Free Fantasy Football draft tools make your Fantasy life easier. And who couldn’t use that? There are so many great Fantasy Football sites out there, whether they are just straight content sites, tools or apps, and sometimes it’s tough to filter through them and find the best of everything.
I’ve been playing fantasy Football for over 30 years now, and writing about it online for over 20. That means I’ve been scouring the Internet to help me find the best assistance possible. The following links take you to the top FREE Fantasy Football Draft tools that I think will help you the most in 2021. There are some tools out there that are similar, and I discuss that in some cases, but for my money (just kidding, they’re free!), these are my favorites! I also post the 25 Best Free In-Season Fantasy Football Lineup Tools every year, too!
As the summer wears on, I’ll be updating this page, removing the ones that are no longer available, and adding new ones that I’ve recently found.
I’ve been updating this column since 2012, adding links to more great tools every summer. This is one of the most popular pages on my website every year.
Top FREE Fantasy Football Draft Tools (Updated for 2021!)
If you come across a dead link or a tool that is no longer free, please comment below, so it tells me — and it tells our readers!
1. DraftWizard’s Mock Draft Simulator
Without question, this tool is still my favorite of all the free Fantasy Football draft tools. You can run multiple mock drafts from different spots in the draft order, see who dozens of Fantasy Football experts suggest, get analysis after your, and generate cheat sheets according to your league preferences. This thing has it all and it has been running strong for over five years now!
Even after all this time, this is still, by far, the greatest free draft tool in Internet history! Outside of having Matthew Berry, Michael Fabiano and Jamey Eisenberg talking over your shoulder as you get ready to draft, this is the best draft assistant you can possibly ask for.
Understand, of course, that the Mock Draft Simulator is free, but there are several pay add-on features — but they will make your life sooo much easier. We’re talking about features like:
- Draft Assistant: Connect to your Fantasy Football league, whether it’s on CBS, ESPN, MyFantasyLeague, Yahoo! or a few other sites, synchronize it, and this tool will move right along with your real draft room. You’ll still have to make your picks in the REAL room, but you’ll be offered pick-by-pick advice. Connecting to your league also pulls in your scoring and lineup settings, keepers and the rosters for other teams. It’s literally your Assistant Fantasy GM.
- Pick Predictor: It shows the odds of which players are likely or not likely to be available by your next draft pick (or whichever round you’re considering waiting for that player). It’s great for planning and for figuring out who you should take with your current draft pick. It uses the stats of all their previous mock drafts, along with current, updated expert rankings, to figure out percentages of who might still be available at your pick in the next round.
- Draft Analyzer: Shows you where the expert projections put your team in the standings after your draft, including where your strengths and weaknesses are.
- Cheat Sheet Creator: You can import your own rankings or combine your favorite experts’ rankings altogether onto one cheat sheet, with tiers and a spot for player notes. Then, as your draft continues, the tiers will light up red if they are close to being empty, so you know it’s time to draft from that position.
- Auction Value Calculator: Auctions are a little trickier than drafts, but this calculator uses projected points and VORP (Value Over Replacement Players) to help sort out player prices.
Go check this tool out now if you haven’t already! It’s my favorite free Fantasy draft tool, but their premium version also happens to be my favorite overall draft tool!
2. FantasyRundown.com’s Daily Article Links
Goose has his eye on the Fantasy Sports industry, and he’s always finding the very best Fantasy Football articles on tons of websites every day. Then he links them out for us to enjoy! He updates his page throughout the day, so you’ll end up coming back here several times.
My favorite part about his listings is that he doesn’t just grab a link and throw it up there. You can get that from an RSS feed or from Twitter. Goose goes in, checks the article out, and explains why this article will be beneficial to you and your Fantasy Football team. Consider this site your media relations team, finding out all the great little pieces of information you need to read about.
This is an interview I did with FantasyRundown about how he gets so many great links to so many great articles each day.
3. Sleeper App
I actually had this app on my “25 Best Fantasy Football Lineup Tools” from the last few years, but it’s one of the best free Fantasy draft tools, too!
Add this app through your app store, and turn on push notifications. Then they’ll shoot you a note every time something major happens in the Fantasy Football world. This could be injury news, roster shakeups, cuts and signings, or just some great gossip from a team’s local beat writer. It’s as if you have Fantasy and NFL headlines being whispered into your ear right when the news happens.
4. MyFantasyLeague.com ADP History
I love looking back over the past 20 years or so (dating back to the late ‘90s!) to see what the average draft rankings were for any particular season. I like their draft setup, which means you can run mock drafts for free that are quite helpful.
5. FantasyPros’ ADP Comparison Tool
Not only do they pull in the Average Draft Position numbers from several websites, but you can see where these different sites differ greatly on players. I do an article series every year over at The Athletic that shares which players are ranked higher in ADP on different draft sites. It’s called the ADP Hacking series, so keep an eye out for it!
6. FFToolbox.com’s Fantasy Strength of Schedule
I love looking ahead at the upcoming schedules to spot opportunities to exploit. I love that you can change the range of schedules, also. Like, you can see who has the best schedule for running backs in the first five weeks, the middle five weeks or the Weeks 11-15 if you want.
7. CBSSports.com’s Pick-By-Pick Series
This is something relatively new Dave Richard and Jamey Eisenberg worked up last year, and they posted the 2018 version in late June. They go through each draft spot in a standard and a PPR league, and they give you an idea of how your draft would work out from that spot. So if you have the eighth pick in the first round of a PPR league, read their article on picking from that spot for some tips. Very cool idea that I should have thought of first! It’s weird to call this one of the top free Fantasy Football draft tools because it’s an article series, but you should use it as a tool that you go back to often.
8. “101 Fantasy Football Tips” ebook By David Gonos & 50 Other Fantasy Writers
OK, so this one is self-promotion — BUT — it is free! All you have to do is sign up for the DavidGonos.com Fantasy Football Newsletter! We’ll send it out once a week or so, with some cool info, new tools and new team names, and such! (This e-book was written in 2014, but it’s a strategy handbook, so it’s still applicable now, just with older player names as examples.)
After you sign up, you’ll get a confirmation email, and then a few minutes later, you’ll get a welcome email that will have the link to your free downloadable PDF!
9. FantasyFootballCalculator.com Scenario Calculator
Ready to have your mind blown? Plug in which draft pick you are targeting a specific player and it magically spits out the probability percentages of that player being available to you. (This hasn’t been updated for 2018, but you should still bookmark it!)
10. FantasyFootballCalculator.com Average Draft Position Rankings
This gives you the ability to graph out specific players to see how they are trending in recent mock drafts. Also, can break it into 8-, 10-, 12- or 14-team drafts. It’s a powerful draft prep tool, for sure. What I really like is checking a player’s rising or lowering Fantasy draft value, like the example shown with Jamaal Williams.
11. FootballGuys.com Daily Emails
Sure, there are a dozens of spots to get your player news, but there’s something nice about getting into work each day and having this email pushed to you, ready to read. Sure, it’s a day later than the news actually happened, but sometimes, that’s a much better way to look at the analysis rather than as soon as it happens.
12. Tristan Cockcroft’s Consistency Ratings
Cockcroft posts his consistency ratings on ESPN weekly, during the season, but in the offseason, these are helpful to look at to see which players consistently do what you expect them to do.
In this new Fantasy Football world, with Daily Fantasy play becoming part of our everyday lives, this research on Fantasy player consistency is invaluable. The more consistent the player is, the higher his floor is and lower his ceiling is, which means he’s a solid play when the DFS salary is right.
13. NFC’s Average Draft Position
This site hosts what’s considered the premier Fantasy Football competition, where the best face off against the best in some of the most competitive leagues in the industry. Big time stuff! So it stands to reason that their ADP is considered one of the best in the world, too.
14. FootballGuys.com Rate My Team
Once you have your roster set, after your draft, come back here and see what the FootballGuys think of your squad. You put your roster in, set your scoring system and lineup settings, then enter your email address and get a rundown. You even get projections and outlooks for each player, along with some possible free-agent recommendations. This is for after drafts, but it still counts as one of my favorite free Fantasy Football draft tools!
15. NBC Sports Edge’s NFL Player Headlines
When Eric Mack and I worked at CBSSports.com, we swore by the player news updates at CBSSports.com. We regularly beat RotoWorld (now NBC Sports Edge) to the punch, and we had better analysis – period. We posted more updates per day and no player owned in more than one percent of leagues went without an update for more than three weeks. But now that I’m not at CBS, I found myself using RotoWorld more and more. (It pains me to call it NBC Sports Edge.) I’m not sure why, exactly, but I do like the most recent updates on a player’s page being available immediately.
I open up their NFL Player Headlines page on one of my Chrome tabs, and I just leave it there, and check back often throughout the day, as it continually updates the headlines throughout the day!
16. Fantasy Football Reddit
This is basically, just a really great message board on a very large scale. Sure, a lot of sites have their own message boards, but this one’s great in that you’ll see stats, articles, questions, links and tools from tons of different sites. And even better, you’ll see opinions and perspectives of Fantasy owners that might not write for a site. And you can ask and answer Fantasy Football questions of all different types. The Redditors try to help the best articles rise near the top, so upvote the ones you like and downvote the others.
17. FootballGuys.com’s Draft Pick Trade Calculator
This is a nice tool put out there by David Dodds that helps you get an idea of the Fantasy value of every draft pick in a draft. So if you are offered a trade by someone, run it through this baby to see how the pick calculator thinks you would do. It’s weighted toward the higher picks, obviously.
18. FantasyPros.com’s Auction Value Calculator
It’s like a Fantasy auction cheat sheet, after you set the league size and team budget. It also works for flex positions and IDP leagues!
Just a great way to get an idea of the prices you should expect to pay for players in your Fantasy Football auction. As you know, auctions are usually very different from one to the next, much more so than a regular Fantasy draft. But starting off with a solid basis for auction values should give you a good head start.
19. FantasyPros.com’s Bye Week Cheat Sheet
Look, I know we have a lot of tools by these guys – but they’re good – and they’re free! What are you complaining about!?!
20. FantasyRundown.com Football Rankings Compilation Page
Think of this page like a portal to everyone’s Fantasy Football rankings in the world. I’m pretty sure he has the Dalai Lama’s PPR rankings on here, too (that guy loves the Ryan Tannehill this year). As of now, I count links to 18 different websites with rankings. Thankfully, it’s not overwhelming, and it’s sorted nicely, allowing you to find exactly what you’re looking for. He updates this daily, also.
21. “Fantasy Football For Smart People: 25 Mysteries Solved to Help You Draft a Better Team” E-book
I highly respect Jonathan Bales and his work in the Daily Fantasy Sports world has not gone unnoticed by the masses. He made this book on Fantasy Football free to download on your Amazon Kindle — or on your computer if you download the free Amazon app! But you can also buy some of his other Fantasy books here.
22. FootballGuys.com’s “Looking For Leagues” Forum
One of the toughest things regular Fantasy Football commissioners have to do is fill up a league after an owner or two bails, and no one has a buddy that: a) wants to play or b) knows anything about Fantasy Football. All the buddies they do know that are like that are already in their league. This forum is full of people looking for leagues – and leagues looking for people.
23. FantasyPros.com Fantasy Football Rumors
I like this page because it sorts through a lot of roster or transaction news, and just gives you some rumors floating around. FantasyPros owns several spots in my top free Fantasy Football draft tools list. They’re good.
24. ProFootballTalk.com’s News and Rumors
Speaking of rumors, there’s no greater source for news and rumors these days than PFT, and that has been the case for just about a decade now. You might not get Fantasy analysis, but wouldn’t you rather know the news sooner, giving yourself a chance to make the Fantasy call rather than waiting on Fantasy sites?
24. FantasyFootballers.org’s RB Touches Stats
It has always bugged me that stat sites, or stat pages within sites, don’t list “Touches,” for running backs. I don’t mean rushing attempts and receptions. I mean rushing attempts and targets, which would truly indicate how much a team uses this specific running back.
Did you know — after Dalvin Cook (26.14), Christian McCaffrey (26.00) and Derrick Henry (25.56), the running back with the most touches (rushes+targets) in 2020 was Joe Mixon at 24.17 per game?
25. NFLSavant.com’s Custom NFL Stats
This free Fantasy Football draft tool is really great because it gives you some next-level research ability. You set the options under each category, and submit for the stats.
26. FantasyFootballNerd.com’s Movers and Shakers
This is one of the cooler free Fantasy Football draft tools that looks over the Fantasy Football landscape to show you which players are on the rise and which players are falling in the rankings at each position. They monitor the rankings on several sites to determine the risers and fallers, and this tool would be a great in-season tool, as well. You can select a time frame you want to use, too, including seven days, 14 days, 21 days and 28 days.
27. NFL Injury Report by CBSSports.com
There are tons of injury reports everywhere, on every sports site, it seems, but I like this one the best because you can quickly get a look by team, by injury, by expected return date and, most importantly, by position. I also like it because you can break it down by their practice status.
28. CheatSheetWarRoom.com Custom Fantasy Football Cheat Sheets
Create your own customized player rankings by dragging and dropping players up and down on an interactive cheat sheet. Then you can generate a printable cheat sheet off of that.
29. FootballGuys.com Depth Charts
There are plenty of sets of depth charts out there, but I these rank up there among the easiest to use. No frills, color coded – and you don’t have to go to a different page for every team. They do a great job keeping them up to date, as well.
IDP Owners Alert: They update their defensive depth charts, too, making this a great IDP tool.
30. TheHuddle.com’s 2021 Offensive Line Rankings
Offensive lines are the lifeblood of most successful Fantasy players, because without them, QBs are running for their lives, wide receivers don’t have enough time to get open, and running backs get stuffed at the line. David Dorey figures it all out and ranks the O-lines before every season.
31. FFToolbox.com’s Ideal Bye Week Running Backs
This is pretty cool, as it allows you to take a look ahead to see which lower-ranked running backs you should consider picking up to start in place of your superstar running back that’s on a bye that week. For instance, it shows Alvin Kamara with a Week 6 bye, so you might want to look toward drafting Denver’s Javonte Williams or Melvin Gordon as your RB3, who could start in Kamara’s place in your lineup that week as an RB2.
32. Draftologist.com Draft Planalyzer
This tool may very well be your Fantasy Football league’s Mel Kiper. Plug in your league’s draft results from the last three years, and this free tool will help you:
- Zero in on other owner’s tendencies when they draft. You’ll be able to tell which owners are more predictable than others
- Get an idea when an owner usually takes the first player at a specific position.
- Figure out your league’s depth at a particular draft position.
Helmet-hair aside, I think this just made Kiper expendable.
33. FFToolbox.com’s Quarterback By Committee
If you missed out on the top 10 or so quarterbacks, loading up on running backs and wide receivers, you can check out this page to see what the best pairs of quarterbacks you should draft and stream, according to their schedules.
34. Great Fantasy Football Podcasts: CBSSports, ESPN and More
This one’s tough because there really are so many great Fantasy podcasts out there, and most of them are free. You can subscribe through iTunes, or you can listen through Stitcher for many of them. Different podcasts are for different people, though. I love the guys at CBSSports.com, as Adam Aizer, Dave Richard and Jamey Eisenberg are just top-notch, and they cover a ton of info every day. But I also love Tristan Cockcroft on ESPN’s Fantasy Football Podcasts because he’s entertaining and shares a great amount of analytical stats. But you should find your favorite Fantasy Football site, and listen to their podcast first. You’ll understand their references and stat discussions much more.
35. NFL’s NextGen Stats
This one sounds pretty boring, but there are a ton of different things you can do with their stats that I haven’t been able to find on other sites.
36. DavidGonos.com’s History of Top Rookie Draft Picks
Did this guy just vote for himself as one of the best free Fantasy Football draft tools? … Yes. Yes, he did.
Over the past few years, I’ve looked back at the rookie players that have been drafted as the top first-year players in Fantasy Football leagues. Then I compared them to the rookies that eventually scored the most points that season. You’ll be shocked to know that the top rookie pick in Fantasy Football leagues every year rarely ends up being the top scoring rookie. And here’s an article about 7 Compelling Stats About the Top 2 Picks in ADP Every Year Since 2000.
I hope these free Fantasy Football Draft Tools and our 21 Best Free In-Season Fantasy Football Lineup Tools help you win a Fantasy Football championship! And if they don’t, then you can just say, “Man, those guys are tools.”
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