September 6, 2022
FanDuel vs. DraftKings: Battle for the Best Daily Fantasy Sports Platform
- DraftKings slightly outperforms FanDuel for many daily fantasy sports features, including fantasy sports offered, new player welcome bonus, and mobile app quality.
- FanDuel offers more flexibility for payment options, especially for withdrawing winnings.
- Though FanDuel was the very first innovator in the daily fantasy sports market, DraftKings has become the No. 1 online daily fantasy sports operator.
When you think of FanDuel and DraftKings, you probably think of online sports betting, right? We’d be surprised if you didn’t — they are the top two online sportsbooks in the U.S.
But did you know that they got their start as daily fantasy sports operators?
Before the late 2000s, fantasy sports was just a season-long event where you got one chance to draft the best players before the season started and collect your prize at season’s end when your team scored more points than your friends or co-workers who played in your league. But then FanDuel and DraftKings came along and changed the game. Now, fantasy sports lovers get to make a new team whenever they want, play in private or site-wide games, and get a chance to win money every day instead of at the end of the season.
FanDuel and DraftKings offer a lot of the same features, including available sports, types of contests, and winning potential for users of all levels. New players and fantasy sports aficionados alike struggle to figure out which daily fantasy sports site they should go with. In general, it’s a matter of preference for the look and feel of each platform. But let’s dig into the nitty-gritty to see whether FanDuel or DraftKings is better.
Get To Know FanDuel
Launched in 2009, FanDuel was the very first daily fantasy sports site. They transformed fantasy sports from a season-long venture to daily contests and games, which increased players’ chances of winning and helped pad their fantasy sports bankroll on the regular. The site’s five co-founders literally created a whole new industry that now makes billions of dollars each year.
FanDuel is currently based in New York City, though it got its start around the Austin, Texas, area. Its daily fantasy sports contests are available in most states across the U.S., including New Jersey. The site has more than 12 million registered users across its fantasy sports, sportsbook, and online casino platforms.
In 2016, FanDuel was actually set to be absorbed by DraftKings. But the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) saw that deal as a monopoly in the fantasy sports and online sportsbook industry, so they shut it down. FanDuel was then acquired by Paddy Power Betfair, which is now Flutter Entertainment.
In 2021, FanDuel’s parent company, Flutter Entertainment, reported $1.8 billion in revenue.
Get To Know DraftKings
Just a few years after FanDuel burst onto the online fantasy sports scene and changed the game forever, DraftKings came along. This site started in 2012 to add even more daily fantasy sports contests to the market. DraftKings got popular very quickly, which became more apparent when it almost merged with its predecessor, FanDuel, as mentioned above.
DraftKings is a Boston-based company, with offices in the U.K. and Malta. It has more than 2 million unique monthly users across its fantasy sports, sportsbook, and online casino platforms. Last year in 2021, DraftKings reported $1.3 billion in revenue.
Differences Between FanDuel and DraftKings
Overall, FanDuel and DraftKings are pretty well matched on most of the features, website quality, and loyal user base. But for some categories, DraftKings is slightly ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to its number and breadth of fantasy sports available and its new-user welcome bonus offer. However, FanDuel does pull ahead for offering more diverse payment methods for its fantasy sports users.
| Pros and Cons of FanDuel vs. DraftKings | |
| FanDuel | DraftKings |
| 2 unique DFS game types | 3 unique DFS game types |
| 13 daily fantasy sports leagues available | 20 daily fantasy sports leagues available |
| More daily fantasy soccer options | Fewer daily fantasy soccer options |
| No daily fantasy fighting options | 2 daily fantasy fighting options |
| Limited fantasy esports | 6 fantasy esports |
| 1 fantasy racing option | 2 fantasy racing options |
| Limited international fantasy sports leagues | Multiple international fantasy sports leagues |
| No deposit bonus for new players | Deposit bonus for new players |
| Free game entry for new players | No free game entry for new players |
| Fantasy sports news, stats, and guides | Fantasy sports news, stats, and guides |
| Less than 100,000 ratings on app | Over 500,000 ratings on app |
| 4.8 stars on Apple App Store | 4.9 stars on Apple App Store |
| More payment options for withdrawals | Limited payment options for withdrawals |
| Has an online sportsbook and online casino | Has an online sportsbook and online casino |
Let’s break down the similarities and differences between FanDuel vs. DraftKings:
Types of DFS Play
Again, FanDuel and DraftKings offer many of the same types of daily fantasy sports games. Both platforms have:
- Single-game plays
- Single-entry tournaments
- Guaranteed Prize Pools
- Head-to-heads
- 50/50s
- Multipliers
- Satellites and qualifiers
- Beginner contests reserved for players who are brand new or new-ish
- Snake Draft and Best Ball Drafts
- Private leagues
- Public leagues
- Free-to-play games
DraftKings has a few unique daily fantasy sports features that FanDuel does not. These include:
- In-Game Showdowns, where you draft players after the first half to pick a lineup that will clinch the second
- Flash Draft, which is another quick-draft game option in addition to the Snake Draft and Best Ball drafts
- Casual tier games, which are for players who are somewhat experienced but haven’t played enough to become official Experienced DraftKing players
In addition, DraftKings tends to have more high-stakes games than FanDuel. Higher stakes means even bigger returns for keen fantasy sports players.
FanDuel has two unique game offerings that DraftKings doesn’t seem to have a match for. These include:
- Beat the Score, which is where your lineup must beat a certain score and you split the payout with all other players who also win
- Contests with 3 to 100 players, where you compete against fewer players in a single contest (as opposed to hundreds or thousands of opponents) with multiple payout structures based on the number of opponents you face
Like DraftKings, FanDuel also has badges for Experienced and Highly Experienced players on the platform so new and new-ish players know the skill-level they’re playing against.
Another small, but important difference, between these two platforms comes from NFL scoring. At DraftKings, you get a full point for every reception, but at FanDuel, you only get a half-point for each.
Available Sports
If you want a wide range of sports to play, then you can’t really go wrong with either FanDuel or DraftKings. However, DraftKings offers more sports and sports in leagues that FanDuel doesn’t.
| Daily Fantasy Sports at FanDuel vs. DraftKings | ||
| Sport/League | FanDuel | DraftKings |
| NFL | Yes | Yes |
| NBA | Yes | Yes |
| WNBA | Yes | Yes |
| MLB | Yes | Yes |
| NHL | Yes | Yes |
| MLS | Yes | Yes |
| EPL | Yes | Yes |
| PGA | Yes | Yes |
| Tennis | Yes | Yes |
| UEFA Champions League | Yes | No |
| NASCAR | Yes | Yes |
| Formula 1 Racing | No | Yes |
| College Football | Yes | Yes |
| College Basketball | Yes | Yes |
| UFC | No | Yes |
| MMA | No | Yes |
| XFL | No | Yes |
| Canadian Football League (CFL) | No | Yes |
| Australian Football League (AFL) | No | Yes |
| Euroleague Basketball | No | Yes |
| ESports | No | Yes |
FanDuel and DraftKings both have games for football, basketball, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, soccer, and NASCAR racing. But you’ll see that DraftKings has a wider variety of football, basketball, and racing games, including XFL, CFL, AFL, Euroleague, and Formula 1. FanDuel offers UCL soccer, but DraftKings does not. You’ll also notice that DraftKings has fighting games, including MMA and UFC. It also offers fantasy esports for League of Legends (LoL), Call of Duty (CoD), Rocket League, DotA, Valorant, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).
To offer a bit more variety, FanDuel introduced its Fantasy Everything contests, where you can play in contests for fantasy esports as well as “reality shows” and “political debates,” according to the FanDuel site. The platform has free and paid contests for its Fantasy Everything events.
Offers for New Players
Both FanDuel and DraftKings recognize how great a welcome bonus offer is for getting new players to register for an online gambling site. But both platforms seem to have much more substantial offers for their online sportsbooks (which makes sense as this feature is likely their biggest financial pull) and their online casinos (which are pretty new, especially compared to their DFS and online sportsbook features).
At FanDuel, new players who sign up for an account get an instant free single-game entry.
At DraftKings, you get a 20% deposit match bonus up to $500. The minimum is $5. You’d have to deposit $2,500 to get the full $500 extra funds.
The offer at DraftKings may be more attractive to some, as they get $500 in bonus funds to use on the fantasy sports platform as they like. The FanDuel offer may leave something to be desired as you get one single-game entry, which may or may not result in some winnings.
Educational and News Content
You need a lot of data on each sport or league you play and every player in your lineup to have an effective daily fantasy sports strategy. Good thing both FanDuel and DraftKings have:
- Up-to-date news for all sports available on the site
- How-to guides for DFS play, strategy, and contests
- Sport-specific DFS guides
- Live gameplay
At FanDuel, you’ll find the Training Guides for each sport really helpful. These pages teach you more about building a basic roster, including what positions you need and how many players you can pick, and picking the best players while staying conscious of the salary cap. FanDuel also partners with numberFire to provide top daily fantasy sports picks on that fantasy sports stats site.
At DraftKings, you can browse the How to Play guide that has a glossary of terms used across the daily fantasy sports platform. The site also has the DraftKings Fantasy Advice library on DraftKings Nation with daily articles on players, stats, and news across all the sports and leagues they offer.
App Quality
You can use both FanDuel and DraftKings on desktop, tablets, and smartphones. You’ll find the smartphone app for both iOS and Android on those devices’ respective stores.
| App Ratings for FanDuel vs. DraftKings | ||
| Store | FanDuel Fantasy | DraftKings Fantasy |
| App Store (iOS) | 4.8 stars (100,000+ ratings) | 4.9 stars (475,000+ ratings) |
| Google Play Store (Android) | 4.7 stars (52,000+ ratings) | 4.7 stars (121,000+ ratings) |
While both apps are equally rated on the Google Play Store for Android users, DraftKings has more than double the number of ratings. That makes us feel more positively about the DraftKings Fantasy app for Android.
Now the DraftKings Fantasy app has 0.1 star more than FanDuel on the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad users. While that’s not a big margin, DraftKings Fantasy has four times the number of ratings on the App Store, so more people have used the DraftKings apps than the FanDuel app.
Note that both FanDuel and DraftKings have separate apps for the Fantasy Sports, Sportsbook, and Casino features of their platforms.
Payment Methods
The kinds of payment methods you can use to deposit and withdraw money can make a huge difference in who is able to actually use a fantasy sports platform. Both platforms allow many of the same payment methods for depositing money, but FanDuel is more accessible when it comes to payment methods for withdrawing money, which means it’s that much easier to get paid.
| Payment Methods Accepted at FanDuel vs. DraftKings | ||||
| Payment Method | FanDuel | DraftKings | ||
| Deposit | Withdraw | Deposit | Withdraw | |
| Visa | Yes | Debit only | Yes | No |
| MasterCard | Yes | Debit only | Yes | No |
| Discover | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| American Express | No | No | Yes | No |
| Play+ | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| PayNearMe | Yes | No | No | No |
| Online Bank Transfer | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| PayPal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Venmo | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Check | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Prepaid Gift Cards | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Brand Gift Cards | Yes | No | Yes | No |
FanDuel is also a bit faster at processing withdrawals — online bank transfers, debit card transfers, PayPal and Venmo, and FanDuel Play+ take between 2 and 48 hours to process, and checks come within 14 business days. It can take a little longer for your bank to process a payment from FanDuel directly or from PayPal or Venmo.
DraftKings only has the two options for withdrawing your funds from your fantasy sports account; there are more payment options for the online sportsbook and casino. It takes up to 5 business days for the platform to process withdrawal requests. Then, you may need to wait an additional few business days for your bank to process a transfer from PayPal. Your check should arrive within 14 business days after your withdrawal request is approved.
Other Features
Both DraftKings and FanDuel have online casinos and online sportsbooks, so you can play in three different ways using just one account. However, you will have to get the Sportsbook and Casino apps if you want to play these on the go.
Here are the features offered at both platform’s online casino:
- Slots
- Poker
- Craps
- Blackjack
- Roulette
- Baccarat
- Other table games
- Live dealer casino games
Compare Online Casinos in New Jersey
If you’re looking for more information on how these platforms stack up against other online casinos in New Jersey, check out our reviews. We evaluate each online casino for welcome bonus offers, game selection, customer support, and more so you have all the information you need to find the best online casino for you.
