Whether you’re playing fantasy football for fun or profit, you probably don’t want to shell out a bunch of cash for fantasy advice. After all, that kind of defeats the purpose.

 The good news is that there have never been more free fantasy football advice sites on the market. Here’s a roundup of all the best websites and apps for getting the data you need to win your league – without cutting into your bottom line.

Fantasy Football Calculator’s Mock Drafts Are Flexible and Plentiful

What annoys me about most mock draft apps is their minimal draft configuration options. Unless you’re playing in a standard league, your average mock draft utility is just about useless.

Mock draft uselessness is not an issue for Fantasy Football Calculator, whose draft room is always open, bustling, and fully stocked with mock drafts of every configuration. Whether you are targeting PPR, Half-PPR, 2-QB, or Dynasty, they’ve usually got a mock draft that matches your league’s configuration starting within the next ten minutes.

They also let you browse the results of their completed drafts, including aggregated ADP data.  That’s currency, accurate, and actional draft data for free, right there at your fingertips. Beautiful.

The Draft Buddy Offers Actionable Live Draft Advice

The Draft Buddy from the Fantasy Football Nerds is like having your most brilliant friend give you advice while you draft – but not nearly as annoying. It offers suggestions in real-time and shows critical data to help you make informed picks as you build your roster.

Draft Buddy is customizable to most league types, checks bye weeks, analyzes your roster needs, and identifies where to find value throughout your draft.  The user interface is also more intuitive than other paid tools. 

The one shortcoming of Draft Buddy is that it doesn’t sync with your league, so you’ll have to enter each pick manually.  But that’s a minor inconvenience for free live draft advice of this caliber.

It even has an AI feature powered by IBM Watson.  You may remember this supercomputer from its domination of Jeopardy against people way more intelligent than you.

I’m not entirely sure why Watson is slumming it in the fantasy football world, but you better believe I’m happy to reap the benefits.

‘Who Do I Start?’ App is Perfect for Toss-Up Lineup Decision 

FantasyPros’ Who Do I Start? app is a fast and efficient tool for comparing players during the fantasy football season. It gives you side-by-side stats, rankings, and player news in a clean, easy-to-navigate format.

This app offers player projections from various fantasy professionals (as their name implies) that can help you make those difficult decisions, week in and week out. The stats they provide aren’t particularly insightful, so the expert analysis feature is what puts this app over the top.

It’s also an effective tool for helping you make decisions during your draft, particularly if you’re choosing between players with comparable ADP.  The fact that it’s so quick and easy to use means you won’t burn much time as you make those critical in-draft decisions.

Draft Hero Is Offering Their Tool Suite for Free (for Now)

Draft Hero is a premium fantasy football software suite that is currently letting folks use its services for a free promotional period. They have a variety of draft prep and in-season tools that can help you build and maintain a championship-caliber fantasy team.

This freemium tool offers detailed player projections, roster optimization, draft analysis, and more. At the time of this writing, you can sync Draft Hero to most league hosts and get live advice during your draft.  But I’m not sure for how long that feature will remain free.

Draft Hero works with most of the major fantasy league hosts, including some of the minor players like Sleeper, My Fantasy League, and the FFPC.  Having access to your entire league means you’ll get practical advice tailored to your team’s true needs.

Dynasty 101 Identifies Beneficial (but Fair) Trade Opportunities

Being on the wrong end of a bad fantasy football trade in any league will hurt.  But in dynasty leagues, the results can be devastating.   

Let’s say you desperately need a wide receiver upgrade and have depth at RB to deal from. Or maybe injuries left you in a roster crunch and trying to pull off a two-for-one deal. 

How can you identify realistic dynasty trade opportunities that meet your goal but is also favorable to the opposing team?  That’s where the Dynasty 101 trade calculator shines. 

The trade analysis software calculates and totals numerical scores for each player involved in the trade.  It even considers tiered rankings to ensure that you’re neither overpaying nor insulting your trade partners.

Another benefit of these tools is that dynasty trade analyzers can be used as an objective source to help you sell a trade to a league-mate. Just send a screenshot to prove you’re not trying to fleece them.

Free Tools Have Value if you Know Where to Look

Hardcore and casual fantasy football players alike can benefit immensely from the insights provided by free fantasy football tools.  There are valuable and effective tools out there; you just need to know where to find them.

Granted, with free tools, you might not be able to get all of your fantasy answers from a single source.  However, the money you save could be well spent on that fantasy basketball league that’s right around the corner.

For more on fantasy advice, make sure to check out Belly Up Fantasy Sports. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.