Best Courses on E6 Connect 2026: Top 10 Rated Golf Simulator Courses

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What are the best courses on E6 Connect? The 10 best courses on E6 Connect include Pebble Beach, St Andrews Old Course, and Sawgrass (premium tier, $99/year extra) plus Kapalua, Banff Springs, and Bandon Dunes (base tier, included in subscription). The premium tier costs $99/year on top of the $299-$599 E6 subscription and adds 13 licensed courses including the most famous ones. If you want Pebble Beach, you need premium. If you are fine with quality fantasy courses, the base tier is enough.

The thing about E6 Connect is that buying it doesn’t mean you have the courses you want.

Pay $300 for a golf sim software and you might not get Pebble Beach? That’s exactly right. The tier system is E6’s most controversial feature, and it’s the one you need to understand before you spend a dime.

Full disclosure: I reviewed E6 Connect in detail here. This is the course-specific follow-up.

The Tiers: How E6 Keeps Courses From You

Three access levels. The naming is confusing, so I’ll be blunt.

Basic ($300/year). The software plus a rotating course selection. Not the full library. Rotating. Think Netflix — they decide what’s available this month. Next month some leave, some stay, some show up. You get about 40-50 courses at any given time, but you don’t control which ones. Want to play the same course next week? Hope it didn’t rotate out.

Expanded ($600/year). The real E6 experience. Full course library — roughly 100 courses, all available anytime. No rotation. No “sorry, that course isn’t available.” If E6 has it, you play it. Full online play too.

Premium Content (additional cost). Here’s where it gets spicy. The Expanded tier doesn’t include everything. Pebble Beach, Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill, Oakmont, and the Old Course at St Andrews are separate purchases — even at $600/year. Usually $15-30 each or a bundle.

The real question: which tier, and which courses, justify the price?

The $300 Base Tier: What You Actually Get

Honest take: the base tier is for trying E6 out, not for living in it.

The rotating selection has legitimately good courses. Kapalua Plantation — the PGA Tour’s Sentry course with those massive fairways and Pacific views. Innisbrook’s Copperhead (the Snake Pit on 16-18 will eat your lunch). Royal Troon, Prairie Dunes, Mauna Lani. Real courses real people want to play.

But you don’t keep them. E6 refreshes monthly. That course you loved? Gone. Maybe back in three months. Maybe not.

The standard library courses stick around — Banff Springs, Cabo del Sol, Pelican Hill, Pinehurst No. 8, Troon North. But you’re missing the heavy hitters.

Who this is for: The guy who isn’t sure he’ll use a sim regularly. iPad-and-Mevo+ backyard setup. Minimum viable spend while you decide.

Who it’s NOT for: Anyone already committed. Projector, gaming PC, enclosure in the garage? The base tier will frustrate you. You’ll want Bethpage Black — not available this month. You’ll want St Andrews — premium-only. The base tier is a tease.

The $600 Expanded Tier: Where E6 Becomes What You Thought You Were Buying

Night and day difference. Here’s what opens up:

Major championship venues: Bethpage Black. Torrey Pines. PGA National (the Bear Trap on 15-17 is just as annoying in sim form). Harbour Town. Kiawah Island Ocean Course. Firestone. Pinehurst No. 2. Bay Hill. Valderrama.

Bucket-list destinations: Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes. Royal Melbourne. Banff Springs. Cabo del Sol. Castle Pines.

Strategic tests: Cog Hill. Sea Island. The Gallery at Dove Mountain. Courses that punish bad decisions, not just bad swings.

Plus full online play — tournaments, matchmaking, leaderboards. At $300, online is limited. At $600, it’s the full product.

I said in my full review that the $300 vs $600 gap is the hardest thing to justify about this software. I stand by that. But if you’re paying $600, you’re getting a real library. Not 4,000 courses — 100. But those 100 are properly licensed, professionally mapped, and look incredible on a 4K projector.

The Premium Courses: Pebble, St Andrews, and the $25 Question

This part pisses people off, and I won’t pretend it shouldn’t.

You pay $600/year. You do not get Pebble Beach.

Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill, Oakmont, and St Andrews are premium — separate purchases at $15-30 each.

Let me be clear: these are the best courses on the platform. Pebble Beach in E6 is stunning — holes 6-10 look photo-realistic on a 4K projector, the poa annua greens have the right grain, the wind off the bay affects ball flight correctly. Closest you can get without a CA driver’s license.

St Andrews captures the double greens, the humps and hollows, the wind around the R&A clubhouse. It’s not a video game version. It’s a simulation of playing it.

But you’re at $600 a year. Adding Pebble and St Andrews pushes you to $650-660. Oakmont and the rest push you toward $700.

Is it worth it? Play 100 sim rounds a year and that’s $7 per round. Real Pebble green fee is $600. The math works. But it stings.

The Standout Courses — Visually Stunning

I’ve played every E6 course worth playing. These make you stop and look, even on your 50th playthrough.

Banff Springs. The visual highlight of the entire library. Canadian Rockies backdrop, Bow River valley, elevation changes — E6’s lighting engine handles mountain courses better than any sim software. Morning rounds with low sun hitting the peaks is a moment. The course I show people when they ask “does E6 really look that much better?”

Pebble Beach (Premium). Specifically holes 6-10 where the cliffs drop into Carmel Bay. E6’s water rendering is the best in sim golf — it looks wet, not like blue carpet. The light changes as the fog rolls in. Makes a 4K projector feel like a necessity.

Kiawah Island Ocean Course. Windswept dunes, marsh views, the Atlantic on every hole. Kiawah in E6 is a mood. The tall grass textures are noticeably better than what GSPro does with similar rough.

Pelican Hill. California coastal views, cypress trees, Thomas Bendall-designed holes riding the ridges. E6’s scanning fidelity pays off — the undulations are accurate, not approximated.

Kapalua Plantation (Base rotation). Elephant-grass-lined fairways, the massive elevation drop on 18, the Pacific visible from every hole. Kapalua captures the scale better than any other sim version. It’s in the base rotation. Play it.

Pacific Dunes (Expanded). Ocean cliff holes, firm sandy soil, Oregon coast wind. Pacific Dunes plays firm and fast the way it’s supposed to. The short-game practice alone — chipping from dunes onto tiny greens — justifies the upgrade.

Cabo del Sol Ocean Course. Desert-meets-ocean aesthetic translates perfectly to E6’s rendering. Golden sand, blue water, green fairways — the color palette is unreal. You’ll find yourself hitting an extra club to admire the view during ball flight.

Is the Premium Tier Worth It? The Math

$600/year = $50/month. Add internet and you’re at ~$75/month before the launch monitor, enclosure, and PC.

For $50/month you get ~100 courses, full online play, the best sim golf graphics. You do NOT get Pebble or St Andrews.

Playing every weekend? 52 rounds minimum. $600/52 = $11.50 per round. Cheaper than every muni with a cart. That’s a deal.

Playing once a month? $600/12 = $50 per round. Private club money to hit balls in your garage. Harder to justify.

The case for $600: Bethpage, Torrey, Kiawah, Bandon, Harbour Town, Pinehurst No. 2, and 90+ courses — properly mapped, visually gorgeous, available anytime. The Expanded tier gives you a library.

The case against $600: GSPro is $250 and has 4,000+ courses. Every one included. No rotation. No tiers. No premium upsells.

Read my full breakdown in the GSPro vs E6 comparison. And if you’re deciding which sim software fits your budget, our best golf simulator software guide compares all the major platforms head to head.

E6 vs GSPro: Licensed vs Community Courses

This is the real battleground.

E6 courses are officially licensed. Professionally mapped using laser scanning, aerial imagery, and on-site data. When you play Valhalla in E6, the 16th hole has the exact bunker shapes, the exact green contours, the exact tree placements. The legal agreement requires it.

GSPro courses are community-created. The best ones are incredible — indistinguishable from licensed courses. Some are better because the creator spent 200 hours on a single course out of passion. But GSPro courses range from “this is Augusta” to “this was built from Google Earth screenshots and the greens don’t hold.”

The difference is consistency. Every E6 course is good. The worst E6 course is a professional-grade scan of a real golf course. The worst GSPro course is a teenager’s weekend project.

If you want Pebble Beach and need the 8th hole to play correctly — the layup, the second shot over the cliff, the wind — E6 is the answer.

If you want 500 different courses and don’t mind rough edges, GSPro wins. Different products, different people. Pretending they’re interchangeable is how you spend $600 on the wrong software.

The Decision Framework

Get the base tier ($300) if: You’re new to sim golf. You only use an iPad. You don’t mind rotating courses. You want minimum spend while you decide.

Get the Expanded tier ($600) if: You have a proper projector setup. You play at least once a week. You want specific courses available anytime. You care about online play.

Add Pebble + St Andrews if: Those courses are why you bought a sim. You’ve got Expanded and the extra $50-60 doesn’t hurt. You want the best-looking courses on the platform.

Skip E6 for GSPro if: Course variety matters more than course quality. $600/year hurts. You don’t need iPad. You want 4,000 courses, not 100.

The Closing Take

E6 Connect has the best licensed course library in sim golf. If you want Pebble Beach, St Andrews, Bethpage Black, and Pinehurst No. 2 — and you want them to look and play like the real thing — E6 is the only option that delivers that out of the box.

But the tier system is annoying. $600/year not getting Pebble Beach is annoying. GSPro costing half and having 40x the courses is annoying. I won’t pretend otherwise.

Here’s what I tell people: building a sim for yourself and want a thousand courses? Get GSPro. Building a sim so you and your buddies can play Pebble Beach on a Friday night? Get E6 Expanded and buy the Pebble bundle. Both are right. The difference is which person you are.

You’ve read this far. You know which one you are.

Read the full E6 Connect review → GSPro vs E6 Connect: The head-to-head →