The Best Daily Fantasy Apps for April 2024
Our team has spent thousands of hours using all of the popular DFS apps on the market, and have put forth an extensive review and rating process to determine the best daily fantasy apps for sports fans interested in participating in daily fantasy contests.
You can see our list of the best DFS apps here and read more about our process below.
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The NBA Playoffs are officially underway, with Round 1 in full swing. Ditto the NHL playoffs. The MLB regular season now dominates the nightly schedule. Basically, it’s a great time to be a DFS player, and there are plenty of exciting contests to get in on this spring.
Underdog Fantasy is our favorite place to play DFS pick’em contests, where you choose higher or lower for athletes’ stat totals. Underdog also offers quite a few daily fantasy contests every football weekend. NBA, NFL and NHL action is in full swing, so there are plenty of daily draft and pick’em options over at Underdog!
Details and information on the Best DFS Apps page last updated by Saturday Down South on April 26, 2024. Information verified by Adam Spencer.
The Best Daily Fantasy Apps
Here are the best daily fantasy apps based on our team’s process and recommendations at Saturday Down South:
Underdog Fantasy
Underdog Fantasy is our highest rated daily fantasy app. Underdog brings a combination of great contests ranging from best ball tournaments with 7-figure prize pools, regular daily fantasy contests at varying entry fee points and a plethora of pick’em contests that can keep you busy night after night across all the major sports. But, all it takes is a few minutes of playing on the Underdog app to know how smooth and easy Underdog is to use. The app is world class, with clean branding, easy navigation, and just super enjoyable experience.
Here are our individual grades for the Underdog Fantasy app:
- Onboarding Experience: A
- App Usability and Reliability: A
- Games and Contests Available: A
- Payouts and Multipliers: B
- Withdrawal Methods: B
- Promo Attractiveness: B+
- Promo available: Up to $100 Deposit Match
Sleeper Fantasy
Sleeper Fantasy is a do-it-all fantasy platform with options for sports fans of all interests. In addition to season-long fantasy leagues, Sleeper users can participate in daily drafts and picks contests in order to win real money. Select player over/under props or build a team for that night’s slate of games and root your team on to victory. Sleeper uses dynamic multipliers for its player over/under contests, so you can play it safe or push the envelope and build a contest with a higher potential payout. Sleeper also offers live in-game contests. If you miss the opening kickoff or the first quarter of a game, you can still get in on the action! To sweeten the deal, Sleeper is offering a full deposit match up to $100 for new users who sign up using promo code SOUTHXL. Sign up today and get in on the fun!
Here are our individual grades for the Sleeper Fantasy app:
- Onboarding Experience: A-
- App Usability and Reliability: A
- Games and Contests Available: B+
- Payouts and Multipliers: B
- Withdrawal Methods: A
- Promo Attractiveness: A-
- Promo available: Up to $100 Deposit Match
Thrive Fantasy
Thrive Fantasy is a widely used fantasy platform with a unique spin on fantasy contests. Thrive’s daily fantasy contests are unique in the sense that rather than build rosters around players and accumulate stats from those players, you select over/under picks or prop-like bets to build your “roster.” It’s a unique spin on the daily fantasy approach. Now, Thrive has some of the best multipliers and payouts in the space. For instance, you can get $16 on a $5 2-leg pick’em play rather than the standard $15 payout. Also, Thrive has an industry best offer where they will match up to $250 on your first deposit. Sign up today and take advantage of this great offer.
Here are our individual grades for the Thrive Fantasy app:
- Onboarding Experience: B
- App Usability and Reliability: B
- Games and Contests Available: B+
- Payouts and Multipliers: A
- Withdrawal Methods: B
- Promo Attractiveness: A+
- Promo available: Up to $250 Deposit Match
Boom Fantasy
Boom Fantasy is one of the newer players in the DFS space, but it is certainly a strong app to consider if you’re looking for a new place to play pick’em contests. Like some of the other apps on this list, there are no daily drafts on Boom, but there are plenty of offerings for picks contests. Boom has 3 different tiers of picks, which keeps things interesting. You can play “favorites,” which offers player stats that are easier to predict correctly but offer lower multipliers. You can play “toss-ups,” which are similar to what you’d find on other DFS apps. Or, and this is our favorite, you can play “longshots,” which are stat lines that are higher than normal, but if you pick 3 “higher” options correctly, you can earn an 80x multiplier on your entry fee. That’s a pretty solid way to play DFS, in our opinion! The promo offer isn’t a great one, but it’s still worth a look if you’re interested in more tiers of pick’em contests.
Here are our individual grades for the Boom Fantasy app:
- Onboarding Experience: A-
- App Usability and Reliability: A-
- Games and Contests Available: A-
- Payouts and Multipliers: A
- Withdrawal Methods: B
- Promo Attractiveness: B-
- Promo available: Up to $100 Refund if first entry loses
Vivid Picks
Vivid Picks is a great DFS app for pick’em enthusiasts. The app rivals Underdog and PrizePicks with its variety of sports and esports available for contests. Vivid Picks also makes it easy to find boosted picks, which is an attractive quality for newer DFS players. The multipliers are a little bit below industry standard. A 3-leg contest pays out 5.5x, a 4-leg is a 9.5x multiplier and a 5-leg entry earns a 16.5x multiplier. Those 4-leg and 5-leg multipliers are curiously low. But Vivid Picks also offers Vivid Bucks bonuses on contests to help make up for it. Vivid Picks likely needs to add some more withdrawal options in the future, as currently, only bank transfers and checks are allowed. The signup bonus is, without a doubt, the best in the industry, though, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you love picks contests.
Here are our individual grades for the Vivid Picks app:
- Onboarding Experience: B
- App Usability and Reliability: A
- Games and Contests Available: A-
- Payouts and Multipliers: B-
- Withdrawal Methods: C
- Promo Attractiveness: A+
- Promo available: Up to $250 first-time deposit match plus secured play up to $25 on first cash entry
Apps Like PrizePicks
PrizePicks is a popular daily fantasy app. PrizePicks was one of the first platforms to begin emphasizing the player props-like picks in the daily fantasy format. These picks are sometimes also called over/unders or higher/lowers. There are a couple different formats when you are playing these types of fantasy contests on PrizePicks, most notably the Flex Play and the Power Play formats. In Flex Play, you make your picks, and you can still win the contest even if you miss one of the picks (this is similar to when you might parlay together a few prop bets on a sports betting platform, but then have insurance on maybe one leg of the parlay). You can do Flex Play on PrizePicks with a 2-player, 3-player or 4-player contest. Power Play is the format where you have to get all of your picks right. This includes 2-player, 3-player and 4-player. The difference of course is that in Power Play you have a higher multiple or payout.
So what are the best apps like PrizePicks? If you’re looking for a great platform for participating in player prop picks similar to what PrizePicks offers, then our top two choices are Underdog Fantasy and Sleeper Fantasy. Both are offering great signup bonuses now that you can take advantage of.
Underdog’s Pick’em Contests are Comparable to PrizePicks
Click here to take advantage of Underdog’s $100 deposit match now upon signing up.
Sleeper’s Player Props are Comparable to PrizePicks
Not only are Sleeper Fantasy’s play prop contests similar to PrizePicks, they also have added dynamic payouts where each player projection has a multipliler attached to it rather than a pre-set multiplier which is how most DFS providers work.
Click here to take advantage of Sleeper’s $100 deposit match.
If you are looking for something similar to PrizePicks in the DFS market, you can’t go wrong with either Underdog or Sleeper.
How do we rate and review the best daily fantasy apps?
Our Team
Adam Spencer
Adam has been on the editorial team at Saturday Down South for multiple years and has covered college football and fantasy sports. Adam loves playing daily fantasy with a variety of sports including college football, college basketball, NFL, NBA and even PGA. With a long history of fantasy sports participation, Adam has recently become a major participant in daily fantasy pick’em contests. He appreciates when daily fantasy apps offer a great app experience with live scoring and accurate player cards.
Ethan Stone
Ethan joined the editorial team at Saturday Down South in 2022 and has covered college football, college basketball and fantasy sports. Ethan plays daily fantasy with a variety of sports including college football, college basketball, NFL, NBA and more. Ethan has recently become a big fan of daily fantasy best ball drafts. He appreciates when daily fantasy apps offer plenty of options and a variety of daily drafts.
How we review the top daily fantasy apps
There’s no substitute for first-hand experience. Our team obsessively plays daily fantasy across a wide range of the best daily fantasy apps. We evaluate all of the DFS apps with specific criteria through hundreds of contests and thousands of hours of app use.
Here is the criteria we use when evaluating the best DFS apps:
- The app: is it reliable, easy-to-use and offer a range of important features to make daily fantasy fun and enjoyable?
- Variety of contests available
- Deposit and withdrawal methods
- The extras: What else does the app do unique to make the experience better?
How to play daily fantasy
In the mid 2000’s, there was nothing better than daytime baseball. That’s because it offered a chance for me to follow my fantasy baseball team while at work. I’d fire up the Yahoo! Sports live game tracker for my fantasy baseball team, set it adjacent to what I was working on and it’d be a good day. Fantasy baseball was my thing for years. Yes, I enjoyed fantasy football, too. But, there was just something about our fantasy baseball league that was super enjoyable.
But then life got busier. Fantasy leagues became a bit cumbersome. Who had the time commitment or the attention span for an 8-month long contest? While my interest in traditional fantasy leagues and contests went away (or should I say, it got crowded out by other parts of life?), the same interest has recently been rekindled via daily fantasy (DFS).
Daily fantasy offers much of the same thrill and enjoyment of traditional fantasy sports, sprinkles in similar vibes as sports betting, and just provides a really fun and entertaining way to enjoy sports more.
Whether it’s a second-screen partner (I can track my DFS contest while I watch an NBA game at night, for instance) or just a way to put a few bucks on the line, DFS is just super fun. Whether you bet on sports through traditional sports betting or not, I think there remains a place for the best daily fantasy apps and contests for any sports fan.
The reality is that the best daily fantasy apps are not your daddy’s fantasy sports leagues. These apps are built on great technology, are incredibly user friendly and make participating in real money daily fantasy contests easy and enjoyable.
What is daily fantasy?
Daily fantasy sports (DFS) are a rapidly growing form of sports gaming and entertainment that allow users to compete in daily or weekly contests for cash prizes. While traditional fantasy sports leagues last for an entire season, daily fantasy sports contests last for just one day or one week, and participants can enter multiple contests on different days or weeks.
Playing DFS offers a different type of sports entertainment where participants create a lineup of athletes from a particular sport or league, and compete against other users’ lineups in daily or weekly contests. Each athlete is assigned a salary or value, and participants must select a lineup of athletes within a salary cap.
The goal is to create a lineup that will score the most points in a given day or week, based on the athletes’ actual performance in their respective games. Points are awarded based on the athletes’ performance in the game, such as points scored, rebounds, assists, or other statistics. The participant with the highest-scoring lineup at the end of the contest wins a cash prize.
How Do DFS Contests Work?
Daily fantasy sports contests are available for a wide range of sports, including football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer. Participants must first sign up for a DFS site or app, and then deposit money into their account.
Participants can then enter contests for a particular day or week, and select a lineup of athletes within a salary cap. Each athlete is assigned a salary or value, and participants must select a lineup of athletes within a salary cap.
Once the contests begin, participants can track their lineups’ performance in real-time, and see how they stack up against other participants. At the end of the contest, the participant with the highest-scoring lineup wins a cash prize, with prizes typically ranging from a few dollars to thousands of dollars, depending on the size and type of contest.
Drafting Players in DFS Contests
One of the most important aspects of playing daily fantasy sports is drafting the right players for your lineup. To win a DFS contest, you need to have a lineup that scores more points than your competitors, which means you need to draft players who are likely to perform well in their games. Sure, some of the top players are usually obvious, but finding less popular players that aren’t so obvious, but that can overachieve for a given night or contest likely will determine who wins the contest. Here are some tips for drafting players for daily fantasy sports contests:
- Research and Analysis – Before drafting your players, you need to do your research and analysis to find out which players are in the best form and are likely to perform well in their upcoming games or matches. This can involve reading sports news and analysis, looking at player statistics and performance history, and considering factors like injuries, suspensions, and weather conditions. There are also DFS tools available for users that recommend optimal lineups and player selections based on a given night’s or weekend’s specific matchups and latest data.
- Focus on Consistency – When drafting players for daily fantasy sports, it’s important to focus on consistency rather than just going for the highest-scoring players. Consistent performers who consistently score well in their games are more likely to help you win a contest than a player who has one great game followed by several mediocre ones.
- Consider Matchups – Another key factor to consider when drafting players for daily fantasy sports is the matchups. Some players may perform better against certain opponents or in certain weather conditions, so it’s important to take this into account when making your selections.
DFS Lineup Strategies
Drafting the right players is just the first step in playing daily fantasy sports. To truly dominate, you need to put together a winning lineup strategy that maximizes your chances of success. Here are some tips and strategies for creating a winning lineup in daily fantasy sports:
- Balance Your Lineup – One of the most important things to consider when creating your lineup is balance. You want to make sure that you have a mix of high-value and low-value players, as well as a mix of players from different teams and positions. This helps to ensure that your lineup is not too heavily dependent on any one player or team, and that you have a good chance of scoring points across the board.
- Stack Your Lineup – Another popular strategy in daily fantasy sports is stacking your lineup. This involves selecting multiple players from the same team, typically from a team that you believe will perform well in their game. By stacking your lineup, you can maximize your potential points if that team has a strong showing. Of course, if the team has a poor showing, this strategy can also lead to a low-scoring lineup, so it’s important to use this strategy judiciously.
- Use a Stars and Scrubs Approach – Another approach to lineup strategy is the stars and scrubs approach. This involves selecting a few high-value, high-scoring players who are likely to perform well, along with some lower-value players who have the potential to outperform their salaries. This approach can help you fit a few top-tier players into your lineup without exceeding your salary cap, while also taking advantage of some potentially undervalued players.
- Target Underpriced Players – Speaking of undervalued players, another key part of lineup strategy is targeting players who are priced lower than they should be. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as an injury or suspension that causes the player’s value to drop, or a new player who has not yet had a chance to prove themselves. By targeting these underpriced players, you can potentially get a lot of value for your salary cap.
- Consider Game Flow – When creating your lineup, it’s important to consider the likely game flow of each game. Some games may be high-scoring affairs with lots of back-and-forth action, while others may be low-scoring, defensive battles. By considering the likely game flow, you can make informed decisions about which players are likely to have the most opportunities to score points.
Underdog’s Best Ball Contests:
While lineup strategy has always been a key component of successful DFS participation, Underdog Fantasy has rolled out its uber-popular “Best Ball” contests which tweak or eliminate much of previous lineup strategy. The reason for this is that Best Ball contests automatically select your highest scoring players from your lineup each week, so you don’t have to set your lineup at all. This is attractive for DFS players who want to eliminate some of the “maintenance” each week for the longer-term contest formats. Best ball contests are also extremely popular because of the huge prize money typically available. You can signup for Underdog now by clicking here and get up to $100 match on your first deposit.
Types of DFS Contests Available
When it comes to daily fantasy sports, there are different types of contests that players can enter. Each type of contest has its own unique rules and payout structure, so it’s important to understand the differences in order to choose the right contest for your skill level and playing style. Here are some common types of DFS contests available on the best daily fantasy apps:
Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) Contests
Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) contests are one of the most popular types of DFS contests. In a GPP contest, the prize pool is guaranteed to be a certain amount, regardless of how many people enter. These contests usually have large prize pools and can offer significant payouts for top finishers. However, they also tend to be very competitive.
Head-to-Head (H2H) Contests
Head-to-Head (H2H) contests are exactly what they sound like: you go up against one other player, and the winner takes all. H2H contests can be a good option for players who are just starting out with DFS, as they offer a simple, low-pressure way to play. They can also be a good option for more experienced players who are looking for a quick, easy way to win some cash.
50/50 and Double-Up Contests
50/50 and Double-Up contests are similar to H2H contests, but instead of playing against just one other player, you play against a group of players. In a 50/50 contest, the top half of the players win cash, while the bottom half receive nothing. In a Double-Up contest, the top half of the players double their money, while the bottom half receive nothing. These contests can be a good option for players who are looking for a relatively low-risk way to play DFS.
Multipliers
Multipliers are a type of DFS contest that offer payouts based on a predetermined multiplier. For example, a 3x multiplier contest would pay out three times the entry fee to the winners. Multipliers can be a good option for players who are looking for a little more risk and reward than 50/50 and Double-Up contests, but don’t want to take on the high level of competition that GPP contests offer.
Satellites and Qualifiers
Satellites and Qualifiers are DFS contests that offer the chance to win a ticket to a larger, more expensive contest. For example, a satellite contest might offer a chance to win a ticket to a $100 entry GPP contest for just $10. These contests can be a good option for players who want to take a shot at a big payout without risking a lot of money upfront.
Showdown and Single-Game Contests
Showdown and Single-Game contests are a newer type of DFS contest that are becoming increasingly popular. In these contests, you select players from a single game or matchup, rather than from multiple games. Showdown and Single-Game contests can be a good option for players who want to focus on a specific game or matchup, and who want to add an extra level of excitement to their DFS experience.
Pickem or Higher/Lower Contests
These contests resemble prop betting in traditional sports betting, where you can choose higher or lower on a particular stat for a player. For example, you might choose over 25 points for Steph Curry in tonight’s game. By stringing together (similar to a parlay) multiple higher/lower picks, you can win money in a multiplier fashion. Learn more about pickem contests over at Underdog.
How Are Daily Fantasy Sports Different from Traditional Fantasy Sports Leagues?
While daily fantasy sports are similar to traditional fantasy sports leagues in many ways, there are some key differences between the two:
- Contest Length – Daily fantasy sports contests last for just one day or one week, while traditional fantasy sports leagues last for an entire season.
- Drafting Process – In traditional fantasy sports leagues, participants draft their own teams at the beginning of the season, and can make changes throughout the season as needed. In daily fantasy sports, participants select a new lineup for each contest, based on the athletes’ performance in that day or week’s games.
- Scoring System – Each daily fantasy sports site has its own scoring system, which can vary widely from site to site. In traditional fantasy sports leagues, the scoring system is generally standardized across all leagues.
- Prize Pools – Daily fantasy sports contests typically offer much larger prize pools than traditional fantasy sports leagues, with the potential to win thousands of dollars in a single contest.
Sports Available for DFS Apps and Contests
Daily fantasy spans all major sports and through offerings like pick’em contests even includes college sports such as college football and college hoops.
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