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Fantasy football these days is serious business. And with its evolution has come the advent of daily fantasy sports, otherwise known as DFS.
You’ve seen the ads on TV – FanDuel or DraftKings telling you to build the ultimate fantasy roster and make some money. Pretty sweet deal. What they don’t tell you is that there’s a salary cap limit on your DFS lineup.
You set out to do your research, spending hours and hours and hours of work to put together a lineup. Then you find out you’re over the salary cap limit. Big bummer! Now you’re left to start from scratch.
Enter lineup optimizers. With the click of a button, you can consistently start lineups with high potential. And with high potential comes more wins, and with more wins comes more money!
The market is saturated with lineup optimizers, but below are the eight best lineup optimizers that can instantly start earning you more money. Read on!
Best LineUp Optimizers in 2022
#1 Best Overall: Draft Dashboard
Draft Dashboard’s lineup optimizer has a user-friendly interface and a bevy of features that result in a more immersive and efficient lineup-creation experience.
With their lineup optimizer are additional features like the Position Optimizer tool, Perfect Lineups interface, and Top Players widget which will help you achieve the best possible fantasy lineup.
What’s best in Draft Dashboard’s lineup optimizer is the ridiculous amount of time you will save on research! No, seriously! Their Daily Fantasy Tools show players the best value, most optimal stats, and best defensive matchups.
You’ll immediately notice the number in your wins column skyrocket when using the DFS lineup optimizer on sites like DraftKings and FanDuels – where millions of lineups are optimized every single day.[1]
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This tool is absolutely easy to use, making setting a lineup easier than ever with fantasy advice that gives you everything you need to make an informed decision.
#2 Most Time Efficient: RotoQL
RotoQL has helped optimize over 34 million lineups for tens of thousands DFS players. They make you daily fantasy football research more efficient through Insights, Simple Player Research and Stack Lineups Builder.
You can create a daily fantasy lineup for DraftKings and FanDuel in literal seconds, AND a volatility slider generates lineups with higher upside if you so choose to go that way.
On top of that, RotoQL keeps track of NFL injuries so you don’t have to, and they update your daily fantasy football lineup automatically, updating fantasy projections as news breaks.
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Truth be told, all of this would be meaningless if RotoQL did not have a world-class group of technologists and NFL experts to back their projections – but they do. Projections are built from the ground up, taking into account a player’s past performance, match-ups, and news.
Also read this article on the best daily fantasy sites.
#3 Most Accurate: Fantasy Alarm
Fantasy Alarm’s lineup optimizer is unique in the sense that they use qualitative data to create their lineups based on past performance and projected future in raw numbers.
All of their projections are derived not from numbers, but rather from analysts who watch games and then analyze the mounds of data to determine value.
Fantasy Alarm has also included an option to toggle whether you want analysts’ information to be factored in, in which case you’ll have to research and study over 30+ metrics to create your fantasy lineups.
Their lineup optimizer will also factor in your DFS’ scoring system – though FanDuel is set by default since it is the most popular. This adjusts player rankings and scouting reports based on what is most optimal to your pool.
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Fantasy Alarm has really done all that they could to make picking your lineup as easy as possible for you. Everything is mechanically guided to ensure you do not make mistakes or do something you did not intend to do.
#4 Best Value: Fantasy Football Nerd
Fantasy Football Nerd’s Line-up Assistant tool is designed to find players who give you the most bang for your buck. That’s because they focus primarily on finding players who give the most points while costing the least amount of dollars.
Based on projected points, Fantasy Football Nerd calculates the cost per point for every player, factoring in the percentage of cap room that each player will take up. Simply put, this is the best way to find value players.
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You also have the option of adjusting your lineup preferences between Conservative, Consensus and Aggressive, giving you some say in how you want to play.
#5 Best For High Volume: Fantasy Cruncher
Fantasy Cruncher is the best fantasy tool for those who have several pools on the go. That’s because, instead of hand-entering your pool of players, using trial and error to see the best combinations under the cap, you can generate 50 lineups at once with several possible combinations.
Moreover, their lineup optimizer is chock-full of amazing features, like stacking/anti-stacking restrictions (useful for when you do not want to generate a lineup with wide receivers from the same team).
Along with the ability to optimize your lineup, Fantasy Cruncher also includes generated projections, which you can use to make informed decisions that will have you dominating your fantasy competition.
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The only real downside is that generating lineups is so automated that you sometimes cannot try out certain stacks, and the optimizer itself is relatively expensive compared to other optimizers on this list.
Other Great Lineup Optimizers
#6 Daily Fantasy Nerd
Daily Fantasy Nerd is great because it offers a no-fuss, simple and intuitive optimizer that even those new to the world of fantasy football will understand.
They offer the ability to customize your projections, and to then integrate those custom projections with their player projection metrics. If it sounds complicated, it’s not. Everything on DFN’s website is simple and easy to use.
Best yet, their lineup optimizer is one of the cheapest around, and when it comes to net profit, DFN is one of the more successful optimizers around.
#7 Fantasy Footballers
The guys over at Fantasy Footballers doll out hilarious but accurate advice on fantasy football on a regular basis. They also have a full-fledged lineup optimizer tool that, although not feature-rich, comes with a bevy of side bonuses.
This includes advice columns from industry experts, stack reports, Vegas odds reports, and more. Moreover, the lineup optimizer can optimize lineups for six different fantasy football sites, which is the most on the market.
#8 FantasyPros
With FantasyPros, you can leverage the projections of experts from around the world of fantasy football to generate the most optimal DFS lineups.
There is also the option to create a custom pool of players of your choice, and you can generate as many as 150 lineups at one time!
Moreover, saving and exporting your lineups into FanDuel and DraftKings is super easy, and will have you on your way to winning in no time.
Factors to Consider When Choosing DFS Lineup Optimizer
There are four main factors to consider when choosing a lineup optimizer:
1. Usability
The whole point of a lineup optimizer is to make your life easier. No, seriously, that is the whole point of a lineup optimizer. So if you find yourself trying out an optimizer that is confusing, overly comprehensive, and just a headache to sift through, then run for the hills.
The best lineup optimizer is feature-rich, but should convey all of the most important information in simple and accessible terms. Sometimes, when it comes to data, less is more.
2. Value
Some of the lineup optimizers out there are so expensive to subscribe to that you make near-to-no profit, even if you do win big.
That defeats the whole purpose. A lineup optimizer should be both affordable and have a proven track record of success. After all, the point is to make a net profit, right?
3. Effectiveness
When you combine usability and value, you get effectiveness. This means that an effective lineup optimizer is both streamlined AND is backed with documented success.
An effective lineup optimizer will also not only generate a fantasy lineup quickly, but will also produce several lineups at once. All this while also making it easy for the user to import their lineups into different DFS pools.
4. Tool Suite
Most lineup optimizers come as a package to a more comprehensive tool suite. This means that you should expect access to a number of other features that will help make you a more consistent fantasy football player.
Check out our article on the best fantasy football advice sites to know which companies complement and enhance their lineup optimizers with a suite of features that’ll have you winning big.
Is It Worth It To Pay For A Lineup Optimizer?
The thing with optimizers is: all of the information is already out there. Combined with the fact that sporting events are highly unpredictable and, well, you might not make as much profit as you think.
The truth of the matter is that when you pay for a lineup optimizer, you are paying for someone else’s process, not their information. There are also plenty of free lineup optimizers where picks can often outperform.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Final Words
The eight lineup optimizers I listed above each have a specific strength it can offer to Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) players. You just have to find the right one for you.
I personally pick Draft Dashboard as the overall best. The reason for this is Draft Dashboard provides a mix of simple design and in-depth player evaluations. That’s why it is my personal favorite lineup optimizer.
Moreover, there are so many tools to generate your perfect lineup, and you can import projections from other experts and use those to field the best possible roster.
It’s not just that the lineup is so great, but it’s also the fact that your subscription also comes with a number of other amazing features. With a one month trial at $1, it’s hard to not give it a try.
Try Draft Dashboard now or any of the lineup optimizers above!
DRAFT DASHBOARD
Overall Best LineUp Optimizer
