FPL Price Changes: How to Predict Rises and Falls Before the Deadline

Player prices move based on a single variable: net transfers. Net transfers is simply the number of managers who bought the player minus the number who sold him over the current gameweek. When enough managers buy a player, his price rises by £0.1m overnight. When enough sell, it falls by the same amount. The update happens once per day at roughly 2:30am BST, which means every price prediction is really a prediction of whether the player will cross their threshold before that deadline.

There are hard caps built into the system. A player can move by at most £0.1m per day and by at most £0.3m within a single gameweek. That cap protects the market from runaway inflation but also means you cannot keep a popular riser cheap indefinitely. Once the third rise of the gameweek has landed, the price is locked until the next round of fixtures begins.

The number of net transfers needed for a price change is not fixed. It scales with ownership. A player owned by 1% of the game needs far fewer net transfers to rise than a player owned by 50%. This is why budget differentials and early-bandwagon picks can move dramatically while premium assets take a sustained, league-wide push to shift.

There is also a hard floor in the data. Across four full seasons of FPL history, no player below approximately 1.7% ownership has ever recorded a price rise. Ownership that low simply does not generate enough concentrated buying pressure. Our model respects this floor: any player below the threshold is assigned a zero rise probability regardless of how many transfers they receive.

A player who has already risen this gameweek is more likely to rise again than a player with the same net transfers but no previous rise. The algorithm effectively rewards sustained demand, not just a single spike. This momentum effect matters for timing. A budget midfielder who rose last night and is still being bought this morning is usually a safer rise bet than a premium asset whose transfers only turned positive today.

The same logic works in reverse for falls. Once a player has fallen once, managers become more likely to sell, and the negative momentum can push him toward a second or third fall before the gameweek ends. Our predictor factors this in by giving an extra boost to the probability of any player who has already moved in the current gameweek.

When a player returns from an injury or suspension flag, the FPL algorithm locks his price for approximately one week. Even if managers pile into the player, the price will not move. This protects the market from artificial rises caused by managers reacting to good news before the player is actually available. The lock length is not announced precisely, but historical data shows it is usually around seven days from the point the flag is removed.

The Price Predictor shows the player's status, so you can see immediately when a returner is locked. A high transfer count with zero price movement is often the first visual clue that a lock is active. Once the lock lifts, any pent-up demand can translate into a very fast rise.

Every time you sell a player for more than you paid, FPL takes half the profit as a tax, rounded down. If you buy a player at £7.0m and he rises to £7.2m, your sell price is £7.1m, not £7.2m. That asymmetry makes timing even more important. You do not need to hold a riser forever; you need to sell him at the right moment to bank the maximum possible budget increase.

This is where the Price Predictor becomes a planning tool rather than just a curiosity. Knowing which players are likely to rise tonight lets you decide whether to hold one more day or take profit now. It also helps you avoid buying a player who is just about to fall, which would lock in an immediate loss before you have even captained him.

The predictor table has three tabs: Rising, Falling, and All players. The Rising tab is the default and shows players with the highest probability of a price rise before the next 2:30am deadline. The Falling tab shows players most likely to drop. Use the position filters and search bar to narrow the list to the players you actually own or are considering.

Each row shows the current price, any change already made this gameweek, net transfers, a progress bar towards the estimated threshold, and separate rise and fall probabilities. The progress bar tells you how close a player is to the predicted threshold. The probability tells you how confident the model is that the threshold will be crossed before the next deadline. A player at 85% progress with a 75% rise probability is a strong bet; a player at 40% progress with a 25% probability is much more speculative.