, and scouts watch free through the Network app, no viewer subscriptions required. The Apollo Streams Network is not another place to stream games. It's the place people go to find them. More than one million live and highlight views have run through the Apollo Streams platform, so this part isn't theoretical.

"But I don't want to give up my phone"

The most common objection to any phone-based system, and it deserves a straight answer: you don't have to give up anything.

Many families already have an older compatible iPhone in a drawer, and used or refurbished iPhones can make practical dedicated filming phones. Apollo Streams recommends an iPhone 12 or newer, running a recent version of iOS. The filming phone needs no phone number and no cellular plan of its own just to record. Recording works without cellular service, and for live streaming, the filming phone can ride on the hotspot of the phone in your pocket, using the plan you already pay for.

Or use your everyday phone and leave it on the gimbal for the game. Either way, nobody is texting from a tripod.

What we'd actually do

Choose Trace if you want a system available today, nobody wants to operate anything during the game, one camera needs to serve many players, next-day personalized content works for your family, and the team is comfortable with the subscription structure. It's a proven model, and for team-wide coverage with zero effort during the game, it's a sensible pick.

Consider BallHawk if you care most about seeing the action up close, following the play live, broadcast-like framing, highlights ready the moment the game ends, manual control when sports get chaotic, and owning your tracking hardware rather than relying on an ongoing equipment-and-family-subscription model. Add the freedom part: with AI tracking doing the filming, you're in the bleachers watching your kid, not behind a camera. Backing BallHawk means waiting for the Kickstarter launch rather than buying today, and we'd rather tell you that plainly than have you find out at checkout.

Your kid won't play forever. Both of these products exist so you're watching while they do. We think the difference is whether the footage brings you close enough to feel it again later.

Common questions

Is BallHawk available now?

Not yet. BallHawk is preparing for its Kickstarter launch. Join the launch alert list at apollostreams.com to be notified when the campaign goes live, with final pricing and demo footage.

Does Trace require a subscription?

Trace's main recorded PlayerFocus experience uses paid Basic or Pro subscriptions: Basic at $180/year or $25/month, Pro at $300/year or $40/month, with a $99 one-time equipment lease fee on monthly plans. Available livestreams can be watched without PlayerFocus, but recorded games, personalized highlights, PlayerCam, and related features are tied to paid subscriptions. Trace also offers team pricing based on multiple Pro subscribers.

Does every family on a Trace team have to subscribe?

No. Trace does not require every family on the team to purchase PlayerFocus. However, Trace requires at least seven families or staff members on the roster for recorded video access to remain active, offers discounted team pricing beginning at seven Pro subscriptions, and makes full-game downloads available to club subscriptions or teams with at least seven paid subscriptions.

Does BallHawk require a subscription?

No. Basic recording and AI tracking work through compatible apps with no subscription. The optional Apollo Streams Capture plans add the sports production platform, and BallHawk includes a 30-day Capture trial.

How fast are highlights ready?

Trace processes games after upload; its support materials say processing can take up to 12 hours after the upload finishes, with games typically back by the next day. With BallHawk and Capture, highlights are marked live and ready when the game ends.

Can BallHawk film sports other than soccer?

Yes. BallHawk's AI tracking follows the action across field and court sports, and Capture includes baseball-specific controls and GameChanger integration for baseball and softball families.

Keep reading

• BallHawk vs Veo: Two Different Cameras for Two Different Experiences
• BallHawk vs XbotGo: Which AI Sports Camera Fits Your Game?
• How to Live Stream Your Kid's Games So Grandparents Can Watch From Anywhere

Want to know how we actually build BallHawk?

BallHawk wasn't designed in a conference room. We build it and test it at real fields, in real heat, at real games. If you want to see what that looks like, read: Why You Can't Build a Great Sports Camera From an Office.

Product details, prices, and turnaround times were checked against official Trace and Apollo Streams materials available on August 10, 2026. Features and prices can change.