The AI co-pilot for Fantasy Premier League

outsmart
your league.

SmartPlay tells you who to captain, who to transfer, and who to bench — every gameweek. Picks that adapt to your actual mini-league rivals.

Free access through 30 September 2026. No card required.

25,234

player scores audited

95.2%

of a perfect season XI

Editorial illustration of two footballers competing for the ball

Three taps to a smarter gameweek.

No spreadsheets. No black box. Link your team and SmartPlay does the analysis — you make the call.

01

Link your team

Connect your FPL side and mini-league in seconds. Nothing to install.

02

Pick a strategy

Protect a lead, play balanced, or chase rank. Every pick adapts to your choice.

03

Make your moves

Get captain, transfer, and bench calls ranked by expected points. You decide.

v12 validation

Accuracy metrics, without the hand-waving.

Four walk-forward test windows from 2025-26. Every test gameweek comes after the data used to train that fold, so the benchmark reflects unseen matches.

Walk-forward benchmark

25,234 player-gameweeks · 32 GWs

MAE

0.979

avg absolute miss

Spearman

0.729

full-pool ranking

NDCG@10

0.380

top-pick ranking

Decision score

0.555

rank + top picks

Error consistency

32 of 32

v12 had lower MAE than v11 in every evaluated gameweek: 0.979 vs 0.994 on average.

Top-pick ranking

+0.028

Mean NDCG@10 gain over v11. The 95% bootstrap interval is +0.005 to +0.052.

Combined decision score

+0.014

Mean gain in the 50/50 Spearman and NDCG@10 selection metric; 95% interval +0.002 to +0.027.

Season recap · XI audit · 2025/26

Did the model spot the right players?

We added up SmartPlay's weekly xPts for every player across all 38 gameweeks, then picked the highest-scoring legal 3-4-3 XI from that list. Below, we compare it to the XI you'd build with perfect hindsight — the players who actually scored the most.

This shows whether the AI got the long-term player calls right. It isn't a recommendation to start the same 11 every week.

Headline result

95.2%

of the points a perfect-hindsight XI scored.

SmartPlay's XI banked 2,047 real FPL points across the season — 103 short of the best possible 3-4-3 (2,150 points).

made for your mini-league.

Most FPL tools give every manager the same advice. SmartPlay’s picks adapt to the exact rivals you’re trying to beat. This is the part nobody else does.

Strategy

The mode you pick reshapes every call.

Each mode rewires the captain, transfer, and chip recommendations — without you touching the underlying model.

Ahead

Protect

Template captain

Lock in the obvious pick. Avoid needless variance.

Close

Balanced

Best EV pick

Highest expected points without forcing risk.

Behind

Chase

Differential captain

Lower-owned pick for rank separation.

Mini-league toolkit

Track rivals. Catch up. Lock in the lead.

Rival captain coverage

See which players each rival is captaining this gameweek.

Differential edge

How much rank you stand to gain from your low-owned picks.

Template alignment

How much of your team matches the league consensus right now.

Template gap

See high-owned rival picks you do not own and the exposure if they haul.

Analysis scope

Focus the read on reachable rivals instead of distant managers.

Leader gap context

Keep the points gap in view while you choose protect, balanced, or chase mode.

Rival-aware picks that shift with your league — recomputed every gameweek.

Open the mini-league lens

Elite FPL instinct, real AI engineering.

A top 0.4% all-time FPL manager and an AI/ML engineer trained at Oxford and Berkeley. Both use SmartPlay every gameweek.

Alish — SmartPlay founder

Alish

Product & FPL strategy

  • FPL manager since 2014 — twelve seasons playing.
  • Finishes: 1× Top 10k, 2× Top 30k, 3× Top 50k, 4× Top 100k worldwide.
  • Best season: rank 9,046 — top 0.1%, roughly 1 in 1,000.
  • Season 2025/26 rank 49,078 — top 0.4%.
  • All-time rank 38,405 — top 0.4%, roughly 1 in 250 managers who have ever played.
  • ACCA-qualified — the same analytical instinct that audits a balance sheet picks apart an FPL squad.
  • Shapes the FPL methodology and strategy behind every SmartPlay recommendation.
All-time rank 38,405 (top 0.4%)4× Top 100k finishes10 of 12 seasons in top 10%ACCA-qualified
Qazy — SmartPlay founder

Qazy

AI, Design & Engineering

  • UC Berkeley School of Information — focus on Artificial Intelligence applications.
  • University of Oxford AI Programme — top 5 in cohort with 89%, across deep learning, NLP, and ethical AI.
  • 2nd place at the UC Berkeley MIMS Quantitative Finance hackathon — applied financial ML built head-to-head against the cohort.
  • 5 years working in football, including professional football club FC Kairat.
  • Builds production AI systems for a living — the same engineering rigor SmartPlay's prediction model is built on.
  • Built the prediction engine, the solver, and the product behind SmartPlay.
AI/ML engineerUC Berkeley · MIMSOxford AI · Top 5 of cohortEx-FC Kairat

pay once. no subscription.

Start free now. Your access runs through 30 September 2026; no card required today. Pay once through PayPal only if you want to keep access after that.

Full Season

Most popular · Limited deal
$80$49

Until the end of the 2026/27 season

  • AI captain & transfer recommendations
  • Protect, balanced, and chase strategy modes
  • Mini-league lens — rival-aware picks
  • Custom-budget squad optimizer
  • Faceted search across every player
  • Updated every 2 hours during the gameweek
  • Full ML model methodology

Half Season

Limited deal
$45$29

Half-season access

  • AI captain & transfer recommendations
  • Protect, balanced, and chase strategy modes
  • Mini-league lens — rival-aware picks
  • Custom-budget squad optimizer
  • Faceted search across every player
  • Updated every 2 hours during the gameweek
  • Full ML model methodology

Free access runs through 30 September 2026 for launch signups — every account gets at least 10 free days. After that: one-time payment only. Half Season customers can upgrade to Full Season for $29 from Account. No recurring payments or auto-renewal.

Common questions, honest answers.

How is SmartPlay different from other FPL tools?

Three things you won't find together anywhere else. First: the mini-league lens — recommendations change based on the specific managers you're competing with, not a generic top-1k consensus. Second: three one-click strategy modes (Protect, Balanced, Chase) that reshape captain, transfer, and chip decisions around your actual rank position. Third: a fully documented model — xPts, OFR, FRR, all explained at /under-the-hood. Most tools either pick for you in a black box or hand you a spreadsheet to interpret alone. SmartPlay does neither.

What does SmartPlay actually do for my mini-league?

When you link a mini-league, four things kick in. Captain coverage shows whether your armband moves with the field or creates a swing after the deadline. Transfer and squad advice factor in rival ownership and template gaps, so a good buy can become more or less urgent depending on your league. Differential edge compares your low-owned picks against template alternatives. And leader-gap context shows which rivals shape the analysis. This is the wedge — everything else flows from it.

Will SmartPlay actually improve my rank?

Honest answer: it depends on whether you use it. SmartPlay gives you a model evaluated on 25,234 player-gameweeks across 32 leakage-controlled walk-forward gameweeks, rival-aware recommendations, and a documented framework that the recent FPL champions all describe as part of their own process. What you still bring: discipline, patience, and the willingness to occasionally override the model. We don't promise top-10k — anyone promising that is lying. We promise tools that make better decisions easier.

Do I still play, or do I just follow the AI?

You still play. SmartPlay is a co-pilot, not autopilot. Every recommendation comes with the reasoning behind it — you can agree, override, or use the tool only on the decisions you actually want help with (captain only, transfers only, or all of it). The 2023/24 and 2024/25 FPL champions both describe analytics as one input alongside form, fixtures, news, and gut feel. SmartPlay is built to be the smartest input, not the only one.

Can I join mid-season?

Yes — and mid-season is often the smartest time. The model uses past-season data plus the current season's live data, so it's never starting from scratch. By the time you're halfway through, you know where you stand in your mini-league, your free hits are spent, and the run-in to GW38 is where most rank movement actually happens. The limited-deal price applies whether you join in GW1 or GW28.

How does payment work? Is it recurring?

Start with free launch access through 30 September 2026 (every account gets at least 10 free days), no card required. If you want to keep access after that, checkout runs through PayPal. SmartPlay plans are one-time payments: Full Season is $49 until the end of the 2026/27 season; Half Season is $29 for the first half of it (through December). Half Season customers can upgrade to Full Season later for $29 to get the rest. There are no recurring payments and no auto-renewal.

The SmartPlay journal

Latest from the blog.

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stop guessing. start outsmarting.

Link your team, pick a strategy, and get your first set of calls in under two minutes.

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Free access through 30 September 2026. No card required. No auto-renewal.