FanRanked › Leagues › Compare › FanRanked vs Fantrax
Fantrax is the deep end of fantasy baseball: minor-league rosters, contracts, salary caps, picks years out, and a dynasty community that settled there over the last decade. It is the platform FanRanked measures itself against, and this page says where each one is ahead.
By the FanRanked staff. Updated 2026-09-28. FanRanked is ahead on 18 features, Fantrax on 4, even on 33.
On the core dynasty machinery the two are closer than most people expect. Both have minor-league slots with eligibility rules, rookie drafts, contracts, a salary cap, picks tradeable years ahead, slow and auction drafts, offline entry, and mid-season settings changes. If your league runs on Fantrax today, nothing you rely on for dynasty is missing on FanRanked. Most of what Fantrax sells in its Premium tier ($129.95 per league) is also built on FanRanked, free.
FanRanked adds things Fantrax does not have: arbitration and salary raises, a weighted and auditable draft lottery, conditional picks and swap rights, a trade finder that builds three-team deals, dead money and multi-year cap sheets with what-if scenarios, a sandbox copy of the league, a commissioner assistant, a Discord bot, side games, and minor-league stats that can score. The rankings and trade calculator read your league. And a Fantrax league imports in one click, history included.
Fantrax is ahead on its store app, on the size of its dynasty community and public league pool, and on ten years of edge cases. A few settings are still Fantrax only, such as one player on more than one team in the same league and live scoring pushed to your phone.
| Feature | FanRanked | Fantrax |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | ||
| Free to host a full-season league | Yes. Every format is free to host and play: dynasty, keeper, redraft and the October games | Yes. Free tier with ads; a paid tier for extras |
| Ad-free option for the whole league | Partly. Pro removes ads for the subscriber only | Yes. On the paid tier (ahead) |
| Formats and Scoring | ||
| Rotisserie with custom categories | Yes. Any 1 to 20 categories from box-score and derived stats, or up to 12 formula categories you write | Yes. The longest category list anywhere |
| Head-to-head categories, each category or one win | Yes. Each category or most categories; periods daily, weekly, semi-weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or custom dates | Yes |
| Head-to-head points and season points | Yes. Periods daily, weekly, semi-weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or custom dates | Yes |
| Custom point value for every stat | Yes. Any box-score stat, derived stat or formula category, up to 40 per league | Yes |
| Innings minimum and games-played caps | Yes. Innings minimum and a games cap per slot | Yes |
| Configurable playoffs and divisions | Yes. 2 to 32 teams, reseeding, consolation, toilet bowl, placement games, round lengths, up to 16 divisions | Yes |
| Best ball lineups | Yes | Yes |
| AL-only and NL-only player pools | Yes. AL-only, NL-only or any set of clubs; the pool applies to drafts, waivers and adds | Yes |
| Rosters and Lineups | ||
| Configurable roster slots | Yes. C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, IF, LF, CF, RF, OF, DH, UTIL, SP, RP, P, BN, IL, NA, TAXI, MiLB, up to nine custom slots, custom roster columns, rookie minimums and maximums, minimum starters per slot | Yes |
| Minor-league slots with eligibility rules | Yes. By prospect flag or career at-bats and innings, with age, games and days-on-roster caps, optional auto-graduation | Yes |
| Injured-list slots with rules | Yes. IL10 or IL60, custom injury types, grace days, auto-park, forced activation | Yes |
| Daily or weekly lineups, lock at first pitch | Yes. Daily, daily-tomorrow, weekly or once per scoring period; per-player lock, a fixed time or a time per weekday; nightly auto-start | Yes |
| Commissioner-set position eligibility thresholds | Yes. Games this season and last, starts, appearances | Yes |
| Transactions | ||
| Waiver order or FAAB bidding | Yes. Rolling, reverse standings or first come; FAAB with minimum bids, tradeable; claim groups and alternate drops | Yes |
| Instant free agents option | Yes. Same day or next day | Yes |
| Trade review: commissioner, vote or timed | Yes. None, commissioner, league vote with a veto count, or a timed window | Yes |
| Three-team trades | Yes | Yes |
| Trade draft picks years ahead | Yes. One to five seasons of future picks, set by the commissioner | Yes |
| Conditional picks and swap rights | Yes. Finish, protected, usage and swap conditions | No |
| Trade analyzer and trade finder inside the league | Yes. Analyzer, a balance-this-deal helper, and a finder with three-team loops | Partly. A trade block, no finder |
| Drafts | ||
| Live snake draft room | Yes. Clock by round, queue with pick-from-queue, chat, pause, undo, force pick, pick trades on the board, automated drafts | Yes |
| Auction draft | Yes. Live or slow, proxy or sealed bids, keepers pre-loaded at salary | Yes |
| Slow draft with hours per pick | Yes. Clock in hours with an overnight pause and custom days off | Yes |
| Offline draft entry | Yes. Paste snake or auction results with a dry run | Yes |
| Rookie draft with a first-year-player pool | Yes. Startup, rookie, supplemental and reserve drafts | Yes |
| Weighted draft lottery | Yes. NBA, NHL, linear or even odds, seeded and auditable | Partly. Randomized or manual order |
| Linear (non-snake) draft order | Yes. Snake, snake with third-round reversal, or linear | Yes |
| Dynasty Economics | ||
| Keepers with a count and a deadline | Yes. 0 to 60 keepers with a minimum, position caps, years limits, hidden or public picks and a deadline default; a flat dollar raise or last price paid in auction leagues | Yes |
| Keeper cost by draft round | Yes. Round drafted with escalation, a first-round floor rule, a pickup round, first picks or named picks; keepers fill their slots on the board | Yes |
| Contracts with years, options and extensions | Yes. Standard, rookie, taxi, franchise and transition contracts; options, multi-year extensions, a re-sign window, rookie conversion, generated salaries | Yes |
| Salary cap with hard or soft enforcement | Yes. Hard, soft with a luxury tax, or report only; a floor; retained salary; a cap by season and by team | Yes |
| Arbitration and salary raises | Yes. Allocation, bid or commissioner modes in a calendar window | No |
| Dead money and multi-year cap sheets | Yes. Dead money by season, cap sheets years ahead, what-if scenarios | Partly. Cut penalties, no multi-year sheet |
| Commissioner Tools | ||
| Change settings mid-season with an audit trail | Yes. Every section validated and logged, mid-season included | Yes |
| Constitution page with version history | Yes. 25 versions and read receipts | Partly. Rules text |
| Dues ledger and payout table | Yes. Ledger, per-team amounts, part payments, waive and refund, prize pools, payouts by place, reminders; card checkout is not wired yet | No |
| Season archives, record book and trophy case | Yes. Archives, record book, awards, trophy case; twelve seasons from Yahoo | Yes |
| Sandbox copy of your league to test changes | Yes. A private copy to try a rollover or a rule change | No |
| Commissioner assistant that reads your rules | Yes. Reads settings, constitution, trades and flags; proposes, never applies | No |
| Community | ||
| Chat, message board and polls | Yes. Reactions and images; threads, pins and polls on the board | Yes |
| Discord bot and webhooks | Yes. Webhook embeds for chat, trades, waivers and posts; a bot that links accounts and DMs alerts | No |
| Push notifications in a store app | Partly. Web push and email are built; there is no store app to carry push yet | Yes (ahead) |
| Power rankings, playoff odds, matchup previews | Yes. Plus a news feed filtered to your rostered players | Partly |
| Side games inside the league | Yes. Weekly pick'em and a prospect bracket | No |
| Imports and Data | ||
| Bring a league over from another host with its history | Yes. Yahoo and Fantrax in one click with past seasons; ESPN, CBS, RTSports and NFBC rosters through Connections; rosters, salaries and contracts from one spreadsheet | No |
| CSV exports and a read-only API | Yes. Eight CSV datasets and a read-only league API token | Partly. CSV exports of some tables |
| Minor-league stats can score | Yes. Chosen levels and a weight, from the MLB Stats API | No. MiLB stats shown, not scored |
| Apps and Platform | ||
| Apps in the App Store and Google Play | No. Installs to your home screen as a web app; store apps are not published | Yes (ahead) |
| Live scoring during games | Yes. About every four minutes while games are on | Yes |
| Rankings and trade values that read your league | Yes. Dynasty rankings, trade calculator, StreamMachine and player values read your rosters and settings | Partly |
| Sample leagues to explore without signing up | Yes. Five running leagues, one per format | No |
| Public leagues to join right now | Partly. A marketplace of open seats, but far fewer leagues than the big hosts | Yes (ahead) |
| Postseason formats | Yes. Long Ball, One and Done, October Box Pool and Playoff Draft | No |
Start a league on FanRanked and choose Bring a League From Fantrax, then paste the league link. Settings, teams and rosters come over from Fantrax's public API, with injured and minor-league players parked, plus past standings, drafts and rosters. Members-only data such as the season chain, managers, rules, weekly scores and moves comes through a helper script a member runs once in their browser. Contracts and salaries can be imported from a CSV.
Yes. Contracts with years, options and extensions; a cap with hard, soft or report-only enforcement; a floor; dead money; and multi-year cap sheets. FanRanked also has arbitration, which Fantrax does not.
Yes, in one click from the league link, with past seasons. A member runs a small helper script once to bring over the members-only data.
A store app with live scoring pushed to your phone, a bigger pool of public dynasty leagues, and a few settings FanRanked has not built yet, such as one player on more than one team in the same league.
Both have a free tier. Fantrax charges $129.95 per league for Premium, which holds settings such as 64-team leagues, custom scoring periods, formula categories, contract automation and multi-team managers. FanRanked has those in every full-season league for free, with no paid tier for the league.