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*2026 Update*
FPL Towers finally made some changes to the BPS! They’re not exactly groundbreaking, and this article remains relevant. If you want to know the ins and outs of them though, James has covered it all here.
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Fantasy Premier League (FPL) bonus points are a critical part of the FPL scoring system. Understanding how bonus points are calculated through the Bonus Points System (BPS) can give you a serious edge.
In this guide, we’ll break down the process, helping you track and maximize FPL bonus points to boost your fantasy team’s performance.
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It’s perfectly possible to enjoy Fantasy Premier League without having a clue what the hell’s going on.
The basics are easy enough to grasp – you pick a team, swap players in and out, and score points, right?
Well, yes!
But, if you actually want to get good at Premier League fantasy football, you need to deepen that knowledge a bit.
You can get our 10 top tips on how to win your FPL league here. Right now though, we’re going to look in more detail at the Fantasy Premier League rules.
Wait, come back! It won’t be as boring as it sounds, I promise!
In this article, you’re going to get Fantasy Premier League bonus points explained for you in terms that even a damned fool could understand (no offence).
I’ll explain what bonus points are, how Fantasy Premier League bonus points are calculated, what in the world ‘BPS’ means (yeah, it’s Bonus Points System… but what does that actually mean?), and plenty more besides.
Let’s roll, FPL rockstars!
(Okay fine, I promise never to call you that again).
Scoring points is the name of the game in EPL fantasy. Breaking news.
I’ve covered how regular FPL points are calculated, in detail, here. TLDR: you pick a team, up to 11 players score you points every gameweek, and the things they score points for varies by position.
We all know how most of the points are dished out. Goals are scored, assists are made, clean sheets are kept, and all that good stuff. What about that mysterious other category, though? What are FPL bonus points?
I’m glad I asked myself to get this article rolling* you asked, dear reader!
Every player, in all FPL fixtures, can score regular points. For PL fantasy purposes, however, three players in every game will also score FPL bonus points.
These are then added to whatever they otherwise achieved (scoring, assisting, etc.) to give their overall score for the week.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I hear you say. ‘Bonus points are points… given as a bonus. Thanks for the revelation, genius.’
Hold your horses, my friend. This little Fantasy Premier League bonus points explained article is about to kick into gear.
As noted, three players will get FPL bonus points added every match. These players will be ranked 1-3, and will receive an extra 3pts, 2pts, and 1pt respectively.
How are those Fantasy Premier League bonus points calculated? Who gets on the digital pedestal each match? Well, that’s where good old BPS comes in.
The FPL bonus points system (BPS to the cool kids like me) is a bit complicated.
It consists of over 30 different metrics, provided by Opta Sports. These range from scoring goals and getting assists, through to pass completion percentages, successful crosses, key passes, and loads of other good stuff. You can see everything that goes into the FPL bonus points system on the official FPL fantasy football website, here.
Fortunately for us, the Fantasy Premier League bonus points system is completely automatic. Put your abacus away.
After a game wraps up, the Fantasy PL powers-that-be tell us all which players they’ve doled out bonus points to, and we gratefully accept / fume that the ‘wrong’ players were chosen. Easy!
This is the point of the article at which we learn whether you’re an unhealthy PL fantasy football obsessive (like my Full 90 FPL co-conspirator James and I), or a Normal Person.
If you’re a Normal Person, you now already have a decent idea of how fantasy football bonus points work, and will unthinkingly accept them when you leisurely check your score after the gameweek.
Unhealthy obsessives like yours truly, however, who check their Fantasy Premier League points a dozen or more times throughout the gameweek, will want to know exactly when Fantasy Premier League bonus points get added!
The answer is ‘about an hour after the final match of the day has ended’, per the official FPL website. ‘About’ an hour? What unspecific nonsense is this?! I know, and I agree with you, but unfortunately that’s all the detail we get.
(In all seriousness, FPL bonus points usually are added pretty quickly after the day’s action concludes. It does typically happen within an hour at most).
What are you, some kind of FPL monster? You’re that obsessed with your FPL team that you want to see who’s going to get you bonus points during the game?!
I would never stoop that low. Never have, never will – no sir.
If you did want to check your FPL bonus points live, however (not that I’ve ever felt the need myself), there is indeed a way to do so… or so I’ve heard.
Tracking the Fantasy Premier League bonus points system in-play is actually very easy.
If you’re old-school like me, and prefer using the desktop site, just hit the ‘Fixtures’ button and click on the game you’re interested in. If you’re too high-tech for boring old computers, and using the FPL app instead, you can just go to the main menu, then ‘Fixtures & Results’, and pick a match there.
Either way, you can see two handy bits of info here. One simply tells you the three players currently favoured to take home FPL bonus points. The other shows you which players – on both sides – are currently ranking highest in the Bonus Points System.
So, there you go. That’s how you track FPL bonus points live, you madman.
The star players in FPL are star players for a reason. Quite simply, it’s because they deliver the goods more often than not, and put up Fantasy Premier League points on the regular.
In short, it’s the same story with FPL bonus points. While the BPS does reward players for lots and lots of stuff, the most points are still incurred by – y’know – scoring goals. A successful cross or a key pass, for example, will get a player 1 BPS point. A forward scoring a goal will get 24pts. Bit of a difference, there.
Accordingly, even with all the complicated stuff that goes into how Fantasy Premier League bonus points are calculated, it’s still the goal-scorers who are the stars.
Good question… me!
My short answer here is that I love the idea, but the execution could be a lot better.
Regular Fantasy Premier League stats only reward a very small number of players. Goals and assists are king.
‘Fine’ – you might say – ‘Goals win games!’
‘That’s true, amigo,’ I’d reply. ‘But lots of other stuff helps along the way’.
A common complaint in FPL is that a whole load of very good real-life players are completely irrelevant. Defensive midfielders are the most common example.
Year in, year out, Rodri is often described as Man City’s most important player. Would you ever dream of putting him in your FPL team? Of course not!
Likewise, players like Fernandinho and Kante have played major roles in helping their sides win titles in recent years, but you’d never want them in your PL fantasy team.
The whole point of the FPL bonus points system is that it rewards players who are actually good in real life – at stuff apart from just getting goals and assists. The problem is that it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to actually make this a reality.
3pts is nothing to sniff at, but they’re almost certainly going to the goal-scorers anyway. In most cases, having a good real-life game (making lots of good passes or tackles, for example) might get a player 1pt via the BPS.
I don’t think Fantasy Premier League is broken, by any means, and one of the reasons it’s so popular is its simplicity.
That said, I would like to see more players being genuine options for the best FPL team possible, aside from just the usual attacking full-backs, wingers, and strikers. Making adjustments to the BPS – whether through adjusting the BPS points each action incurs, or increasing the number of FPL points the BPS results in – seems like the best way to do it.
Well, there you go – Fantasy Premier League bonus points explained! Easy, huh? You know how Fantasy Premier League points are calculated. You know when FPL bonus points are added. You even know how to check out FPL bonus points live, if you’re an obsessive freak like me.
After reading this article, I like to think you now stand a slightly better chance of winning your FPL league. How can you crank those numbers up a whole lot higher? By using our Fantasy Premier League tips, of course!
James and I review each and every gameweek, and provide FPL advice for the upcoming batch of fixtures. Get those as soon as they land by following us on Twitter, liking us on Facebook, or just refreshing our home page like a madman.
The choice is yours, dear reader.
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