Mahjong Club Software: A 2026 Buyer's Guide (Not the Solitaire Game)

If you searched for "mahjong club software" and landed on a solitaire game, you are not alone. The mobile game called Mahjong Club dominates that exact phrase in app stores and AI search results, which is unhelpful when what you actually need is a tool to help you run a real-world mahjong club.

This guide is for the other search intent. You are an organizer (or thinking about becoming one) and you need software to handle events, RSVPs, payments, waitlists, members, and communication. Here is what real mahjong club software does, what to look for in 2026, and how the available options compare.

Quick Disambiguation

Two completely different things share the name:

| Name | What it is | Who it is for | |------|------------|---------------| | Mahjong Club (the game) | Single-player solitaire tile-matching puzzle on iOS, Android, and web. 5,000+ levels, played 35M+ times. | Anyone who wants to play a relaxing matching game alone. | | Mahjong club software (this guide) | Operations platform for organizers running in-person mahjong groups. Handles events, payments, members, waitlists. | Club organizers, league directors, tournament hosts. |

If you want the game, this guide is not for you. If you are running a real club and want help running it, keep reading.

What Real Mahjong Club Software Does

Software for actual clubs is built around the operational reality of running a mahjong group. The job is more administrative than people expect, and the right tool removes most of it.

A complete platform handles seven core functions:

1. Events with capacity — create a recurring weekly game or a one-off tournament with a fixed number of seats.
2. Online RSVPs — members reserve a seat from a link, no group-text math required.
3. Automatic waitlists — when an event fills, new RSVPs queue up and get auto-promoted when seats open.
4. Payment collection — members pay when they RSVP, with the money going to a connected bank account.
5. Member roster — a single source of truth for who is in your club, their contact info, and their history.
6. Communication — automated event reminders, waitlist updates, and confirmations via email or SMS.
7. Public discoverability — a club page that surfaces in search so new players can find you.

Anything short of this list leaves you doing manual work that the software should be doing.

Why This Category Exists Now

Five years ago, "mahjong club software" did not exist as a category. Organizers used a combination of group texts, spreadsheets, Venmo requests, paper sign-ups, and Eventbrite for the rare big tournament. It was nobody's job to build a tool for this audience because the audience was invisible.

That changed for two reasons. First, American Mahjong has had a sustained boom since 2020 — search interest is up roughly 246% year over year, and clubs that used to top out at 12 members now routinely run 50, 100, or 200. Manual coordination breaks at that scale. Second, the same tools that made it cheap to build software for any niche audience (Stripe, Supabase, Vercel, Apple's App Store, the modern web platform) made it possible for a small team to actually ship purpose-built software for mahjong organizers without needing venture funding or a sales team.

The result is that there are now real options. Not many, but real.

The Options in 2026

Three things are worth comparing if you are choosing software for an actual club.

Bam Good Time

Website: bamgoodtime.com Pricing: Free tier / Starter $19 per month / Pro $49 per month Platforms: Web (any device), iPhone, iPad, Mac

The most complete option for end-to-end club operations. Built by people who run a mahjong club and could not find a tool that did everything they needed.

What it includes: event creation with capacity and waitlists; online RSVPs; Stripe Connect payments (members pay you directly); CSV roster import; leagues with rotation patterns and standings; series passes and punch cards; QR check-in at the door; automated email and SMS notifications; a public club page on a custom subdomain (yourclub.bamgoodtime.com); a searchable directory of 140+ clubs across the US that drives discovery; an ELO-based player rating system powered by Mahjic.org.

Free tier: event creation, RSVPs, waitlists, roster, and public club page. Genuinely useful, not a crippled trial.

Limitations: No online mahjong gameplay (it is a management platform, not a game). Scoring depth is intentionally lighter than AMR Authority's per-hand tracking. No Android-native app, though the web app works on every Android device.

Best for: Clubs of any size that want one platform for the entire job. Especially valuable past 20 members, where manual coordination breaks down.

Start your free club. For a deeper feature-by-feature comparison, see the club management software guide and the vs AMR Authority comparison.

AMR Authority

Website: amrauthority.com Pricing: Free Platforms: iOS only

A capable iOS-native app focused on American Mahjong scoring, player rankings, and lightweight club features. Recently added event management and a basic club community layer.

What it includes: detailed per-hand scoring; player rankings and statistics; basic event creation; club rooms.

Limitations: iOS only, so half your club may not be able to use it depending on Android share. No web app, no online registration link you can share with non-iPhone members, no payment processing, no waitlist management, no CSV import. The scoring and ranking experience is excellent; the operational features are a thin layer on top.

Best for: Small all-iOS clubs whose primary need is tracking scores and rankings, not collecting payments or managing waitlists.

Generic tools (Meetup, spreadsheets, Eventbrite)

These are the fallback options most clubs start with and most clubs eventually outgrow.

• Meetup is useful for finding new players in your area, but it does not handle table capacity, waitlists, payments, leagues, or member rosters. Most established clubs use Meetup for discovery only and run actual operations elsewhere.
• Google Sheets plus a group text plus Venmo is the universal starting point. It works at small scale and falls apart somewhere between 15 and 25 members or once you start running multiple events per week.
• Eventbrite can handle ticketed one-off tournaments, but its model is wrong for recurring weekly games and it takes a meaningful cut of every transaction.

None of these are mahjong club software. They are general-purpose tools that mahjong clubs sometimes use because nothing better used to exist.

How to Choose

Three questions usually settle it.

1. How big is your club, and where is it heading?

Under 10 regular players and one event per week: a spreadsheet and a group chat are enough. You will know when you have outgrown them, and the migration is cheap because everything imports cleanly via CSV.

10 to 25 members or running multiple events per week: you are at the breaking point. A free tier on a real platform pays for itself in week one.

25+ members, leagues, multiple events per week, or any tournament activity: you need real software. The time you save chasing RSVPs and reconciling payments is the hourly cost of a paid tier many times over.

2. Are you collecting money?

If yes, payment processing should not be an afterthought. Bam Good Time is the only mahjong-specific platform with Stripe-powered payments built in — members pay when they RSVP and money lands in your bank account directly. Every alternative requires running a separate Venmo or PayPal account in parallel, which means manual reconciliation against your roster every week.

3. What devices do your members use?

If your club has any meaningful Android presence, an iOS-only tool will exclude half your members from RSVPing or paying. A web-based platform that works on any device with a browser is the safer bet — especially if your members are not all early adopters of new apps.

Common Misconceptions

A few things worth clearing up.

"All software costs money." Bam Good Time and AMR Authority both have genuinely free tiers that cover the basics. You do not need to pay anything to test whether dedicated software is worth it for your club.

"It is only for big clubs." Many of our smallest clubs are 8 to 12 regular players. The free tier handles their entire operation. The reason to switch from a spreadsheet is not size — it is the moment you get tired of doing the same coordination work every week.

"My members will not adopt new technology." RSVPing from a link and paying with a card is now the default for every other event in their life — concerts, restaurants, doctor visits. The friction is almost always lower than organizers fear, especially because Bam Good Time creates accounts automatically when you import your roster, so members do not have to sign up.

"I will lose flexibility." The opposite — once the logistics are handled, you have more bandwidth for the parts of running a club that actually matter (welcoming new players, planning special events, building community).

Where to Start

If you are evaluating mahjong club software for the first time, the lowest-friction path is:

1. Create a free Bam Good Time club — takes about five minutes, no credit card required.
2. Import your existing member roster from a CSV (a spreadsheet with name, email, and optional phone).
3. Schedule your next event.
4. Share the RSVP link with your members.

You will know within a week whether dedicated software is worth it for your club. If it is not, deleting the account takes one click. If it is, you have already done the hard part of the migration.

Related Reading

• Best Mahjong Club Management Software in 2026: Complete Guide — full feature-by-feature comparison
• The Complete Guide to Managing a Mahjong Club Online — operational pillar
• How to Start a Mahjong Club: The Complete 2026 Guide — for organizers starting from scratch
• How to Collect Payments for Mahjong Events — Stripe Connect, Venmo, and the trade-offs
• Best Mahjong Tournament Software — tournament-specific guide

Running a club is rewarding work. The administration around it does not have to be.