Fantasy Auction Values for 2026: Build a Budget Before the Room Gets Loud

Updated Sep 7, 2026 · Week 1 board.

Jahmyr Gibbs prices at $65. Bijan Robinson prices at $63. Puka Nacua prices at $61. Those three alone cost $189, almost 8 cents of every dollar in a 12-team, $200 room.

That is not an opinion. It is the draft market itself, converted into dollars.

Here is how. The market ranks 210 fantasy-relevant players by average draft position, a Sep 7, 2026 snapshot. We turn that rank into a price with one budget curve. Pick 1 prices at $65.

Pick 60 prices at $12. Pick 150 prices at $2. The room pays for the top of the board and lets the bottom go for pocket change.

What the price tells you, and what it doesn't

The dollar figure is pure market. It says where the room drafts a player, not whether he is worth it there. For that you need one more figure, and only one: his Week 1 projection off the board. Divide the dollar by the projection and every player in the auction, at every position, becomes directly comparable.

Christian McCaffrey, Questionable, at $56 and 18.38 is $3.05 a point. Trey McBride at $29 and 14.35 is $2.02. Tyler Warren, also Questionable, at $10 and 12.24 is 82 cents. Those three cost wildly different money and the quotient is what tells you which one is actually expensive.

One limit, stated plainly. The projection is a Week 1 number and your auction buys a season. A back with a hard opener prices badly here and can still be right at his season cost, and I would not fade a $50 player on one week of arithmetic. The quotient earns its keep lower down, in the middle and bottom of the sheet, where two men cost the same money and just one of them holds a job this week.

Build the budget before you touch a paddle

Write your budget by tier before the first name is called. The curve tells you exactly how top-heavy the room's money is. The top 12 picks cost $669, better than a quarter of the room's full $2,400. By pick 36, $1,483 is gone.

That is 62 cents on the dollar. By pick 100, $2,201 is spent, over 91 cents. What is left is a long tail of $1 players: 26 of the room's 192 rostered spots price at exactly $1, the formula's floor, no matter who fills them.

Two ways to spend $200 that both work.

• Stars, then punt. Bijan Robinson ($63), Puka Nacua ($61) and Amon-Ra St. Brown ($55) run $179. That leaves $21 for 13 more roster spots, which is fine, since most of those spots price at $1 to $3 anyway. You are spending where the room spends.
• Spread it across the middle. Skip the top tier. Buy six or seven players in the $20 to $35 range instead, the band where a $28 Kyren Williams or a $23 Tee Higgins lives. You get more usable players and fewer $1 fliers, at the cost of never owning a true top name.

Neither plan is wrong. What is wrong is no plan at all. Write a walk-away price for each target, and here is the honest way to set it: pick the dollars per point you are willing to pay at that position, multiply by his projection, and that is your number. Stop bidding there.

The only dollar that costs you the draft is the one spent past your own number.

The board: top 40 by market price

Auction $ is the price the current draft order implies. Projected pts and board rank come off the Week 1 board. Right-hand column, price divided by projection, computed on every line.

A (Q) in these tables flags a man the injury report still lists as Questionable.

Where quarterback and tight end get cheap

These are the two positions where the room pays for one or two names and then walks away, and they are where the quotient gets silly.

Read the right-hand column on both. No quarterback in that group costs more than $1.35 a point, and Josh Allen at $26 against 19.26 is the one sitting on that line at $1.3499. The cheapest is Jalen Hurts at 38 cents, who also carries the highest quarterback projection anywhere on this sheet. Every tight end below Trey McBride is under $1.25, and Tyler Warren at 82 cents is third at his position.

You start one of each. So the entire quarterback and tight end half of your starting lineup is available for about $18, in a room where a single running back costs $65.

Where the board and the market don't agree

Sort the 74 players priced at $8 or more by where the room drafts them at their position, then sort the same 74 by the board, and the two orders come apart. These are the five widest gaps in each direction.

The board is higher on these than the room is. Buy at or under market.

The room is higher on these than the board is. Let somebody else pay.

Michael Pittman, Questionable, at $8 is the one I keep circling. That tag is the part I have to talk myself through. Fourteen places, a single-digit price, and a real role. At that price the tag is survivable, and survivable is the case for him.

Eight dollars is a small enough share of the budget that a lost Sunday does not sink the roster. I would not raise the bid past it until he practices in full. Alec Pierce is the opposite, and the cleanest fade here: $10 for a receiver the room drafts thirty-fourth at his position and this board ranks forty-fifth. Neither gap proves a Week 1 result.

Both are exactly the kind of gap that should move your walk-away price.

Running the room: nomination tactics

• Nominate names you don't want, early. Every team still has a full $200 in the first ten minutes. Put a stud you are not targeting up first. Let two other rosters fight over him. Their money gets spent, not yours.
• Let the expensive points go. James Cook at $49 and $3.29 a point, and Bijan Robinson at $63 and $3.27, are the two priciest points in the top forty. Somebody else can have them.
• Buy your quarterback and tight end dead last. Jalen Hurts at $8, Matthew Stafford at $9, Harold Fannin at $9, Tyler Warren at $10. Four starters. Thirty-six dollars. Not one of them ranked worse than eighth at his own position.
• Watch the other teams' cash, not just your roster. Once three or four teams are down to $10 to $20 total, a player who should cost $28 goes for $14. Nobody left can pay the sticker price. Check what is actually in the room, not the number you wrote an hour ago.

The Receipts Drawer

The number: $8, twice. Jalen Hurts at 38 cents a projected point and Michael Pittman at 65 cents, and between them they cover a starting quarterback and a third receiver for the price of one bench back. Build the budget off the curve above, not off the room's mood, because stars-then-punt and spread-the-middle both cash if you write the number down first. Where this breaks: the room stops sleeping on quarterbacks in the last hour, Hurts goes for $20, and the cheap half of this plan evaporates while you are still holding cash.

Watch the price of the second quarterback nominated. If he clears $20, take yours immediately. My ceiling tonight is $12 on Hurts and $11 on Pittman, and James Cook goes at $49 without a bid from me.

The companion board on price per projected point runs the same division across all four positions. The ADP value-tier breakdown shows how the draft order shifts between formats. The roster construction guide covers mapping 16 auction spots to a starting lineup. Full detail, refreshed as the market moves, lives on the rankings page and the draft kit.

Check the rankings page again close to your draft, since the market snapshot can update several times a day.