Every cheer gym tracks skills. Most of them do it on a laminated sheet on the office wall, a group chat between coaches, and one person's memory of who got their back handspring in June. That works until placement season, when somebody has to defend a level assignment to a parent and the evidence is a coach saying they are pretty sure.
So the question "which software tracks cheer skills" is a fair one. The honest answer is that three products publish a feature for it, they are cheaper than most gyms assume, and all three were designed around a model that does not quite match how cheer works. Here is what each one actually says it does, read from the vendors' own pages on September 1, 2026.
What each vendor publishes
Every claim in this table came from the vendor's own product or pricing page, not from a directory listing. Where a vendor does not publish something, the table says so rather than guessing, which matters in this market because several of the sites that rank for cheer software terms invent both prices and vendors.
Swipe sideways to see the full table
| Vendor | How progress is modeled | Who marks it, who sees it | Published price and plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| iClassPro | Customizable skill trees you build to match your program | Staff mark them in the portal on a phone or tablet, a whole class on one screen. Parents see evaluations and progress reports in the Parent Portal | Listed on all three plans: Signature $139, Elite $199, Premium $299 per month per location |
| Jackrabbit Class | Student skill tracking against class skills | Staff mark them, results surfaced to families through the Parent Portal | From $49 per month tiered on total students, and every plan includes every feature |
| Gymdesk | Rank progression: qualify by classes, hours, attendance, skills or age, then a promotion flag | Staff, with automatic ready to promote flags. Members track progress in the mobile app | From $75 per month for up to 50 active members, no separate skill charge published |
| Upper Hand | No skill progression feature named on the features page; an athlete evaluation template is offered as a resource | Not published | Start $79, Grow $199 per month, both priced as monthly paid annually |
| TeamSnap | No skill tracking. Built for the season: schedules, availability, messaging | Not applicable | Free tier capped at 15 players, Premium $10.00 and Ultra $12.50 per team per month on annual billing |
Two things in that table are worth more than they look. The first is that iClassPro puts skill tracking on its entry plan rather than holding it back for an upgrade, which is not something you can assume in this market. The second is Jackrabbit's own answer on its features FAQ, that regardless of subscription level you always have access to the full set of features. A vendor that will write that down has removed the most common unpleasant surprise in a class software purchase, which is discovering on day nine of the trial that the feature you bought for sits one tier up.
All three model a ladder, and cheer is not a ladder
Here is the structural problem, and it is not a criticism of any vendor. These products grew up serving gymnastics, swim and martial arts, and all three of those sports genuinely are ladders. A swimmer moves from Level 2 to Level 3. A karate student earns the next belt. Gymdesk says so openly: you set the rank progression and how members qualify, and the system flags who is ready to promote. That is a clean, correct model for a sport with one linear track.
Cheer is not one track. An athlete can have a Level 4 standing tuck, Level 3 running tumbling, a prep level single leg stunt and no pyramid clearance above Level 2, all at the same time, and every one of those is a separate rulebook category with its own cap. USASF writes the rules as a grid precisely because the skills do not move together. The tumbling rules by level and the stunt rules by level are different documents in the same book for a reason.
A skill tree can hold that if you build it as several parallel trees, and iClassPro's is customizable enough to try. A rank ladder cannot, because a rank is a single value. If you are evaluating Gymdesk for a cheer program specifically, that is the thing to test in the trial: can an athlete sit at two different levels in two different categories without you inventing a fake rank to hold it.
What none of them do: the group is the unit
Even a perfect per athlete skill record leaves the harder half unanswered, because in cheer the thing that has to be legal is usually not an athlete. It is a group.
Whether a stunt is legal depends on the level the team competes at. Whether a pyramid is legal depends on that, plus which structures are allowed to connect to which, plus the twist cap for the transition, plus whether the bracers are at prep level or below. USASF caps non released pyramid transitions at a quarter twist at Level 1 and two and a quarter at Level 6, and the structure column bans specific connections at specific levels regardless of how skilled the athletes are. The full grid is on our cheerleading pyramids page.
None of the products above models a stunt group as an object. They model a student, a class and an invoice, because that is what a class business is. So the question a coach actually asks before choreographing, which is whether these five athletes can legally build this structure at our level, is not a question any of them can answer. That is not a bug in their software, it is the boundary of what they were built for, and it is worth knowing before the demo rather than after the purchase order.
Five questions for the demo
Vendor demos are optimized to show the parts that work. These five questions get you to the parts that matter for a cheer program, and they take about four minutes.
- Can one athlete hold different levels in different categories at once? Ask them to show a record with a Level 4 tumbling skill and a Level 2 stunt clearance side by side. If the answer involves a workaround, you have a ladder, not a grid.
- Can a coach sign a skill off from the floor? Anything that requires going back to the office computer will not get done, and an unmaintained skill record is worse than no record because people trust it.
- Does a signed off skill show up anywhere a roster gets built? If skills live in one screen and teams live in another with no connection, placement season still runs on a spreadsheet.
- Can you export one athlete's full skill history? Cheer athletes transfer. A gym that cannot hand over a record, or take one in, is doing the evaluation from scratch every time.
- Is this on the plan you are quoting me? Get it in writing. Jackrabbit publishes that every plan has every feature and iClassPro lists skill tracking on all three tiers, so if a vendor will not say the same, that is information.
What this should cost you
Skill tracking is not sold separately by any of these vendors, so what you are really choosing is a class management subscription, and the pricing models are different enough that the cheapest option flips depending on your shape. iClassPro prices per location, Gymdesk per active member, Jackrabbit per total student. A single gym with 300 active athletes and a second gym with 90 will not get the same answer, and the crossover is genuinely worth doing on paper. The arithmetic at three sizes is in our billing software cost breakdown, which also covers the two vendors that add a percentage fee on top of card processing.
One thing worth separating out: if the real reason you are shopping is paperwork rather than skills, you are about to overpay. A season's waivers, medical consent and fee agreements are a document signing problem, and a standalone online document signing tool covers that for a fraction of a class management subscription. Buy the platform for the thing you will use every week, not for the thing you do once each August.
Cheerleading skill tracking questions
What is the best skill tracking software for a cheer gym?
For a gym that wants skill evaluations inside the same system as registration and billing, iClassPro is the strongest published option: customizable skill trees, evaluations marked on a phone or tablet, and the feature listed on all three plans from $139 a month per location. Jackrabbit Class also publishes student skill tracking and states that every plan includes every feature, which makes it the cheaper entry at $49 a month.
Does iClassPro have skill tracking?
Yes, sold as Skill Tracking and Student Evaluations and built on customizable skill trees. Coaches evaluate in the staff portal on a phone or tablet and can do a whole class on one screen, parents see results in the Parent Portal, and it appears on Signature at $139 a month per location, Elite at $199 and Premium at $299.
Does Jackrabbit Class track student skills?
Yes. Jackrabbit publishes Student Skill Tracking, described as monitoring skills progress and keeping parents informed through the Parent Portal. Their features FAQ adds the part that matters commercially: regardless of subscription level you always have access to the full set of Jackrabbit Class features, so it is not gated behind a higher tier.
Can Gymdesk track cheer skill levels?
Gymdesk tracks rank progression rather than a skill list. You set each program's rank progression and how members qualify, by classes, hours, attendance, skills or age, and the system flags who is ready to promote. That model came from martial arts and it fits a belt ladder better than it fits cheer, where an athlete holds skills at several levels at once.
Why does a skill tree not answer whether a stunt is legal?
Because a skill tree tracks one athlete against one ladder, and cheer legality is a property of a group. Whether a pyramid is legal depends on the competing level, which structures may connect to which, and the twist cap for that level. No product on this list models a stunt group, so none can tell you the pyramid you just built is legal.
What should you ask a vendor about skill tracking on a demo?
Ask five things: can an athlete hold skills at different levels in different categories at once, can a coach sign off from the floor on a phone, does a signed off skill appear where a roster is built, can you export the skill history for a transferring athlete, and is the feature on the plan being quoted rather than one tier up.
The short version
If you want skill tracking bundled with the system that already runs your registration and billing, iClassPro and Jackrabbit both publish it and neither hides it behind an upgrade. Choose between them on the pricing model rather than on the feature, because per location and per student produce very different bills at the same gym. Go in knowing that what you are buying is a per athlete record, not a legality check, and that the group level question stays with the coach and the rulebook. Programs that use these tools well use them for the same reason they publish a tryout score sheet in advance: not because the software decides anything, but because a written record is what you have when somebody asks how you decided.