Best Fantasy Football Apps
Get Ready for Some Football
Fantasy football may have started out as a geeky, niche hobby. But these days, it’s a pop-culture phenomenon that’s inspired sitcoms and fuels its own industry. One of the big reasons fantasy football is so popular is the wealth of online tools that do away with clunky bookkeeping, making it easier to keep tabs on players and stats across an entire fantasy league. It gets even better with mobile apps entering the fray. With the 2019 fantasy draft season looming — and the NFL not that far off from kicking off its upcoming season — we’re taking a look at the best fantasy football apps for your smartphone or tablet.
Credit: Tom's Guide
NFL Fantasy Football (Android, iOS: Free)
The NFL's Fantasy Football app (Android, iOS) is a good place to start your search for fantasy football apps, with the latest news and data sourced straight from the NFL itself. The app has gotten a major update for the 2019 season, with improved player profiles and stats and a revised Teams section helped out by improved player comparison tools. Players can join public leagues or create private ones with friends, draft players in-app, configure rules, lineups and trades, and view the latest scores, stats, analysis, and game video recaps.
ESPN Fantasy Football (Android, iOS: Free)
ESPN's Fantasy Football app (Android, iOS) allows you to take your desktop fantasy sports account mobile. You can create teams and leagues and participate in mock and live drafts from your phone or tablet. The app comes with team management tools making it easy to set up your starters and bench players, as well as trade them with other league teams. Users can get FantasyCast live scoring, as well as news and videos from ESPN's own team of analysts.
Sleeper (Android, iOS: Free)
Fantasy football app Sleeper (Android, iOS) taps into the social dimension of your friendly fantasy football league, building a chat platform straight into the app that also includes notifications and announcements. As a result, it’s easier to make league announcements, keep track of waivers, trades and other moves, or simply shoot the breeze with other managers or your league commissioner. Sleeper supports a variety of modes (including redraft, keeper, and dynasty leagues), variant scoring rules, multi-team trades, league history, and more. While it isn’t as feature-packed as other platforms, the built-in social dimension of Sleeper is a great draw for a solid fantasy football platform.
Yahoo Fantasy Sports (Android, iOS: Free)
Search giant Yahoo's carved out a respectable niche for itself in the field of online fantasy sports. The Yahoo Fantasy Sports app (Android, iOS) is a top-notch football app that covers a variety of other fantasy sports, such as baseball, basketball and hockey. Players can create or join fantasy leagues, set up drafts, quickly set up team lineups and track scores and performance, as well as check out pieces by Yahoo Sports and Rotoworld experts. In addition to custom leagues, users can also participate in weekly and daily fantasy games with a chance to win real money. (Note that in the iOS App Store, this app is listed as Yahoo Fantasy Sports and More.)
CBS Sports Fantasy (Android, iOS: Free)
CBS's Sports Fantasy app (Android, iOS) is another versatile fantasy sports app that covers fantasy football, baseball, basketball and hockey. While you'll get the most benefit from playing your fantasy leagues at CBSSports, the app also provides a variety of features such as season projections, a draft companion, player news, and player rankings that will be useful even if you play at Yahoo, ESPN, or other fantasy sports platforms. CBSSports account users can also set up drafts, access live scores and other personalized content.
Rotowire Fantasy Football Draft Kit '19 (iOS: $4.99)
Rotowire has a long history of providing high quality tools to the fantasy sports community, and this year's Fantasy Footbal Draft Kit 2019 edition is no exception. The iOS app is a powerful assistant to fantasy football fans, allowing them to input their league's roster and scoring settings. The Rotowire app creates a ranked cheat sheet for drafts based on performance projections. Users can set draft priorities, run mock drafts against the AI and view detailed projections, news stories and analysis. Highly configurable and capable of spitting out a wealth of statistics and projections, Rotowire's Draft Kit app makes for a great companion for fantasy football fans who want to take their draft to the next level.
Footballguys Fantasy Football Draft Dominator (Android, iOS: Free)
Another well-regarded fantasy football draft companion app is the Footballguys Fantasy Football Draft Dominator series. The 2019 edition (Android) continues that tradition, with a comprehensive draft assistant that provides options for customizing settings to match your fantasy football league. (The iOS version is lsited as Fantasy Football Draft FBG, but it’s the same app.) Adaptive rankings for your draft picks change to reflect your team's needs. You'll also find mock drafts, team ratings, pick tiers, and player watch and avoid lists within the app.
Fantasy Football Draft Wizard (Android, iOS: Free)
FantasyPro's Fantasy Football Draft Wizard (Android, iOS) is another neat Fantasy Football draft companion app that provides some useful free features that get better if you subscribe to the premium tiers. Users can set up custom mock drafts, create custom cheat sheets, and check out expert advice and analysis on player picks and draft tactics. The app supports custom drafts, and users who sign up for the premium tiers get extra features, such as a live draft assistant that syncs with major draft hosts such as Yahoo, NFL & CBS, a Pick Predictor, and Keeper League support.
RotoWire.com Fantasy News Center (iOS: Free)
RotoWire.com Fantasy News Center on iOS is an all-in-one source of the latest news, rumors, injury updates, and analysis of how this all might affect your fantasy sports game. Drawing on the expert minds of Rotowire, users can check out the latest on fantasy football, baseball, hokey, basketball, golf, racing, soccer, or collegiate sports. A variety of in-app purchases also unlock additional features such as player rankings and other information. An Android equivalent, RotoWire News Center, provides much the same coverage for a variety of fantasy sports.
DraftKings (Android, iOS: Free)
Those who find waiting through a full fantasy season to be a daunting prospect might want to check out DraftKings' (Android, iOS) daily fantasy sports drafts, where players can participate in daily fantasy sports leagues whether in free or private leagues, or in paid entries with high scorers getting a shot at winning real money. The appeal is very clearly the speed, but with the allure of real money winnings added to the mix of fantasy sports stat crunchyness. In addition to football, players can also compete in fantasy baseball, basketball, MMA, soccer and esports.
FanDuel (Android, iOS: Free)
Another popular one-day draft site is FanDuel (Android, iOS), which has players competing in free and paid games using FanDuel's salary cap format to challenge players to build the best balanced team that they can. Players can compete in daily or weekly leagues, with a system to quickly set up your teams, as well as quickly receive notifications on results. FanDuel also supports baseball, basketball and hockey.
