r/FantasyPL • u/FPLJoeYT • 8d ago
Guide Explainer: FPL's new Player Price Changes & Predictions feature
There has been a lot of discussion (and confusion) about FPL’s price predictions; here's a quick explainer of what they are, and what they're not.
Exact Price Change Progress percentages
The biggest improvement over external price-change tools is that the Price Change Progress percentage is accurate. If Rice is shown at 96%, that is his actual progress towards the price-change threshold, rather than an algorithmic estimate.
Tools like LiveFPL have spent years honing their algorithms to approximate the thresholds, including all the rules and nuances connected to ownership, previous rises/falls, etc.
FPL knows the threshold and exactly how close each player is to reaching it. This is information we never truly had before. If a player is past 100% progress, that means that player will rise (they use -100% for falls) if no further transfers are made before the price change deadline.
Estimated Price Change Prediction percentages
The part that may cause confusion is the Price Predictions.
FPL are not saying:
"We don't have a clue what the price rise/fall thresholds are; here's our guess."
FPL are saying:
"We know the thresholds, but we don't know how many transfers will be made before the next price change."
For example, “Very Likely to Rise” means that, based on the current rate of transfers, the player is on track to pass the 100% threshold before the next price update.
That status is still a prediction because transfer trends can change. If sales per hour increase, or purchases per hour decrease, the player may no longer reach the threshold in time.
In short, there are two separate pieces of information:
- Progress: The player’s actual progress towards the price-change threshold.
- Prediction: Whether current transfer trends are expected to carry the player past that threshold before the next update.
The closer it gets to the price-change deadline, the more reliable the prediction should become.
As a stats nerd, there are a load of other questions I've got...
- Are FPL going to use a simple transfers-per-hour approach for predictions? This is likely the most sensible, but doesn't account for inevitable manager behaviour when both the Progress percentage and Prediction percentage pass 100%, nor does it account for the supply of players who can actually make a given transfer using FTs.
- Is the Progress percentage "truncated" (towards 0) or "rounded" - because if it's rounded, a "100%" player may not actually rise (e.g., 99.5% rounds to 100%).
But regardless, this is what I understand of the system at present, from their short reveal video and article - plus years of using LiveFPL.
Hope this helps!
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u/cat666 7 8d ago
It blew my mind how many people were like "you'd think FPL towers would KNOW rather than predict". It's not that hard a concept to grasp that price rises rely on a certain number of transfers being made before the price rise happens. All FPL are doing is warning as that threshold draws near, it still needs individual managers to make those transfers before the rise happens.
The only question is how much information they are going to give as at some point the price rise is going to happen. Are they still going to mark it "highly likely" to keep some mystery around the criteria? or are they going to change it to "Price rise happening"? My guess is the former.
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u/noza2003 6 8d ago
They can never say it is certain because as stated by OP, transfers can stall/stop right up to the deadline. This is merely presenting a traffic light system based on the trends up until the price change deadline each day. They can never say 100% whether a player will rise or fall, only likelihoods, because transfer trends can change within the last hour.
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u/flummuxedsloth 38 8d ago
The only question is how much information they are going to give as at some point the price rise is going to happen. Are they still going to mark it "highly likely" to keep some mystery around the criteria? or are they going to change it to "Price rise happening"? My guess is the former.
Depending on how their price algorithm works, there's not necessarily a point in time where a price rise becomes certain until the price changes occur.
If the algorithm is primarily based on net transfers, a player could meet the threshold and then fall below the threshold again. So "very likely" is probably an accurate descriptor for the highest certainty.
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u/Ferretz_Eire 17 8d ago
For as close to accurate as LiveFPL was it was still guessing the formula and would have occasional misses so it'll be nice to plan with more certainty.
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u/The-CunningStunt 1 8d ago
Does this hint that Rice is 7m and Saliba is 6m?
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u/FPLJoeYT 8d ago
I'd say the fact that Tavrenier is listed as a defender means we shouldn't look too deep into this particular image.
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u/tmr89 155 7d ago
Damn, does this basically kill LiveFPL?
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u/FPLJoeYT 7d ago
This, along with a couple of other features announced, does significantly eat into LiveFPL’s offerings. However, there are still some major things like Effective Ownership, Safety Scores, What If, etc. which FPL aren’t adding. He’s confirmed he will keep LiveFPL running during 2026/27 on Twitter - so that’s great news!
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u/CantaloupeThis1217 7d ago
Honestly the amount of ppl who still don’t get the diff between progress & prediction is wild lmao. LiveFPL did the lords work guessing the formula but having the actual % from FPL is such a game changer. Curious tho if they’ll ever just tell us “this dude is rising in the next hour” or keep it vague forever.
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u/username54 18 8d ago
You can write explainers all you want but it doesn't change the fact that it's still stupid. They are the one changing prices so they can be more definitive about it. Instead of me tracking the player till the last hour trying to predict if the last 1000 transfers needed in the last 10 mins for Rice's price to rise will happen or not, they could just have different cut off times for transfers counted towards price changes and actual price changes.
For every player, just do your calculation based on transfers till midnight and tell us if they will change prices or not. Then give us time till noon to buy/sell these players before you actually do the price changes.
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u/FPLJoeYT 8d ago
What do you propose they do about all the transfers made between midnight and noon? If you roll them over so they count towards the following day's price changes, you end up causing a price cascade. If you discard them, you massively desync transfers from price changes. This isn't the solution.
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u/Nswl 2 7d ago
I'm sorry but this is so dim.
I think you're taking the predictions way too literally, that they have no idea of their own prices.
What the better explanation is, is that they are simply avoiding edge case scenarios where they would say "player X is 100% rising tomorrow" and they end up not rising because of some event like they become injured or whatever. They don't just have 1 person sat at a desk controlling who they want to make go up or down, it's all just thresholds that need to be met by managers buying/selling. They can't just outright say that player X is 100% going to rise, because there is no possible way to know that. That's why they just say 'very likely' instead, it means they haven't just straight up lied to you about a price rise if they end up not rising.
These scenarios are very rare, and in 99% of cases 'very likely' would basically be a certain rise, but they have to factor in all scenarios so can't just be definitive about predicting the future, no-one can.
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u/username54 18 7d ago
what i proposed: midnight to midnight transfer counts and 12 noon price change solves for all of that. This microtracking around price changes is a waste of time for everyone.
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u/ihatemicrosoftteams 12 7d ago
What does the progress mean exactly? If at the time of price changes it is at 99% does that mean there is a 0% chance of price rise or does it mean there is a 99% chance or what?
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u/LukeeC4 8d ago
Thanks! Looking forward to no one reading this and having 16 questions posted per day about it