Pickleball Equipment For Beginners in 2025: 3 Essential Things

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When you are a beginner pickleball player, you really just need two pieces of equipment:

1. A pickleball paddle (racquet)
2. A pickleball ball
3. Pickleball shoes

I will briefly end by talking about shoes, but this is a nice to have if you are not playing competitively.So, your paddle is the most important tool on the court, in my opinion.

For a paddle, I would consider purchasing a very budget pickleball paddle under $50.

I purchased this super cheap paddle, and the paddle set also came with 4 balls and a bag. Voila.

If you know you are going to love the game, you may start with a better paddle. If that’s the case, you can get a fantastic paddle for under $100. You could also just consider borrowing a pickleball paddle from a friend as well.

1. Pickleball Paddle

I had a friend come with too cheap of a paddle (maybe something like this) If you go to cheap, you will probably not like the game regardless. I personally prefer purchasing cheap paddles on Amazon as I find places such as Target having wood paddles, like the one above.

For example, wood is probably the worst material for a pickleball paddle, so consider purchasing anything else such as carbon fiber, graphite or fiberglass. Carbon Fiber is my favorite, by far.

I have around 50 pickleball paddles, and here’s a breakdown of the most popular choices.

Okay, enough with paddles, let’s talk about pickleball balls.

2. Get Pickleball Balls

Another important pickleball equipment needed is pickleball balls. There’s outdoor and indoor pickleball balls.

The indoor pickleball balls have 26 holes and the outdoor pickleball balls have 40 holes.

Here are my favorite outdoor pickleball balls, but if you are starting out, you would probably just need some very cheap, but good quality balls.

Not all cheap balls are the same. For example, I purchased some cheap outdoor balls that ended up being too light, making the ball not bounce correctly. These are my favorite cheap balls, pictured below.

Finally, we will talk about shoes to wear when playing pickleball.

3. Pickleball Shoes.

I tried using running shoes, and almost hurt myself multiple times as you do have an increased risk of rolling your ankle. In my opinion, you should not play pickleball with running shoes.

You can check the best pickleball shoes in 2025, but if you are looking for a cheap pair, I found that these Reebok shoes are inexpensive and work just fine.

In addition, here are 3 different pairs of shoes I’ve used playing pickleball. I prefer pickleball shoes to basketball shoes, but basketball shoes work just fine.

If you are not going to play competitively, and you are just going to be mainly walking, then you may reduce the risk of rolling your ankle in shoes that do not have proper grip.

I would just be cautious about it.

Do you need any other pickleball equipment for beginners?

Many people play pickleball on tennis courts or built out pickleball courts. If you do not have access to a tennis court or pickleball court, you may then need access to a portable pickleball set with a net. There’s plenty of options, so you may want to just research the best pickleball sets with nets.

Here’s a picture of one below.

Finally, if you’d like, check out some great pickleball accessories that you can use while you improve.