Every year, fantasy football best ball evolves, offering more ways to play and bigger prizes to compete for. With this increased competition, it’s worth considering how you want to attack best ball in 2025. After all, unless you have a blank check, it’s best to consider which game types suit your playing style and bankroll.
While Sleeper and MyFantasyLeague (MFL) offer fantasy football platforms that can be tailored to every possible configuration of leagues, when it comes to best ball, we’re mainly looking at the big four platforms of Underdog, DraftKings, FFPC and Drafters as well as the newest platform on the scene, FastDraft.
Fantasy Football Best Ball Site-by-Site Comparisons
Underdog
Key Differences: 18 rounds, 0.5 PPR, Short-Window Tournaments
Underdog has become the most popular best ball platform, understanding its consumers and catering to all budgets from $3 up to the high-stakes market.
Underdog’s drafts are 18 rounds rather than the traditional 20; this forces a different spin on roster construction and often leaves a lot of players on the table when it comes to your final picks. Players who you’d always take on another platform might become a trickier pick on Underdog, and if you have strong convictions, scrolling down further at the end of drafts to select a player others might not could reward you with unique combinations.
In 20-round best ball drafts, we often see more comfortable roster constructions, but Underdog’s 18-round drafts can force you to be more fragile somewhere, leading to interesting tactical decisions. Underdog also offers Superflex contests, which are 20 rounds.
The 0.5 PPR scoring increases the value of touchdowns greatly. This was evident at the tight end position in 2024 with Mike Gesicki ranking as the TE22 in half-PPR, meanwhile, on full PPR platforms, he was the TE18. Gesicki’s 57 receptions made up for his paltry two touchdowns in full PPR somewhat. Likewise, Wan’Dale Robinson was the half-PPR WR57, but in full PPR, he was WR47.
Half-PPR can punish players who accumulate volume in the slot but fail to turn those catches into touchdowns. Underdog tends to be a wide receiver-heavy platform, also with 54 receivers taken in the first 100 picks, while DraftKings and Drafters both have 49 in the first 100.
With Underdog becoming so popular, they can launch contests that fill up within a very short timeframe. It’s not unusual for their lower-budget contests (The Puppy – $5, The Chihuahua – $4, The Pomeranian – $3) to fill within a 48-hour window, depending on how big it is. Because of this, you might want to consider how many entries you’ll have time to draft before the contest closes. Prizes go as high as millions of dollars in the larger contests, with their flagship contest, Best Ball Mania, offering $2 million to first place.
DraftKings
Key Differences: Full PPR With Yardage Bonuses
The next largest platform is DraftKings, which has slowly but surely improved its best ball offering over the last few years. DraftKings has held contests with at least $1 million in prizes each of the last four years, featuring a large-field Milly Maker and numerous smaller contests with varying entry fees and field sizes.
DraftKings had best ball tournaments available from as little as $1 in 2023 & 2024, all the way up to thousands of dollars per entry. DraftKings tends to be one of the better bets for those interested in the high-stakes range of games, with a yearly $555 contest where you can enter up to 150 teams if you have a spare $83,250 to play with. Last year, they also boasted a $10,000 entry contest on top of a whole host of $100 contests. I
f you’re looking to dabble in higher entry tournaments, the $100 contests are typically three entry max and feature very small finals, meaning if you can make it to Week 17, your chances of a good prize are very strong. Unlike the Milly Maker, which has fantastic prizes up top, the final still features over 1,000 people, and winning will be very, very difficult.
The key difference on DraftKings is that scoring is the same as their DFS product, rewarding a full point per reception, but also includes the following bonuses:
- Three points for a 300-yard passing game
- Three points for a 100-yard rushing game
- Three points for a 100-yard receiving game
This increases the value of the top options, but also helps some pocket-passing quarterbacks close the gap slightly on the dual-threat passers of the world. It also makes the top-end tight ends more valuable, as there are very few who can give you those true difference-making 100-yard games.
With 20-man rosters, you’ll find your way into more 3-QB and 3-TE builds than you would on Underdog.
If you’re new to DraftKings, be ready for quarterbacks to be drafted earlier. For some reason, the platform is always quarterback hungry. As you can see in the table below, many quarterbacks go significantly earlier than on Underdog.
FFPC (Fantasy Football Players Championship)
Key Differences: Tight End-Premium, Scheduled Drafts, Superflex Contests
The FFPC is one of the longest-standing best ball platforms, as well as offering high-stakes redraft leagues, which cost either $350 or $2,200. As a platform that wants to be known for high-stakes fantasy football, the offering is mainly tailored to that, with their main best ball contest entry fees set at $35 and $125. FFPC does run $5 sit & go contests, which are a nice way to familiarize yourself with the platform before diving into the higher stakes drafts.
The platform is built around the idea of quality of draft rather than quantity, so it’s less common for drafters to rack up hundreds of entries to a single contest, with portfolios instead built across 10-20 drafts more often.
Drafts tend not to fill as quickly as on rival platforms during the early parts of the offseason, but FFPC redeems itself by scheduling drafts each day, which you can reserve a spot in at any given timeslot. This is something no other site offers, and it’s a great feature, allowing you not to have to wait an unknown amount of time to draft. During July and August, the platform is a hive of activity, and you never wait long.
The platform’s biggest difference is the tight end-premium scoring, where, in addition to the one point per reception every player gets for a catch, tight ends receive an extra half-point. This can be huge for the top-end tight ends, who see 70+ receptions in a season, but occasionally makes drafters think there is more value in the position than there is.
The difference between Brock Bowers averaging 13.9 half-PPR points and 19.3 in tight-end premium scoring is massive, but Dalton Kincaid‘s 6.1 to 9.4 point-per-game difference in half-PPR versus tight end-premium is much easier to replace through drafting wide receivers and then grabbing tight ends later. We need tight ends that give us volume above all else. FFPC also consistently offers Superflex drafts, something which Underdog does occasionally, but nobody has so far kept Superflex drafts open all offseason, except for FFPC.
Be ready for tight ends to go early because of the premium scoring setting. Here is the current average draft position (ADP) showing the difference between Underdog and FFPC. It’s not unusual to see two tight ends in the first round.
Drafters
Key Differences: Cumulative Scoring, Consistent Offers & Rewards
The last of the big four is Drafters, who stand out from the crowd by using cumulative scoring, rather than the tournament formats that have become commonplace. Instead, once the season starts, every single team drafted within the same contest is put into a big pot, and the team with the most points overall wins the top prize, and so on for second place through all the paying places.
This allows users to sweat their teams from start to finish, as well as being able to see every team in the contest at any given point, which allows you to find out whether you have leverage on the field or not.
Drafters have struggled to fill contests for the last couple of seasons, resulting in overlay, which is a term used for when guaranteed prize pools will be shared among the remaining entries. Because of the slower fill rates, Drafters almost constantly incentivize players to draft on their platform, often giving away free entries for every five teams drafted or similar.
Because of the cumulative format, there is less emphasis on stacking, as we’re looking for consistent high floors, rather than individual spike weeks. It’s also prudent to build your team with the idea of avoiding zeros as often as possible. This means being mindful of bye weeks, player suspensions and the roles players have within your team.
FastDraft
The newest contender on the scene is FastDraft, who differentiate itself with five-minute drafts and much smaller rosters. Due to their status as a newer platform, prizes are smaller, but there is potential for taking advantage of situations if you think people aren’t playing the right way for this unique format.
Like Drafters, FastDraft is a total points format and full PPR. The drafts are 20 seconds per pick and your starting lineup consists of four of the six players you draft.
With so few players drafted compared to most platforms, it opens up the idea of using your sixth-round pick on a player further down in ADP. Consider 2023, when Kyren Williams and Puka Nacua were barely drafted in an 18-round best ball. They made a huge difference in those drafts, but in a six-round contest, unique variations and player selections could be massive.
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