Run an Auction Draft Online

Open the link from your commissioner in any browser, enter a display name, and draft from your phone or laptop. No drafter account required.

What is an auction draft?

An auction draft — also called a salary cap draft — replaces the pick order with money. Each manager starts with the same budget, usually $200. Managers take turns putting a player up for bid, everyone who wants that player bids against each other, and the highest bid when the clock runs out wins. The winner pays from their budget, the next manager nominates, and it repeats until every roster is full.

The appeal is fairness. In a snake draft, whoever wins the draft-order randomizer gets the best player in the pool. In an auction, the best player goes to whoever values them most, and the price they pay is money they cannot spend anywhere else. Every manager has a shot at every player, and every roster is built from a series of real trade-offs rather than the luck of a draft slot.

Auctions are most common in fantasy football, but the format works for any pool. A dynasty dispersal with one franchise player in it, a fantasy basketball league, or a movie draft where three people all want the same film — if the items are worth arguing over, an auction settles it.

How does an online auction draft work?

1. A manager nominates. Nominations rotate through the managers in draft order. The nominator picks a player from the pool and can open the bidding at any price they can afford — $1 if they say nothing. A manager whose roster is full, or who cannot afford another player, is skipped automatically.
2. Everyone bids. The lot opens on every screen at once. Bid with one tap — +$1, +$5, +$10, or straight to your max — or type an exact amount. You cannot outbid yourself, and the board shows exactly who holds the top bid.
3. The clock runs out. When the lot timer expires, the top bidder wins the player, the price comes off their budget, and the player is added to their roster. If nobody bid, the player goes back into the pool for a later nomination.
4. The next manager nominates. The auction repeats until every roster is full or the pool runs out, then the board locks in with every price attached.

If a manager does not nominate in time, you can give nominations their own timer. When it runs out, the app puts up the top player in that manager's queue, or a random available player, so one absent manager cannot hold the auction up.

How much can I bid in an auction draft?

As much as you can afford while still filling your roster. Every open roster spot has to cost at least $1, so your max bid is always your remaining budget minus $1 for each spot you still need to fill after this one:

max bid = remaining budget − (open roster spots − 1)

With a $200 budget and fifteen roster spots, your max before you have won anything is $186: you spend it all on one player and fill the other fourteen spots at $1 each. Win a $50 player and you have $150 left for fourteen spots, so your max drops to $137.

You never have to work this out mid-bid. Your max is always on screen, the Max button bids it for you, and the server refuses any bid above it, so nobody can bid themselves into a roster they cannot finish. You can also see every rival's max. The threat board lists which managers can still afford to beat the current bid and which are priced out, which is most of what you need to know when deciding whether to go one dollar higher.

What stops someone from sniping a player at the last second?

The clock resets. You set a reset window when you create the draft. Any bid that lands inside that window of the deadline pushes the deadline back out, so a manager who waits until the final second to bid just gives everyone else time to respond. A late bid always leaves the room a full window to answer it, so a player goes to the manager willing to pay the most, not to the one with the fastest thumb.

Bids are settled on the server one at a time, in the order they arrive. Two managers hitting the same price in the same instant cannot both win. The second bid is refused and the bidder sees why.

Can an auction draft run over several days?

Yes. Every auction has a pace: Live for a draft-night auction with short lot clocks, or Async for a slow auction where each lot stays open for hours. Live is the traditional auction room. Async is the one most platforms cannot run, and it is the right choice for a group spread across time zones, an offseason dynasty startup, or a league that cannot agree on a single evening.

In a slow auction you are not expected to watch the board. You get an email when you are outbid, an alert when it is your turn to nominate, and an optional heads-up whenever a new player goes on the block. Text-message alerts are a Premium option. Drafters who have the room open see bids land live instead.

For more on running a draft over days rather than hours, see the slow draft guide.

Auction or snake: which draft should your league run?

If your league has never run an auction, it is worth one season. It is the format most experienced managers prefer once they have tried it, and a browser-based room with enforced budgets removes the bookkeeping that makes in-person auctions slow. If your group wants something quick and familiar, snake is still the default for good reason — see the fantasy football draft guide for the full list of formats.

What can the commissioner fix during an auction?

Live auctions go wrong in predictable ways: a fat-fingered bid, a player awarded at the wrong price, a nomination nobody meant to make. The commissioner has a correction for each of them:

• Undo last award — returns the player to the pool, refunds the winner, and hands the nomination back to whoever made it.
• Edit price — changes what the last winner paid, with the budget impact shown before you confirm and the max-bid rule still enforced.
• Cancel lot — pulls the player currently on the block back into the pool without awarding it to anyone.
• Close lot now — ends the current lot immediately at the top bid.
• Nominate on behalf — puts a player up for the manager whose turn it is when they are away.
• Pause and resume — stops the clock. Resuming gives the open lot back the time it had left.

Undos, price edits, and cancelled lots are written to an audit log, and a correction that collides with a bid landing at the same moment is refused rather than applied on top of it. League admins can make the first three corrections too.

How do you set up an auction draft?

1. Create a free league and choose Auction. The format is one setting on the league page.
2. Set the budget and roster size. $200 is the default budget. Roster size is the number of rounds: how many players each manager will win.
3. Choose a pace and clocks. Live or Async, how long each lot stays open, the late-bid reset window, and an optional nomination timer.
4. Build the pool. Paste any list, or import NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL players from Sleeper in one click.
5. Invite your managers. Each one gets a magic link, enters a team name, and is ready to bid. Make sure everyone has claimed their link before you start — a seat can only bid once someone has claimed it.
6. Start the auction. The first manager in draft order nominates, and the lots run until every roster is full.
7. Take the results home. The finished board lists every roster with every price paid, ready to enter into your league platform.

Auction draft FAQ

Is the auction draft free? Yes. Auction is one of the free draft formats, alongside snake and linear, and bidding, the budget floor, late-bid resets, commissioner corrections, and email alerts are all included. Premium and Pro are the paid upgrade paths for things like larger drafts, text-message alerts, and scheduled start times — see Pricing for the full plan.

Can I bid from my phone? Yes. On a phone the bid controls dock to the bottom of the screen with your max and the current price beside them, so you can bid one-handed. There is no app to install.

Can I set a maximum and let the app bid for me? No. There is no proxy or auto-bidding: every bid is placed by the manager making it. In a slow auction the outbid email is what brings you back in time to respond.

Can the commissioner bid for a manager who is not there? Not today. The commissioner can nominate on an absent manager's behalf, but only the manager can bid. A seat that nobody claims cannot win players and can finish the auction with open roster spots. Get every link claimed before the auction starts.

What budget and roster size should we use? $200 with fifteen or sixteen roster spots is the fantasy football convention, and it is what most auction value lists assume. If you change it, change both together. A $100 budget with fifteen spots leaves very little room above $1 players.

Can I see what everyone paid afterwards? Yes. The lot history shows every player put up for bid, who won each one, and for how much, and each roster on the finished board carries its prices.