Golf Simulator Cost and Room Planner for UK Homes

A golf simulator cost in the UK runs from about £530 for a radar, a net and a mat to about £5,900 for a camera unit in a full enclosure, before any five-figure Trackman build. Measure first: a driver usually needs a 2.74m ceiling and standard UK rooms are nearer 2.4m.

How to use the room and cost planner

1. Tape the room. Measure width, depth and ceiling in metres at the lowest point: beams, lights and the garage door when it's open.
2. Enter your height. If a taller person will play, use their height. The ceiling figure moves with it.
3. Pick a launch monitor type. A launch monitor is the radar or camera that reads your club and ball. Its position changes the depth you need more than anything else.
4. Build the budget. Choose each part in the drop-downs. You get a low and high total, then a five-year figure if you pick yearly software.
5. Press Reset to start again. Nothing you type is sent to us.

How much does a golf simulator cost in the UK?

The honest answer depends on whether you want numbers or a picture. Numbers on a tablet with a net cost hundreds. A projected course on an impact screen costs thousands.

These five golf simulator setups run from a budget practice setup to a premium home golf simulator, at prices opened on 4 November 2026 (some on Black November offers). GolfBays' guides date their package prices 30 September 2026, so check before you buy.

Tekden says the launch monitor takes 40% to 60% of a budget. On the net setup it's nearer 80%. In the short-room build the Square Golf unit is about £689 of £2,818, so the enclosure and projector are where your budget goes.

What each part costs

Scottsdale Golf sells the Garmin R10 and its page also lists a SimSpace enclosure and a Tee Turf hitting mat inside these ranges. Our launch monitor guide sets out which unit suits which golfer.

Golf Monthly notes that greater accuracy comes at a higher price. Our take: premium units earn their money only if you'll use the extra data for practice. Full packages are in our guide to home golf simulators. Check any PC against your software first: The Indoor Golf Shop lists GSPro as wanting 16GB of memory and an RTX 3060 Ti.

Simulator package or parts?

Run the planner with a Square Golf, a full enclosure, a Full HD projector, a basic mat and your own mount. It gives £2,695 to £3,768. The ready-made short-room build above lands at £2,818, near the low end. In this example the golf simulator package wins, so start there unless you already own a piece of the kit. A DIY build makes sense when your room needs a custom width or you want a better screen than the package includes. GolfBays says its SimBox frame clicks together without tools in under an hour.

How much room do you need for a golf simulator?

Published minimums disagree, which is why two honest sellers can give you two different answers. Here they are side by side, converted to metres where a source uses feet.

Depth depends on the launch monitor

A radar sits behind you and watches the ball fly, so it needs length. FlightScope asks for 4.9m in total: 8ft behind the ball and 8ft to the screen. PlayBetter says 6.4m for the Garmin R10 and the Mevo Gen2, 4.4m for the Rapsodo MLM2PRO and about 3m for camera units such as Square Golf and the Garmin R50, which sit beside the ball. The planner treats the lower figure for each type as tight. It uses GolfBays' stricter 4.5m as comfortable for a camera unit.

The Golf Shop Online's SimSpace listing says to leave at least 30cm behind the impact screen and 8cm on each side. Take those off your tape measure before you enter the numbers, because a 3m enclosure in a 3m room won't go in as sold.

Golf simulator ceiling height

How high a ceiling for a golf simulator depends on you. Rapsodo says 9ft suits a golfer of about 5ft 8in or below, with taller players needing 10ft or even 11ft. PlayBetter calls 10ft the magic number and says 8.5ft only works for a shorter player or with irons and wedges. FlightScope's absolute minimum is 9ft.

How the planner works, with a worked example

Width and depth are simple comparisons with the figures above. The ceiling needs one sum, since we couldn't find a formula from any maker. We start from Rapsodo's pairing of 9ft (2.74m) with a 5ft 8in (1.727m) golfer:

2.74 ÷ 1.727 = 1.588, so ceiling needed = your height × 1.588 (never less than 2.74m).

Comfortable means 3m, or 15cm above your figure if that's higher. The 15cm is the low end of PlayBetter's advice to keep 6 to 12 inches clear above your swing.

Rapsodo and PlayBetter both say taller golfers may want 10ft (3.05m) or more.

Now a real case. You're 1.78m with a 5m by 5m double garage and a 2.6m ceiling. Width and depth pass for any launch monitor, with a radar only just clearing FlightScope's 4.9m. The ceiling shows "Irons and wedges only", since a driver wants 2.83m. That result should change your plan: a net with short irons in that garage, or a swing test with your driver before you spend on a bay.

What the result means

• Comfortable: you've got margin. Spend the money on the kit.
• Tight but workable: it fits on paper. Test a slow swing with your longest club and check your friends' heights too.
• Irons and wedges only: you can still practise, but your driver stays in the bag.
• Too small: look at another room, or at a net outdoors in summer.

Limits of the planner

It doesn't know your swing. An upright swing needs more height than a flat one of the same golfer's size, as The Indoor Golf Shop and GolfBays both point out. It can't see beams, lights or pipes. Prices are a snapshot and retailers change them, so take the totals as a budget and not a quote.

Golf simulator in a garage, spare room or garden room

Garage

Homebuilding's guide puts most UK single garages at about 2.4m by 4.9m, with the range running up to about 3.5m by 6m. A double runs from 5m by 5m to 6m by 6m. So a standard single is too narrow for a full swing on almost every published figure, while most doubles pass on width and depth.

An up-and-over door swings into the space you'd swing in, so measure with it open. Homebuilding suggests a compact roller door for limited headroom and Tekden prefers concrete or solid flooring, which suits most garages.

Spare room

GolfBays calls this the easiest start because it's already warm and wired. Its catch is that standard UK rooms sit around 2.4m. On that ceiling you're down to putting and part swings, so our guide to putting mats is the better spend in most bedrooms.

Garden room or cabin

This is the rule that catches people out. The Planning Portal's outbuilding rules for England cap a whole building within 2m of your boundary at 2.5m high. Floor and roof take their share, so the inside is lower still. No driver minimum on this page can be met.

Further than 2m away, the limits are 2.5m at the eaves and 4m at the ridge with a dual pitched roof, or 3m with any other roof. So a pitched roof with the swing under the ridge can give you the height under permitted development, as long as it meets the other conditions. These limits are for England, so check locally elsewhere. GolfBays' cabins start at £13,299 before the simulator goes in.

What a home golf simulator costs to run each year

Here's the sum, using the Ofgem price cap of 26.32p per kWh for October to December 2026. BenQ lists the TH671ST at 320W and we've assumed 300W for a PC, which makes 620W. Then we've assumed 6 hours a week all year.

The heater is the line most guides leave out. You wouldn't run one for all of those hours, but it draws more than three times the power of the projector and PC together, so every hour it's on costs more than three times as much. The cap changes every quarter and the government has taken VAT off electricity only until 31 March 2027, so treat these as a guide. Software is usually the largest running cost, which is why a dearer unit with courses to keep can be cheaper to own.

Is a golf simulator worth it?

Tekden says a £10,000 mid-range system pays for itself in 2 to 3 years against green fees of £40 to £60, range sessions and travel. Do the sum: at £50 a round, £10,000 is 200 rounds. That only pays back if each simulator round replaces a round you'd really have paid for. Most golfers will play on as well, so judge a home golf simulator as year-round practice and fun.

Our club distance calculator is a free way to see whether your yardages need the data at all. A practice net may do the job for less. More free calculators are on our golf tools page.