If you have been playing fantasy football for a fair few years you will know that the two main go-to websites for stats, articles, and everything fantasy football are Fantasy Football Hub and Fantasy Football Scout. Both are excellent in providing fantasy football managers with all the information they need to better their ranks. At the start of every season, you probably wonder which one to sign up for and which offers better value for money, etc. This guide will help you make that decision with a top to bottom review of what each site offers so you can make the informed decision and see what is best suited to your FPL needs.
Before we begin, its worth saying that we have written this in an objective way, but we are part of the Fantasy Football Hub Network. Therefore, our goal here is to give you the lowdown on each and let you decide for yourself which is better.
UI Navigation – Aesthetics
Let’s start with the basics. Both websites look very different, with Fantasy Football Scout adopting a predominantly black and green colour scheme and Fantasy Football Hub with black and blue. They are both slick visually and easy to navigate, with simple headers and drop-down menus. You won’t struggle to find what you want on any of these platforms. Also, both homepages lead with the most recent article which makes sense, and you can access the trending articles and topics straight from the homepage.
Fantasy Football Hub pros and cons:
Pros:
– Easy to navigate.
– Latest articles, tweets, videos and main fantasy resources all on home page
– All sections are easily accessible – user friendly
– No ads
Cons:
– Visually, its cleaner and less cluttered than Scout, but some may prefer the busier appeal of Scout with more going on.
Fantasy Football Scout pros and cons:
Pros:
– Really nice colour scheme and easy to navigate.
– Fixture ticker, latest articles, tweets, and topics all on the homepage
– All sections are easily accessible – user friendly.
Cons:
– Adverts can be irritating.
– The forum section is not the best for chatting.
Overview of membership offering and prices
Both websites have a certain amount of articles and areas which are free of charge but charge for access to the members area which has all the OPTA stats, comparison tools, members articles, and much more. The image below gives an overview of each membership offering.
Prices
Fantasy Football Scout
Option one – Currently £20.00 for the year (with 20% off deal).
Option two – Pay £3.19 per month (£38.28 yearly)
Both of these options give you full access which includes:
– Over 150 articles
– Season ticker
– Player Projections (predictions)
– The “Rate My Team” tool to guide selections
– Tailored OPTA powered stats tables
– Player comparison tool
– Extra Members analysis in all of our Scout Notes for Premier League games
– Enhanced Pro Pundits content
Fantasy Football Hub
The Hub has three different pricing options/tiers and allows you to choose a more flexible and tailored experience.
Standard – Currently £18 per year (with 25% off deal) or £3.50 per month (cancel anytime).
Benefits:
– OPTA Stats
– Player comparison tool
– Points projections
– Player profiler
– Full App access
– Double Gameweek Planners (Including Ben Crellin’s)
– Advanced Fixture Ticker
– Slack Channel
– Team Reveals from top ranked players
– FPL Rate My Team Tool
– 150+ Membership articles each year
Premium – £48 per year (full payment) or £8.50 per month (cancel anytime)
Benefits:
– Full site access, plus:
– Access to secret Fantasy Football WhatsApp groups
– Each group includes an expert admin with multiple top finishes.
– Groups for all major fantasy formats (FPL, Sky & TFF)
– FootStock resources and WhatsApp group
Ultra – £120 per year (full payment) (no monthly option for this tier)
Benefits:
– Full premium access, plus:
– 3 team reviews a season
– Direct access to an expert
– All fantasy formats (FPL, Sky, Sun & TFF)
– No monthly plans for this tier
As you can see for an extra cost Fantasy Football Hub offers WhatsApp groups, access to experts, team reviews, access to different formats etc. If you want the basic access to all stats you can go for the standard option which is equivalent to what Fantasy Football Scout offers. However, if you want the extra personalised experience you can also get that for extra. The great thing about both these services is that if you can pay monthly and can cancel at any time so you aren’t tied into anything long term. If you want to try before you buy then the monthly option is for you.
Members Area Comparison
Both Fantasy Football Scout and Fantasy Football Hub have OPTA stats. Let’s start with what Fantasy Football Hub has to offer.
Fantasy Football Hub
Fantasy Football Hub will be releasing an app in time for the 2020/21 season. An app for a fantasy football site is well overdue and this will be a game-changer. Having the ability to check stats, and access all the tools will be made much simpler and easier. The app is extremely smooth and user friendly. It has everything the website has but doesn’t feel condensed at all. The toolbar along the bottom makes it seamless to navigate from section to section and is extremely mobile-friendly.
OPTA Stats – This is personally my favourite feature of the Hub. The level of detail you can search for is amazing. You can filter via gametime, shots in the box, shots on target, xG and xA, and a lot more. It also allows you to build custom tables and compare as many players as you like at the same time. This is what makes it my ‘go-to’ tool personally. There are not many other tools that allow such ease of comparison. You can also filter on game formats such as FPL, Sky, and Footstock. The whole table format is really easy on the eye and user friendly and you can do analysis on player and team stats in minutes and won’t have to spend endless hours doing manual workings.
Comparison Tool – This tool is perfect for those A and B comparisons. When you are pulling your hair out between two players and both have similar stats, this is the tool to use. It gives a detailed but clearly laid out breakdown of stats via web-gram and numbers. It also allows you to filter between specific game weeks and gives you all the important attacking numbers you need which you can see in the image below. You can filter to defence also if you want to compare defenders or goalkeepers and you can switch to Sky format stats too.
You can also add players to each side to compare pairs or more. So for example, if you are on a wildcard and you can’t decide between say Sterling, Salah, Grealish and Barnes or De Bruyne, Mane, Martial and Cantwell then all you need to do is to put them through this tool to get your answer.
Fixture Ticker
The fixture ticker is probably the most used and underrated tool by fantasy football managers. It’s essential really for planning ahead. Fantasy Football Hub’s fixture ticker is colour coded for fixture difficulty like most others. You can also filter between game week’s and switch between ‘attack’ and ‘defence’ fixture rating which is handy. What their fixture ticker has though, which I haven’t seen anywhere else is an average rating for the game week period you have selected for each team. I really like this addition as you can also sort by best average to worst and get a clearer picture of which teams have the best fixtures coming up. It’s especially handy for defensive analysis and working out rotating cheap defenders or goalkeepers.
Ben Crellin’s planning sheet
This is a real differentiator for Hub members over Scout. An incredibly useful planning sheet, especially during the pivotal Double Gameweek season. Allows you to visualise your team over the upcoming weeks, automatically track player prices rises and falls as well as auto-updating fixture changes. I’d highly recommend trying this thing out!
Team Reveals
A unique and popular feature Fantasy Football Hub has is their Team Reveals. A number of their contributors (who I will talk in more depth about later) reveal their plans and transfers for the following gameweek. Some of these include Matthew Jones who is arguably the best FPL player ever with three top 500 finishes and eight top 10,000 finishes and Dan Cox who won the Sky game in 2016-17 and has won over £100,000 in fantasy football winnings over his career over multiple formats. It’s a great way to improve your game is it allows you into the thoughts, insights, and reasoning of these managers who are proven winners.
Contributors
The contributors/writers at Fantasy Football Hub are scarily good and is what makes the Hub such a success. Not only do they have breathtakingly good records but the quality of writing is top-notch. Will Thomas the founder of the website has done a fantastic job on recruitment. Let me just present to you a few of them:
Matthew Jones:
– FPL – three top 500 ranks, eight top 10k ranks.
– Sky FF 2nd place in 16/17
Matthews’s record speaks for itself. It really is quite staggering how consistent his high ranks are and is surely one of the best to ever play FPL.
You can read Matthew’s Weekly Team Reveal and Strategy articles on the Hub.
Twitter: @FPLMatthew
Dan Cox:
– Winner of Sky in 16/17
– 30th in Sky in 17/18
– 3rd in Sun Dream Team in 11/12
I don’t throw the word fantasy football expert around loosely but I think we can safely attribute that title here. Dan has amassed over £100,000 in fantasy winnings over his whole career through various formats with constant high finishes.
He produces weekly articles for the Sky game so definitely one to keep an eye on especially if you are a newcomer to Sky Fantasy.
Twitter: @dancox82
Rich Clarke:
– FPL – eight top 10k finishes and former ranked number fantasy player in the world. Rich is a veteran of the game and again another one in contention for best overall FPL manager.
He writes his weekly articles ‘’A Vet’s guide to FPL’’ for the Hub.
Twitter: @richclarkefpl
Ben Crellin:
– FPL – three top 10k finishes and three top 15k finishes
Ben is the spreadsheet king among the fantasy football community. He makes quite brilliant spreadsheets to help us navigate through FPL schedule and forecasts Blank and Double Gameweeks. His Fixture planners are available on Fantasy Football Hub for members.
Twitter: @BenCrellin
Abdul Rehman aka FPL_Salah:
– FPL – four top 1k ranks, four top 10k ranks
– Sky – 70th in 17/18
With an incredible four top 1k ranks and high finishes across different formats Abdul’s number based approach has done him very well. You may know him from Twitter for his weekly clean sheet and anytime scorer odds. With such a unique record and constant high finishes his weekly posts and Team Reveal articles is definitely one to watch out for.
Twitter: @FPL_Salah
Abu Bakar aka Bigmanbaker:
– FPL – one 1k finish and finished 4th overall in 2014/15.
You will all know Abu Bakar as the thread king. His game week reviews are literally one of the best pieces of content in fantasy football and hugely popular and he now writes them for the Hub. His popularity has skyrocketed since he started his reviews and was probably one of the best additions to the Hub in 2020.
Twitter: @BigManBaker
Adam Hopcroft:
– FPL – two top 1k finishes and six top 10k.
Adam has an incredible FPL record and has been ranked consistently in the top 50 of all time managers over the last few years. Adam is a constant feature on the hub podcasts and Hub’s live 3pm match day stream.
Twitter: @ahopcroft13
The General:
– FPL – three top 500 finishes.
Mark McGettigan aka The General needs no introduction. Fantasy Footballs biggest celebrity and prized asset. One of the first to take the plunge full time as a fantasy football content creator, he has his own website, numerous pods and appears on the Official FPL show. He writes his ‘Watchlist’ articles for Fantasy Football Hub which is very handy and is also the social media manager for Fantasy Football Hub.
Twitter: @FPLGeneral
Chris Tan:
– FPL – one top 1k finish and three top 10k finishes.
Chris Tan’s captaincy articles are by far the best captaincy articles in fantasy football land. The level of detail and analysis that goes into them is staggering and to do this week in, week out take some doing. You really need to look no further when deciding your captain.
Twitter: @ChrisTanFPL
Will Thomas:
– FPL – one top 100, three top 1k, and five top 10k finishes.
– SKY – five top 100 ranks and 27th
Will Thomas is not just the founder of Fantasy Football Hub but he’s also an extremely good fantasy manager, one of the best in fact. With numerous high finishes in both FPL and Sky he really set the standard from early and knows everything thing there is to know about fantasy football. The fresh ideas and content he has introduced via Fantasy Football Hub has been exceptional and he has allowed managers from the fantasy football community to create content and have a platform.
Twitter: @FFH_Will
More Resources
The best thing about Fantasy Football Hub is it covers so many game formats and in great detail. At the moment they cover FPL, Sky, Sun Dream Team, Telegraph Fantasy, Footstock, and Fanteam and are also looking to cover any others that are in demand. The contributors they have are proven experts with constant high finishes in the formats they cover so you know you are getting the highest quality advice.
It has so many more other resources such as an FPL Rate My Team tool, Ben Crellin, and Jossy’s FPL planner, it has an Algorithm Prediction Planner for FPL and Sky which is a genius tool. If you are more into listening or watching rather than reading they have plenty of podcasts and videos released throughout the week and even live Saturday 3 pm matchday streams.
Whatsapp and Slack Channels
The Slack channel is available on all tiers whereas the WhatsApp service is only available on the Premium and Ultra. These are excellent services and I believe Fantasy Football Hub were the first mainstream fantasy football website to set up this type of service. Slack channels are an upgrade to forums, are friendly and troll-free. The discussion there is medium paced and it’s really easy to talk about fantasy football as you can post images and create polls. If you want a bit of a full-on fast-paced discussion then the WhatsApp groups would be ideal. Each WhatsApp group is capped at 50 members so it doesn’t go overboard, and is administrated by an expert fantasy manager who is there to help and give advice along with the rest of the managers in the chat.
Fantasy Football Scout
Pro Pundits
Fantasy Football Scout’s response to Hub’s Contributors and team reveals was Pro Pundits. The same concept in which they have proven fantasy managers to produce content for them. As with Fantasy Football Hub, they have some really good fantasy managers and writers. A few of the best of them below:
Mark Sutherns:
– FPL – four top 1ks and nine top 10k ranks.
Mark needs to introduction, he is the creator of Fantasy Football Scout and legend of the game. In many people’s eyes, he is the best FPL manager ever and its hard to disagree. He had passed on the reigns of Fantasy Football Scout a few years but is now back as a Pro Pundit and everyone is excited by this news. Not only is he a top manager but a great person and has a really maverick approach to the game which is refreshing.
Tom Freeman:
– FPL – five top 1k ranks and four top 10k ranks.
Tom is undoubtedly one of the best FPL managers ever. He is 15th Overall on the FFS Hall of Fame and deserves to be higher in my opinion. His articles for Fantasy Football Scout are top quality too as they are always very detailed and backed up with stats.
Pranil Sheth aka Lateriser:
– FPL – two top 100 ranks, and three top 200 ranks.
Lateriser just had an incredible 19/20 season finishing 31st overall! An unbelievable achievement. He is known as the upside chaser and offers a really unique and risky way of playing the game. His articles are very insightful and refreshing as they go against the norm of ‘standard’ fantasy thinking.
Simon March:
– FPL – 2014/15 winner and three top 10k ranks.
As a former winner Simon has reached the Promised Land in terms of fantasy football. Also backed up by a further three top 10k ranks shows he is no one hit wonder also. It’s always good to get the insight and opinions of former winners.
Season Ticker
Fantasy Football Scout has a very clear and concise season ticker. You can switch the filter between attack and defence and also move teams manually. This is really useful for checking which teams rotate well both offensively and defensively. What I like about this ticker also is you can move the team order around therefore it’s easier to compare.
Comparison Tool
Fantasy Football Scouts Comparison Tool is a really good feature to use when comparing two players. It shows all the metrics you need such as xG, xA, Shots in the box and outside, penalty area touches, defensive stats and much more. It even shows heat maps of players which is really handy when you want to check a players average position. You can also filter between specific game weeks and matches outside league games which is really impressive. It also gives you the ability to filter out certain teams from the comparison if you wish.
Match Data
The Match Data section is my personal favourite. This has all the in-match stats you need – from xG of both teams, average player position on the pitch, all the team stats and player stats, and even the BPS scores for the bonus point allocation. The BPS in this section gets updated almost immediately after the match so we can check the final bonus points here a lot sooner than it appears on the official FPL website. So far all those inpatient managers this is a nice little addition.
Rate My Team Tool
The Rate My Team Tool is very handy for planning 5-6 game weeks ahead and also to determine what transfers to make. All you have to do is punch in your team ID and your team will appear with the expected points of each player for the current and following game weeks. Again you can filter on the number of game weeks you want to project from one to a maximum of six. It will show you the expected points for each game week and a total also of the number of game weeks you have selected. You can make transfer suggestions and the tool will update to give your points projections ‘before transfers’ and ‘after transfers’. This would be quite handy to use when you are not sure on whether to make your proposed transfers. Not something I would recommend to use as a primary source to decide transfers but it’s a good guide.
My Stats Tables
The stats table section allows you to build your own custom tables with all the metrics you can think of – from defensive, passing, attacking and xG and xA. It really is a great tool if you like to dive deep into stats. You can filter on player positions, specific Gameweeks, teams and past seasons. It also allows you to make your table public so other members can view it and benefit from it. In contrast, Hub has their custom stats feature built directly into their OPTA tool (personally I find this slightly more useful and user friendly)
Conclusion
Both Fantasy Football Hub and Fantasy Football Scout members areas offer a lot of resources. Both are good value for money.
Taking everything into consideration, our conclusion is that Fantasy Football Hub is the overall better resource. This would have been different even a couple of seasons ago, but now Hub has become the go-to place for FPL with their range of user-friendly tools, resources and content. The addition of key features, such as Ben Crellin’s planner, definitely gives them the edge for the upcoming 2020/21 season. If you play multiple formats, then Hub is again the place to go.
They have currently have a 25% off pre-season discount.
