> guide · updated 17 Jul 2026

How FPL price changes work: the algorithm explained

FPL prices change once per night, in a single overnight window that usually falls between roughly 01:30 and 02:30 UK time. A player's price rises £0.1m when enough managers transfer him in, and falls £0.1m when enough transfer him out — it is driven by net transfers, not by how many points he scored. FPL does not publish the exact trigger point, which is why every “predicted price change” anywhere is an estimate.

All figures below are computed from the Official FPL API for the completed 2025/26 season. Mechanics have held for several seasons, but FPL can adjust them at any game launch — we re-verify each rule when the 2026/27 game opens, and never publish 2026/27 starting prices before FPL reveals them.

The overnight window: when prices actually move

Prices update in one nightly pass, not continuously through the day. The change is applied while most managers are asleep and is visible the moment the game refreshes each morning. In-play, prices are widely observed to hold steady from each gameweek deadline until that gameweek's matches finish — but FPL publishes no freeze rule, and mid-gameweek moves have been observed in the real game, so treat the pause as a tendency rather than a guarantee.

The whole board resets every season: starting prices are re-set at game launch, and the season's rise/fall counters begin from zero. In practice the overnight window is when almost every price move lands — which is why the timing above matters, and why our price-changes tracker rebuilds daily after that window closes rather than during it.

What actually drives a change — verified behaviour vs folklore

The mechanism is transfer-driven and directional: net transfers in push a price up, net transfers out push it down, in £0.1m steps. Beyond that, a lot of what gets repeated as fact is community reverse-engineering — useful, but not published by FPL. Here is the honest split.

Amber rows are the community's best reverse-engineering, not published rules. We name them as estimates rather than passing them off as facts — and re-check all of them when the 2026/27 game opens.

The 50% sell rule, with a real worked example

The one rule that catches managers out: you only bank half of a price rise when you sell, rounded down to the nearest £0.1m. The other half stays with the club, not your budget. Take the biggest riser of 2025/26 — Bruno Fernandes started the season at £9.0m and finished at £10.4m, a £1.4m rise. Buy at the start price and here is what you actually get back:

So a full-season £1.4m rise turns into £0.7m of usable budget. That is the whole-season ceiling on price profit from the biggest mover in the game — which is exactly why chasing prices at the expense of points is a poor default. Prices are a means; points are the game.

What blocks or freezes a change

• The in-gameweek pause. From each deadline until that gameweek's matches finish, prices usually stand still — community-observed, not a published rule, and not an absolute one.
• New-player protection. Freshly added players appear to be shielded from a fall for roughly their first week — community-observed, not published.
• Wildcard / Free Hit purchases. Many managers believe transfers made on a chip are discounted by the price algorithm — widely repeated, never confirmed by FPL, so treat it as a rumour, not a rule.
• The per-gameweek cap. A player is commonly observed to move at most ±£0.3m across a single gameweek — again community lore, not an official ceiling.

Why every “predicted price change” is an estimate

Because FPL never publishes the trigger threshold, prediction sites reverse-engineer it: they watch net transfers, model how close a player is to the hidden target, and express it as a progress figure or a flag. Different sites use different threshold estimates and different transfer feeds, so they disagree — and none of them can be certain, because the number they are all guessing at is not disclosed. Any tool claiming a “guaranteed” overnight rise is overstating what is knowable.

Bawler treats it the same honest way. On the price-changes tracker we surface transfer momentum — the strongest public signal of tonight's likely movers — labelled as a signal, never as a certainty, and rebuilt daily after the window closes. Where we add something no momentum feed does is context: our model reads whether a riser is actually worth catching on expected points and fixture difficulty, not just whether he is about to tick up £0.1m. How the model is built and calibrated is on the methodology page, with public receipts on the track record.

What actually moved prices in 2025/26

Here is the whole system in one number. Across 2025/26, of the 841 listed players, 579 saw their price move from its starting value — but only 55 rose while 524 fell. Price drift is overwhelmingly downward: the average player quietly leaks budget, and rises are reserved for a small group of genuinely popular, in-form assets. Chasing rises is swimming against that tide.

Biggest 2025/26 risers

Biggest 2025/26 fallers

Source: Official FPL API, final 2025/26 season data (start price, end price and total points are season-final). Even the game's single biggest riser gained only £1.4m all season — the price ceiling is small, and these tables become historical once the 2026/27 game launches.

Track it, don't chase it

Understand the mechanism, watch the overnight window, and use price as a tie-breaker between two players you rate on points — never as the reason to pick one. Confirmed overnight risers and fallers, transfer momentum and current prices live on the FPL price-changes tracker, or head back to the FPL gameweek hub.

Bawler is statistical analysis for entertainment. FPL is a free game — model reads are projections, not guarantees.