Padel serve rules, in full

By Ruzgar Yesil. Updated 19 September 2026.

Every padel point starts with an underarm serve. You bounce the ball, you strike it at or below waist height, and it has to land in the box diagonally opposite. The rules on this page follow the International Padel Federation rulebook in force from 1 January 2026, which is the same rulebook your club tournament runs on. For the wider game, start with the padel rules.

The serve in five steps

1. Stand behind the service line, on the half of the court that matches the box you are serving to.
2. Bounce the ball on the ground behind that line. You cannot serve out of the hand.
3. Strike the ball at or below waist level, with at least one foot touching the ground.
4. Send it over the net into the box diagonally opposite. The lines of that box count as in.
5. After the bounce, the glass is fine and the metal fence is not. A serve that bounces correctly and then touches the fence is a fault.

If the first serve fails you take a second from the same half of the court. Two failed serves is a double fault and the receiving pair wins the point.

Where you stand

The service line runs across each half of the court 6.95 metres from the net. The court is 20 metres long, so that leaves a strip 3.05 metres deep between the service line and the back wall. You serve from inside that strip.

Sideways, you stand between the side wall and the imaginary extension of the centre service line, on the half that matches the box you are serving to.

The rulebook asks for at least one foot behind the service line at the start, and asks you to stay there until the ball has been struck. Neither foot may touch the service line or the imaginary centre line. In practice both feet stay inside your quarter of the strip.

At the moment you hit the ball, at least one foot must be in contact with the ground. There is no jump serve in padel.

Nothing pins you close to the line. Most players start about a metre behind it, because the walk to the net is shorter from there.

The bounce and the contact

You bounce the ball yourself, on the ground, behind the service line and on the correct half. The ball may not cross the service line or the imaginary centre line before you strike it. A bounce that skids forward over the line is a fault even if the strike itself was clean.

The ball must be at or below waist level when the strings meet it. This is the rule that decides most disputed serves at club level, because a serve struck at chest height is faster, flatter and much harder to return. The margin is not negotiable: above the waist is a fault, by a centimetre or by ten.

Because of the waist rule, the whole action is underarm. There is no legal overhead serve in padel.

The serve counts from the moment you make contact with the ball or make a genuine attempt to hit it. So a swing that misses the bounce is a fault. A bounce that you decide not to hit, with no swing at all, is not a serve, and you simply bounce again.

Which box you serve into

The serve travels diagonally. The first point of every game is served from the right half of the court into the box on the receiver's left, which is the box diagonally opposite the server. After that point the server crosses to the left half and serves into the box on the receiver's right. The sides alternate for the rest of the game.

The ball has to pass over the net. It may touch the net cord on the way: if it then lands in the correct box, the serve is replayed rather than lost. That is a net serve.

If you serve from the wrong half by mistake, the error is corrected as soon as somebody notices. Every point played before that stands. A first serve fault already taken on the current point still counts, so you serve a second from the correct side.

Scoring runs the same way as in tennis, 15, 30, 40 and game. The padel scoring guide covers the full count, and the deciding point is on the tie-break and golden point page.

The second serve and the double fault

A fault on the first serve gives you a second serve from the same half of the court. A fault on the second serve ends the point: the receiving pair wins it. That is a double fault.

Replays work in two different ways, and the difference matters:

• A net serve or a let on the first serve. The first serve is replayed and you still have two serves.
• A net serve or a let on the second serve. Only the second serve is replayed. You do not get the first one back.
• A let for something outside the game on the first serve. The whole point is replayed, again with two serves.

One more rule protects the receiver. The server must not serve until the receiver is ready, and no fault can be called if they were not. But a receiver who attempted to return the ball cannot then claim they were not ready, and they must settle into the server's rhythm within reason.

Fault or let: the full list

Read this table as the referee would. A fault costs you that serve. A let or a net serve costs you nothing.

The serve that hits the mesh

This is the most misread rule in club padel, because the fence behaves differently on the serve than in the rally.

On the serve: the ball bounces in the correct box, then touches the metal fence before it bounces a second time. That is a fault. It does not matter how close the bounce was, or that the receiver could have played it.

In a rally: the ball bounces in the opponents' court and then hits the fence. That is a normal, legal shot. The ball stays in play and the opponents have to return it before the second bounce.

The rulebook treats the mesh and its whole frame as fence. The metal door frame counts. The bar at the bottom of the opening counts. If your serve bounces in the box and then clips any of that metal, you have lost the serve.

The glass is different. A serve that bounces in the box and then runs along the side glass or into the back glass is a good serve and one of the hardest to return, because the ball comes off the wall away from the receiver.

The serve that leaves the court

A padel court has openings in the side. A serve that kicks off the glass can go out through one of them, and the ruling depends on the court you are standing on.

The rulebook allows play outside the court only where the facility is built for it. That means two access points on each side of the court and a clear area beside it of at least 3 metres wide, 4 metres long and 3 metres high, with nothing in the way.

• Court with no safety area. The serve bounces in the correct box and then goes out through the gate. That is a fault, and the server takes a second serve.
• Court where out of court play is allowed. The same serve is good. The receiver may follow the ball out of the door and return it, and the point continues.

Most club courts are built in a row with a walkway barely wide enough for a bag, so the fault is the ruling you will use most weeks.

Who serves, and in what order

A coin toss decides the start. The pair who win it choose one of three things: to serve or receive, which end to start at, or to make the opponents choose first. The other pair takes the remaining choice.

After that the order is fixed by rule.

• Between the pairs. The serve alternates every game, all match.
• Inside a pair. Before each set, the two of you choose which one serves first. Once the set has started, that order cannot change until the next set begins.
• Receiving. In the first game of each set the receiving pair decide who takes the first serve. That player then receives the first serve of every game for the rest of the set, and the two receivers alternate inside each game.
• Swapping. You can change both orders at the start of a new set, and only then. Not during a set, and not during a tie-break.

If somebody serves out of turn, the correct server takes over as soon as the error is found. All points already won stand, and a single fault already served is wiped. If the game has finished before anybody notices, the order stays as it was played until the end of the set.

Ends change after the first game, the third game and every odd game after that. The how to play padel guide covers the court, the walls and the basic pattern of a point.

The calls that cause arguments

These five come up every week at club level. Agree them in the warm up.

• Waist height creep. As a set gets tight, contact points rise. Call it early and call it both ways, or do not call it at all.
• The fence serve. It is a fault, not a let. The receiver gets nothing back for it and the server does not lose the point.
• The net serve into the fence. Touching the net does not rescue it. Correct box, then fence, is still a fault.
• The bounce over the line. A ball that bounces forward past the service line before you hit it is a fault. It is common on a fast, slippery court.
• The rushed serve. The receiver has to be ready. You get 20 seconds between points, which is enough time to look up.

None of this needs an umpire. It needs both pairs to use the same list.