FPL API Price Change Data in Python: The Official 2026/27 Fields

Since 2026/27, the free Fantasy Premier League API includes its own price-change predictions. Each player in bootstrap-static carries price_change_percent (progress toward a rise or fall) and price_change_projections (projected progress at the next three updates, with a -5 to +5 likelihood). No API key is needed. A projection past ±100 means FPL expects a price move at the next update.

Most FPL price-change tutorials still teach the old approach: estimate a player's "net transfer rate" and compare it to thresholds the community reverse-engineered. You no longer have to guess. The numbers the official Price Change Predictor page shows come from the same JSON feed you can already fetch.

Where the data lives, and its limits

Everything is in one request: https://fantasy.premierleague.com/api/bootstrap-static/. It returns every player (elements), all 20 teams, the 38 gameweeks (events), and game settings. When I fetched it on 29 September 2026 it held 667 players, and every one of them carried these five fields:

• price_change_percent
• price_change_hourly_rate
• price_change_projections
• price_change_locked_until
• price_change_calibrating

Know the limits before you build on it:

• FPL does not document these fields. The Premier League's announcement explains the tool in plain English: "Anything over 100 per cent will indicate that the player is expected to surpass the threshold for an increase or decrease." Changes happen at 00:00 UK time, the predictor page refreshes every 15 minutes, and a player can move by up to £0.3m in a gameweek. Everything else about the field shapes comes from reading the live JSON.
• It is a guide, not a guarantee. The Premier League says so directly: late selling can pull a player back under the threshold before midnight.
• Your browser can't call it directly. The response has no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header, so client-side fetch() is blocked by CORS. Call it from a script, a server, or a scheduled job.
• It only shows today. The API has no endpoint for yesterday's progress. If you want history (for example, to check how accurate the projections are), you have to save it yourself every day.

Runnable Python: tonight's projected risers and fallers

This script needs requests and pandas. It lists every player projected at or past ±100 at the next update, and it appends a dated snapshot of all players to a CSV ledger.

import os
from datetime import datetime, timezone

import pandas as pd
import requests

URL = "https://fantasy.premierleague.com/api/bootstrap-static/"

boot = requests.get(URL, headers={"User-Agent": "fpl-price-log/1.0"}, timeout=30).json()
teams = {t["id"]: t["short_name"] for t in boot["teams"]}
positions = {p["id"]: p["singular_name_short"] for p in boot["element_types"]}


def projection(el, offset):
    """projected_percent for a given offset (0 = next update), as a float."""
    for p in el.get("price_change_projections") or []:
        if p["offset"] == offset:
            return float(p["projected_percent"]), p["likelihood"]
    return None, None


rows = []
for el in boot["elements"]:
    next_pct, next_lik = projection(el, 0)
    rows.append({
        "id": el["id"],
        "player": el["web_name"],
        "team": teams[el["team"]],
        "pos": positions[el["element_type"]],
        "price": el["now_cost"] / 10,                         # now_cost is in tenths of £m
        "owned_pct": float(el["selected_by_percent"]),        # a string in the JSON
        "progress_pct": float(el["price_change_percent"]),    # also a string
        "next_update_pct": next_pct,
        "likelihood": next_lik,                               # integer, -5 .. +5
        "locked_until": el["price_change_locked_until"],
        "calibrating": el["price_change_calibrating"],
        "net_transfers_gw": el["transfers_in_event"] - el["transfers_out_event"],
    })

df = pd.DataFrame(rows)
risers = df[df.next_update_pct >= 100].sort_values("next_update_pct", ascending=False)
fallers = df[df.next_update_pct <= -100].sort_values("next_update_pct")

cols = ["player", "team", "pos", "price", "progress_pct", "next_update_pct", "likelihood"]
print("Projected to RISE at the next update:\n", risers[cols].to_string(index=False))
print("\nProjected to FALL at the next update:\n", fallers[cols].to_string(index=False))

# The API only ever shows *today*. Append a dated snapshot so you can score
# yesterday's projections against today's prices later.
df.insert(0, "snapshot_utc", datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat(timespec="seconds"))
ledger = "fpl_price_ledger.csv"
df.to_csv(ledger, mode="a", index=False, header=not os.path.exists(ledger))

I ran this against the live API on 29 September 2026. It returned one projected faller and no risers, and it wrote 667 rows to the ledger. On a quiet day, empty tables are normal.

Schedule the script to run once a day, after the midnight update. Within a week the ledger lets you answer the question that matters: when FPL projected ≥100, did the price actually move? You can check this by comparing now_cost between consecutive snapshots.

Field reference

Pitfalls that will bite you

1. Some numbers arrive as strings. price_change_percent, projected_percent, selected_by_percent, form and expected_goals are all JSON strings. If you compare "98.0" >= 100 in JavaScript, you get string coercion instead of a numeric comparison. Cast every one of them.
2. "UK midnight" isn't a fixed UTC time. It is 23:00 UTC during British Summer Time and 00:00 UTC in winter. If you schedule in UTC, pick a time that is safely after both, such as 01:30 UTC.
3. Reaching 100 doesn't guarantee a change. A projection of 100.3 two nights out (offset: 2) can still fall back if managers stop buying. Treat offset: 0 as the actionable number.
4. Early in the season the feed isn't ready. The Premier League says the predicted-progress figure appears only after a calibration period of at least one gameweek. Check price_change_calibrating before you act on any projection.
5. Responses are cached. The endpoint returned cache-control: max-age=300 when I tested it, so polling faster than every five minutes gives you the same data.
6. Snapshots can't be backfilled. If your job misses a day, that day is gone.

The old way still has a use

Before this feed existed, predictors divided net transfers by ownership and compared the result to community-derived thresholds. That approach is still useful as a cross-check: net_transfers_gw is already in the script above. Keep in mind that the thresholds are approximations, not FPL's formula.

Do it without code

If you want an FPL query without writing Python, the free FPL query builder lets you pick a mode (gameweek picks, mini-league intel, manager dashboard, price-change predictor) and a gameweek. It then generates a ready-to-run input and shows a fixed example of the output shape. It is a query builder: it does not fetch live FPL data in your browser, because of the CORS restriction described above.

At scale

The FPL Intelligence actor on Apify runs these calls server-side on a schedule, with no CORS problems and no cron job to maintain. It covers captain and transfer picks, a wildcard optimizer, mini-league differentials, manager dashboards, live gameweek tracking, and historical seasons from the community vaastav archive. One thing to know: its price_change_predictor mode uses the net-transfer heuristic, not the official fields in this guide, so treat it as a second opinion next to FPL's own projection. Pricing is pay-per-event: the first 10 chargeable events in each run are free, then it's pay-as-you-go.

Disclosure: I built the query builder and the actor. The Python above works on its own without either of them.

FAQ

Does the FPL API have official price change predictions?

Yes, since the 2026/27 season. Each player in bootstrap-static has price_change_percent and a three-entry price_change_projections array. FPL doesn't document the fields, but they back the official Price Change Predictor, and the Premier League's explanation says values over 100% signal an expected change.

What does 100% mean in FPL price changes?

The Premier League says anything over 100% indicates the player is expected to cross the rise or fall threshold at the next update, which happens at 00:00 UK time. Negative values work the same way for falls. It is not a guarantee: late transfers can pull the number back.

Do I need an API key or login?

No. bootstrap-static is public and unauthenticated. You do need to call it from a script or server rather than browser JavaScript, because the response has no CORS header.

Can I get historical FPL price change progress?

Not from the API. It reports only the current state. Save a snapshot on a schedule, as the script's ledger does. For past seasons' prices, weekly per-player data (including value) exists in the community vaastav/Fantasy-Premier-League archive on GitHub.

Why are all the price change fields zero or calibrating?

Early in a season FPL needs a calibration period of at least one gameweek before it shows predicted progress. Check price_change_calibrating and wait for it to turn false before trusting projections.