Last reviewed: August 3, 2026 · By the RaceYear team
Short answer: An RC setup app stores your own setup history and race log; a public setup database hands you somebody else’s baseline. You want both. So Dialed is the most feature-complete RC setup app we could verify in August 2026, and free manufacturer PDFs plus the PetitRC index cover baselines for nothing.
Key takeaways
RC model and rule note: Settings, voltages, temperatures, fluids, gearing, tire treatments and service intervals are specific to the model, firmware, battery, motor, tire, class and venue. Use the manufacturer’s own instructions and the current event rules; menu percentages and setup directions are not necessarily comparable between brands.
You have a notes app with eleven entries in it. Three say “black spring front.” One says “diff felt weird.” None of them say which track, which layout, or what the traction was doing at 8pm. So you go looking for a real tool, you search, and the top of the page hands you an article older than most of the cars in your pit box. Here’s the current state of it, checked in August 2026, with the parts we couldn’t verify labelled as such.
An RC setup app is a phone app that stores your car’s adjustable numbers and your race notes so you can repeat a good night and reverse a bad one. It is a logbook with math in it, not a shortcut to speed.
A setup sheet is the list of every adjustable number on the car at one moment in time — ride height, camber, spring, shock oil weight, differential fluid, gearing, droop. An app’s whole job is to keep hundreds of those snapshots straight and tell you what changed between two of them.
That is a different job from finding a baseline. Baselines come from the people who built the car or from other racers who already sorted your chassis on a similar surface. Confusing those two jobs is why racers bounce between tools and end up back in the notes app.
Because nobody has replaced it. The article most likely to land in front of you, RC Newb’s app roundup, carries a published date of September 13, 2012 and a last-modified date of August 30, 2014 in its own page metadata (RC Newb). That is nearly twelve years of RC racing after the last edit.
It is also internally messy in a way that tells you how much attention it has had. Its URL says seven apps; its headline says “Nine apps that help you tune your R/C setup and more.” The list itself runs to ten entries covering nine distinct apps, because RC Setup Workbench is counted twice — once for iOS and once for Android.
The apps it names are ProLaps, Spinout 360 HD, RC Setups 2, Traxxas Link, RC Setup Sheets, RC Manuals, RC Maps, RC Setup Workbench and HPI Lap Timer, with prices from free to $10.50. We could not confirm that any of those are still available. Apple’s and Google’s store search endpoints both refuse automated retrieval, so we have no evidence either way, and we are not going to list a 2014 price as if it were a 2026 price. Treat that page as a historical document.
One more thing worth knowing before you trust a search result here. Gosetups.gg ranks in this neighbourhood and is a perfectly real product — it just sells sim racing setups for iRacing, Le Mans Ultimate, Assetto Corsa Competizione and AMS2, at £9.99 a month, or £7.99 a month billed annually (GO Setups). Nothing to do with a radio control car. The search results for this topic mix two hobbies that share a vocabulary.
There are three, they cost different amounts, and most racers need two of them. Sorting this out first saves you from buying a subscription to solve a problem a free PDF already solved.
| Kind of tool | What it gives you | What it costs | Verified example (August 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer setup sheet | A factory baseline for your exact chassis, in the maker’s own format | Free | Team Associated’s Manuals & Setup Sheets library |
| Public setup database | Other racers’ filled sheets across many brands and classes | Free | PetitRC’s setup sheet index, more than 100 brands |
| Setup app | Your own setup history, race log and calculators, on your phone | Free tier, paid upgrade | So Dialed, iOS and Android |
The mistake is treating an app as a source of setups. An app is a source of your setups. The baseline still has to come from somewhere, and for most classes that somewhere is free.
So Dialed. Say it plainly: as of August 2026 it is the most feature-complete RC setup app we could verify from primary sources, and if you want one app to replace the notes app, that is the one to try first.
Its own app page lists setup tracking across suspension, shocks, drivetrain, tires, diffs and electronics; an “AI Mechanic” that reads your setup and returns advice; a race log that captures track conditions, grip level and weather; side-by-side comparison of any two setups; private or community sharing; a built-in gear ratio calculator with final drive ratio and rollout; and export of a saved setup directly into the manufacturer’s own PDF on supported models (So Dialed). Its homepage counted 4,353+ setups shared by drivers when we checked on August 3, 2026 (So Dialed).
Full disclosure before the comparison: RacerRX is our app. Here is the honest version anyway, because you will find this out in a week and it is better you hear it now.
| Capability | So Dialed (page checked August 3, 2026) | RacerRX |
|---|---|---|
| Save and recall your own setups | Yes, across suspension, shocks, drivetrain, tires, diffs, electronics | Yes, with structured chassis fields and a rating on every setup |
| AI setup advice | Yes, the “AI Mechanic” | Yes, an AI crew chief for RC |
| Gearing math | Yes, gear ratio calculator with FDR and rollout | Yes, rollout calculator |
| Public library of other racers’ setups | Yes, 4,353+ shared setups | No |
| Export into the manufacturer’s PDF | Yes, on supported models | No |
| Fill a setup from a photo of a paper sheet | Not listed on its app page | Yes, snap-and-fill |
Two of those rows are things So Dialed does that we do not. The community setup library is the bigger one. Being able to open somebody else’s sorted sheet for your exact chassis, inside the same app where your own history lives, is genuinely useful and we have nothing like it. The manufacturer-PDF export is the other: handing your tuner a sheet in the factory format, rather than a screenshot of an app, matters more than it sounds like it does.
From the manufacturer first, then from a public database. Neither costs anything and both are older and deeper than any app’s library.
A caution learned the annoying way: check the manufacturer’s current official domain, not the bookmark in a ten-year-old forum thread. When we tried schumacherracing.com in August 2026 it redirected to a domain-for-sale parking page. That does not mean a brand is gone. It means the URL is, and half the setup-sheet links floating around RC forums are in the same condition.
Do this once, properly, and every night afterward takes about ninety seconds. The order matters — build the baseline before you build the history.
If step two is where you stall out, our RC car setup guide for beginners walks the measurements in order, and the gear ratio and rollout guide covers the one number that changes every time the track does.
Yes, to a point. So Dialed’s homepage said “Free for iOS & Android” when checked on August 3, 2026, while its own app page describes a free tier for tracking a few cars with an upgrade for unlimited access. Those are not quite the same promise, so read the current terms in the store listing before you commit a season of data to it.
Manufacturer sheets and apps do different jobs. A factory sheet is a baseline somebody validated on one track on one day, published free by the people who built the car. An app is your own history: what you ran, what the track was doing, and whether it worked. Start from the free PDF, then log every change you make away from it.
Partly. So Dialed’s app page advertises an AI Mechanic that reads your setup and returns advice, and RacerRX has an AI crew chief for RC. Neither one has driven your car on your track. Treat any AI suggestion as a shortlist of things to try, and change one thing at a time so you can still tell what did what.
Assume nothing until you test it. Cloud sync is the biggest change in this category since 2014, and sync is exactly what dies in a metal building with no bars. Put your phone in airplane mode in the driveway, then try to open last week’s setup and save a new one. Do that before a big race, not during one.
Honestly, unknown. That 2012 page names ProLaps, Spinout 360 HD, RC Setups 2, Traxxas Link, RC Setup Sheets, RC Manuals, RC Maps, RC Setup Workbench and HPI Lap Timer. Apple’s and Google’s store search endpoints both block automated retrieval, so nothing in this post confirms any of them still ship. Search the stores yourself and read the last-updated date.
You can do every bit of this with a free factory PDF, a printed sheet and a pen, and plenty of national-level racers still do. Paper doesn’t need signal and it never loses a season. What paper won’t do is find the sheet from the night the car was perfect, or do the gearing math while you’re standing at the drivers’ stand. That’s the gap RacerRX fills:
Start logging your setups tonight in RacerRX — it’s free to start, and the first sorted-out baseline you can actually return to is the point. Then go deeper on the two settings that move an RC car most: differential tuning and shock oil, springs and ride height. Whatever app you pick, it will not tell you your RC gear mesh is wrong.
Hit a term in here you’d have had to look up? Every one of them is defined in the RaceYear racing glossary.
Setup notes, maintenance logs, race-day plans, and tax tracking — all in your pocket.
Get the apps