FPL Bonus Points Explained: How the BPS Awards 3, 2 and 1
FPL bonus points explained for UK managers: how the Bonus Points System ranks every player in a Premier League match and how ties for 3, 2 and 1 are split.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Fantasy Premier League25 min read
- Bonus on offer per match
- 3, 2 and 1
- Players ranked
- Both teams together
- BPS for an assist
- 9
- Values checked against
- 2026-27
Full time at any Premier League ground in England, and within the Fantasy game a second result is being worked out alongside the one on the scoreboard. Every player who appeared has a number against his name, built from the afternoon's tackles, passes, shots and mistakes. The three highest numbers in the match, taken across both teams together, are given three, two and one extra points. Nobody votes. No journalist or panel is consulted. The ranking decides, and the award follows it.
That number is the BPS score, short for Bonus Points System, and the awards it produces are what managers mean by "bonus". The three points go to the highest BPS in the match, two to the second and one to the third, with ties sharing the higher award. The weights quoted on this page are those the Premier League published for the 2026-27 season. They were adjusted that summer, and the summer before, and the one before that.
How FPL bonus points are awarded in every match
One fixture produces one ranking and three awards. That is the whole mechanism, and each part of the sentence carries a condition.
One fixture means the award is tied to a single match and not to a Gameweek, so a player with two matches in a week is ranked twice. One ranking means the twenty-two starters and every substitute who came on are pooled. There is no quota per team. All three awards can go to the winning side, and in a tight match settled by a late goal it is perfectly possible for two of them to go to the losers.
- 3Highest BPS in the match
- 2Second highest
- 1Third highest
- 2Teams pooled into one ranking
The standard award when no two players are level on BPS. Ties change the distribution and can raise the total given out.
Three awards means that a normal match hands out six points among three players and sends the other twenty-five or so away with nothing. The BPS is a ranking tool. A player on 40 who finishes fourth gets exactly what a player on minus 2 gets.
This is the feature managers find hardest to accept. A midfielder can have an outstanding match by the system's own measure and receive no reward because three others were marginally better, and the following week a lower score can earn him the full three in a dull game. The bonus measures a player against the others on the pitch that day, never against a fixed standard.
The awards are added to the player's Fantasy score for that match and become indistinguishable from the rest of it. They count for the manager who owns him, they are multiplied if he is captain, and they sit in his season total. How the remainder of that total is assembled, from appearance points to clean sheets, is laid out in the guide to how every position scores.
What the BPS is: a running score kept apart from Fantasy points
Two sets of books are kept on every player. One is his Fantasy points: the goals, assists, clean sheets and cards that managers watch tick over on a Saturday. The other is his BPS, a much finer-grained tally that most managers never look at until the bonus is announced.
The BPS starts at zero for each player at kick-off and moves with nearly everything he does. The data comes from Opta, the Premier League's statistics supplier, whose analysts log each event in a match as it happens and review the footage afterwards. A completed tackle adds to the score. A shot dragged wide subtracts from it. By the final whistle a busy midfielder may have had dozens of separate entries.
It is visible. Inside the game, each fixture has a statistics panel listing the BPS of every player involved, highest first, and a player's own page shows his BPS match by match alongside a running total for the season. Projected bonus is displayed on live matches. Nothing about the calculation is hidden, which was not true of the game's early years.
What the score is not
Three confusions come up repeatedly.
The BPS is not Fantasy points under another name. A goal by a forward is worth four Fantasy points and 24 BPS, and the 24 buys nothing unless it lifts him into the top three.
It is not the ICT Index either. That is a separate set of numbers in the game, standing for Influence, Creativity and Threat, intended as a guide to underlying performance. The ICT Index awards nothing to anybody.
And it does not carry over. A player's BPS from one match has no bearing on the next. Season-long BPS totals are published and make an interesting league table of all-round contribution, but no prize or points attach to them.
A BPS score can be negative. A substitute who comes on for twenty minutes, concedes a penalty and is booked will finish below zero, the three for his appearance wiped out by the deductions. The floor does not matter, since the system only ever rewards the top.
The actions that raise a BPS score, with 2026-27 values
The published table runs to more than thirty lines. Grouped by type, the positive entries for 2026-27 are these.
| Group | Action | BPS |
|---|---|---|
| Time played | Playing 1 to 60 minutes | 3 |
| Time played | Playing more than 60 minutes | 6 |
| Goals | Goal by a forward, open play or free-kick | 24 |
| Goals | Goal by a midfielder | 18 |
| Goals | Goal by a goalkeeper or defender | 12 |
| Goals | Penalty scored, any position | 12 |
| Goals | Scoring the goal that wins the match | 3 |
| Creating | Assist | 9 |
| Creating | Big chance created | 3 |
| Creating | Key pass | 1 |
| Creating | Successful open-play cross | 1 |
| Attacking | Shot on target | 2 |
| Attacking | Successful dribble | 1 |
| Attacking | Foul won | 1 |
| Defending | Clean sheet, goalkeeper or defender | 12 |
| Defending | Goal-line clearance | 9 |
| Defending | Tackle won | 2 |
| Defending | Every 3 clearances, blocks and interceptions | 1 |
| Defending | Every 3 recoveries | 1 |
| Goalkeeping | Any save | 2 |
| Goalkeeping | Extra for a save from a shot inside the box | 1 |
| Goalkeeping | Extra for saving a big chance | 1 |
| Goalkeeping | Penalty save | 7 |
| Passing | 70 to 79 per cent pass completion | 2 |
| Passing | 80 to 89 per cent pass completion | 4 |
| Passing | 90 per cent or better | 6 |
A few of these need a gloss.
The goal weights run in the opposite direction to Fantasy points. In the scoring table a defender's goal is worth more than a forward's. In the BPS it is worth half as much.
The explanation is that the two systems are balancing different things. Fantasy points make a defender's goal valuable because it is rare. The BPS already gives defenders twelve for a clean sheet, an entry no forward can earn, and weights goals the other way to stop defenders dominating the ranking in every match they keep one. Whether it succeeds is taken up further down.
The pass completion bands apply only to a player who has attempted at least 30 passes. A striker with eleven passes, all completed, gets nothing for his perfect record. A centre-back who strokes sixty short balls across his own back line at 92 per cent collects six.
The goalkeeping entries stack. Under the 2026-27 arrangement every save is worth two, a save from a shot struck inside the penalty area is worth one more, and a save from what the analysts grade as a big chance is worth one more again. A saved penalty earns the seven on its own line plus all three of the others, eleven in total.
The actions that lower it, and how a goalscorer can miss out
| Action | BPS |
|---|---|
| Red card | -9 |
| Own goal | -6 |
| Penalty missed | -6 |
| Each goal conceded, goalkeeper or defender | -4 |
| Yellow card | -3 |
| Penalty conceded | -3 |
| Big chance missed | -3 |
| Error leading to a goal | -3 |
| Error leading to an attempt on goal | -1 |
| Foul conceded | -1 |
| Caught offside | -1 |
| Shot off target | -1 |
Until 2026-27 there was a further line, minus one for each time a player was tackled. It was removed that summer.
Look at which positions each of those lines falls on. Goals conceded hit goalkeepers and defenders and nobody else. Offsides, shots off target and missed big chances fall almost entirely on forwards and attacking midfielders. A holding midfielder who passes sideways all afternoon and never shoots has very little to lose.
The forward's problem is that his job generates deductions as a by-product. Scoring one goal usually involves several attempts. A striker who scores once, puts three other efforts wide, is flagged offside twice and gives away a couple of fouls challenging for headers has handed back seven of his 24. Add a missed big chance and he is down to 14 from the goal, plus six for his minutes.
The scorer in fourth place
It is entirely routine for the scorer of the only goal to receive no bonus. The arithmetic of a 1-0 goes like this. The forward has 24 for the goal, three for it being the winner, six for ninety minutes and whatever his other work adds or removes. Call it 28. Every defender and the goalkeeper on his side starts from 18, being six for minutes and twelve for the clean sheet, before a single tackle or pass is counted. A centre-back with a 90 per cent passing band is on 24. Add a few clearances and recoveries, a tackle won, and he is past the scorer. If two defenders and the goalkeeper all manage it, the match-winner is fourth.
A booking is often what decides it. Three BPS is a small sum against a goal, but third place in a low-scoring match is typically settled by one or two points. A forward who takes his shirt off after scoring in the last minute may be celebrating the loss of his own bonus.
The card deductions here should not be confused with the real-world consequences of a booking, which are the business of the FA and are explained in our guide to how Premier League suspensions are triggered.
A two-nil win, built line by line
The clubs and players below are invented. The weights are the 2026-27 ones. Harbour Town beat Wexley 2-0 at home. The centre-forward Callum Drake scores the first after 34 minutes. A substitute midfielder adds the second on 81 from a pull-back by the right-back, Ellis Marlow.
| Entry | Drake, forward | Marlow, right-back | Abara, goalkeeper | Santoro, midfielder |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minutes, over 60 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Goal | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Winning goal | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Assist | 0 | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| Clean sheet | 0 | 12 | 12 | 0 |
| Big chance created | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Key passes and open-play crosses | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| Shots on target, not scored | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Tackles won | 0 | 6 | 0 | 4 |
| Clearances, blocks, interceptions | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Recoveries | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Saves, with extras | 0 | 0 | 14 | 0 |
| Pass completion band | 0 | 4 | 2 | 6 |
| Fouls won | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Deductions | -9 | -1 | 0 | -1 |
| Total | 27 | 47 | 37 | 22 |
Drake first. His deductions are a missed big chance at minus three, two shots off target, two offsides and two fouls conceded. He had one other effort saved, which is the two for a shot on target. The table lists shots on target as a separate entry from goals; whether the data provider also logs the goal itself under that heading is a matter for its definitions, and adding two more to his line would not change the order here. He attempted 19 passes, so the completion bands do not apply to him.
Marlow has had the sort of afternoon the system loves. Six for minutes and twelve for the clean sheet. Nine for the assist, and three more because the pull-back was graded a big chance. Two other key passes and two accurate crosses from open play. Three tackles won at two apiece. Six clearances, blocks and interceptions make two, and six recoveries make two more. He completed 82 per cent of 48 passes for four, and gave away one foul.
Abara, the goalkeeper, made five saves. Each is worth two, three of them came from shots inside the area for one extra each, and one was graded a big chance for another. Fourteen. Nine recoveries add three, and 71 per cent of 34 passes just reaches the lowest band.
Santoro touched the ball more than anyone and completed 93 per cent of 71 passes, the top band. Two tackles won, nine recoveries, three interceptions, a key pass and two fouls won, less one foul conceded. Twenty-two. Tidy passing alone does not get a midfielder near the bonus, because he has no clean sheet entry to stand on.
So Marlow takes three bonus points, Abara two and Drake one. The man who won the match is third, and only just: Halloran, a centre-back with ten clearances, one tackle won, a handful of recoveries, an 86 per cent passing band and two fouls against his name, finished on 26. One more offside flag against Drake and the two of them would have shared the last point. The substitute who scored the second goal, with eighteen for the goal and three for his short spell on the pitch, was nowhere near.
FPL bonus points tie rules, case by case
BPS scores are whole numbers in a narrow range, so ties are common. The rule is that tied players all receive the higher of the awards they are level for, and the awards below are pushed down by the number of players sharing.
| Situation | Who gets what | Players with bonus | Total given out |
|---|---|---|---|
| No tie | 3, 2, 1 | 3 | 6 |
| Two level for first | 3 and 3, then 1 to the next player | 3 | 7 |
| Two level for second | 3, then 2 and 2 | 3 | 7 |
| Two level for third | 3, 2, then 1 and 1 | 4 | 7 |
Level for first
Both players receive three. The two-point award disappears, because two players have already occupied the first and second places between them, and the next player down receives one.
Level for second
The leader takes three as normal. The two tied players each take two. Nobody receives one, since the third place has been absorbed by the tie.
Level for third
The first two awards go out as normal and both tied players take one. This is the case that produces four bonus recipients from a single match, and it is likely to be the commonest of the three, since the scores bunch more tightly the further down the ranking one looks.
The Premier League's published examples all involve two players. Larger ties follow the same logic. Three players level for third all receive one point, giving five recipients, and three level for first would each receive three with no further award. Such results are unusual, though they do occur, and they explain the occasional match in which more of a manager's players have bonus than seems arithmetically possible.
A tie is never broken. No secondary measure is consulted, no preference is given to the winning team or the goalscorer, and Fantasy points play no part. Two players on 31 are simply equal.
The effect on league standings is small but real. A tie creates a seventh bonus point that would not otherwise exist, and it goes to whoever owns the tied player. Across a season these extra points are distributed more or less at random, which is as good a description of a lot of bonus as any.
Why the clean-sheet defender so often outranks the match-winner
Twelve BPS for a clean sheet is the single most influential number in the table, because it is awarded to five or six players at once and requires none of them to do anything in particular.
Set the two sides of a 1-0 against each other. On one side stands a goal, worth 24 to a forward or 18 to a midfielder, earned by one player. On the other stand the goalkeeper and four defenders, each holding twelve before the count of their actual defending begins. Those five then add what defenders naturally accumulate: passes completed in volume at a high percentage, recoveries, tackles won, and for the goalkeeper two or more for every save.
The asymmetry runs both ways. Each goal conceded costs a goalkeeper or defender four, and the first one costs the clean sheet's twelve as well. A defender's BPS therefore swings by sixteen on a single late equaliser, and a back four that looked certain to sweep the bonus on 85 minutes can be out of it entirely by 90. For the same reason defenders on the losing side of a 3-0 almost never feature.
Attacking players have a ceiling problem in low-scoring matches and no problem at all in high-scoring ones. A forward with two goals is on 48 before anything else is counted and will take three bonus points nearly every time. A hat-trick settles the matter beyond argument. It is the single-goal match-winner who gets squeezed.
Penalties and the forward's bonus
Since 2025-26 a penalty has been worth twelve to every position, down from 24 for a forward. The reasoning was to separate a spot-kick from a goal created in open play. The effect is that a forward whose only contribution is a converted penalty starts from the same place as a defender with a clean sheet and none of that defender's supporting numbers. He rarely makes the top three.
There is a fair criticism to be made here. A system that hands the top award to a full-back in a 1-0 more readily than to the scorer is measuring volume of involvement at least as much as decisiveness, and supporters who watched the match will often think it has the wrong man. The designers' answer, implicit in every recent revision, is that the alternative was worse: before the weights were rebalanced, bonus followed goals so closely that it merely gave more points to players who already had the most.
The entries that rest on context or an analyst's judgement
Most of the table is counting. A pass was completed or it was not. A shot hit the target or missed it. A handful of entries are different in kind.
The winning goal. Three BPS go to the player who scores the goal that wins the match, and which goal that was depends on the final score. In a 1-0 it is the only goal. In a 3-1 it is the winners' second. In a 3-2 it is their third. The entry cannot be known for certain until full time, and it can vanish: a goal that puts a side 2-1 ahead on 70 minutes is the winner until the equaliser arrives on 88, at which point nobody has scored a winning goal and three points drop off the scorer's line. Projected bonus shifts accordingly.
Big chances. Three separate entries hang on this single classification: plus three for creating one, minus three for missing one, and plus one for a goalkeeper who saves one. The Premier League's description of a big chance is a situation where the player is expected to score. Expected, in whose opinion? The data provider's analysts, applying a working definition to footage. Two reasonable observers will sometimes disagree about whether a striker eight yards out with a defender closing was expected to score. A penalty is treated as a big chance automatically, which is why the stand-alone penalty save entry was trimmed by one when the big-chance save was introduced.
Errors. "Error leading to a goal" costs three and "error leading to an attempt" costs one. Somebody has to decide that a misplaced back-pass was an error and that it led to what followed, and not merely preceded it.
Tackles won and successful dribbles involve smaller judgements of the same sort: who came away with the ball, and whether the attacker truly beat his man.
None of this makes the system arbitrary. The judgements are made by trained analysts to written definitions, and they are reviewed after the match. But the subjective entries are concentrated exactly where bonus is decided. A single big-chance classification is a six-point swing between the passer who gets three for creating it and the forward who loses three for missing it. In a match where third place is settled by a margin of one, that classification is the bonus.
One tackle, two awards: BPS and defensive contribution points
In 2025-26 the game began paying two Fantasy points to outfield players who reach a threshold of defensive actions in a match: ten clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles for a defender, twelve including ball recoveries for a midfielder or forward. The detail of that award belongs with the main scoring table.
The complication is that the BPS was already counting the same events. A centre-back who made twelve clearances and won two tackles would collect his two defensive contribution points and also find those fourteen actions pushing him up the bonus ranking. In matches with a clean sheet, the same player could take four points for the clean sheet, two for defensive contributions and three bonus, largely for one body of work.
The response for 2026-27 was to turn down the BPS side. Clearances, blocks and interceptions had been worth one BPS for every two. They are now worth one for every three. Twelve of them yielded six under the old rate and yield four under the new one. Tackles won stay at two each and recoveries at one per three.
Three other adjustments came in the same package, and the stated purpose of the whole set was to reduce the overlap with defensive contribution points and improve the bonus prospects of goalkeepers, full-backs and attacking players. Removing the deduction for being tackled helps the players who run at defenders and lose the ball as a cost of doing so. The restructured save entries help goalkeepers, who are shut out of defensive contribution points altogether.
It is a modest correction. A centre-back still gets twelve for a clean sheet and six for a high passing band, and the reduction in his clearance credit is a point or two in most matches. That will move him from third to fourth in some games and change nothing in most. The direction is what matters: the operators have signalled that defensive work is to be paid mainly through its own award, with the bonus ranking leaning back towards players who create and save.
One distinction between the two systems is easy to miss. The defensive contribution award is a threshold, paid in full on the tenth action and not at all on the ninth. The BPS credit is incremental. A defender on nine clearances has earned nothing from the first scheme and three BPS from the second.
Provisional and confirmed bonus: when FPL bonus points are added
From 2026-27, projected bonus is added to players' live scores once a match is 20 minutes old. The Premier League's explanation for the delay is that twenty minutes is roughly when players start to separate in the ranking. Before that, everyone is on three and the leader is whoever completed the first tackle.
- Kick-off to 20 minutesBPS accumulates from the first whistle but no bonus is shown in live scores.
- From 20 minutesProjected bonus is added to live scores for the current top three and moves every time the ranking changes.
- Final whistleThe projection reflects the live data at full time, including the winning-goal entry, which is now settled.
- Post-match reviewThe data provider re-examines the match. Assists, big chances, tackles and saves can be reclassified, and BPS totals move with them.
- LockdownAt 09:00 UK time on the day after the Gameweek's last match, scores are final and the bonus is written into each player's total.
The sequence under the 2026-27 rules. In earlier seasons scores were locked one hour after the final whistle of the last match of the Gameweek.
"Projected" is the operative word. The figure shown during a match is what the bonus would be if the game ended that second. A goal changes it at once. So does an equaliser, a red card or a run of saves.
It can change after the whistle too, and this is what catches managers out. The live data is a first draft. In the review that follows, an assist may be moved from one player to another, which shifts nine BPS. A chance may be upgraded to a big chance, or downgraded. A goal may be re-credited as an own goal, stripping 24 from a forward and adding minus six to a defender. A tackle may be reassigned. Any of these can reorder a ranking in which third and fourth were a point apart.
The Premier League moved the lockdown in 2026-27 to give this review more room. Under the earlier arrangement scores were fixed an hour after the Gameweek's final match. They are now fixed at nine the following morning, UK time, and the stated reason was to allow more of the post-match data to reach the BPS and the defensive counts before anything became permanent.
After lockdown, nothing moves. A later ruling on who scored a goal does not reopen the bonus.
Bonus in the rest of the game: doubles, captains and the bench
Because bonus is folded into a player's match score, it follows that score wherever it goes.
Two fixtures in a week. When a club plays twice in one Gameweek, each match has its own ranking. A player can take three from the first and three from the second, six bonus points in a week, and the two BPS scores are never combined. A match-winning display on the Tuesday is worth nothing in the ranking on the Saturday. Why some weeks contain two fixtures for a club and others none is covered in our guide to blank and double Gameweeks.
The captain. A manager's captain has his whole score doubled, bonus included. Three bonus points on a captain are six for the manager. The vice-captain's bonus is doubled only if the armband passes to him because the captain did not play, a rule described in the guide to the captain's double points. One of the game's chips triples the captain in place of doubling him, and takes the bonus with it.
The bench. A benched player's bonus is real in the sense that it appears on his own record. It reaches the manager only if that player is brought into the eleven by the game's automatic substitutions, or if the manager has played the Bench Boost that week, one of the one-off boosts explained in the guide to Wildcard, Free Hit and the other chips.
Head-to-head and cups. Bonus is part of the Gameweek score, so it counts in head-to-head fixtures and cup ties exactly as it does in the overall table. A cup tie decided by a point is quite often decided by an overnight change to somebody's bonus.
The timing has one practical consequence. Because confirmed bonus now arrives the morning after the last match, a mini-league table viewed late on a Sunday shows projected bonus for that day's matches. Rivalries have been declared won on a Sunday night and lost by breakfast.
From a reporter's opinion to a published formula
When the game began in 2002-03, bonus points were a matter of opinion. They were awarded by the Press Association on its judgement of who had played well, and managers had no means of checking the reasoning or predicting the result.
A statistical method, the Actim Index, was tried in the mid-2000s. It was objective but slow, with bonus arriving days after matches, and the game went back to Press Association reporters watching from the ground. In 2011-12 the EA Sports Player Performance Index took over. Within a couple of seasons that had given way to the present arrangement: Opta data, a published table of weights, and a ranking any manager can reproduce.
The weights have been moved regularly since, and the last three summers show the pace.
| Season | Changes to the BPS |
|---|---|
| 2024-25 | Goalkeepers and defenders lose 4 for each goal conceded. Shots on target, fouls won and goal-line clearances added. Penalty save cut from 15 to 9. |
| 2025-26 | Penalty goals set at 12 for every position. Goal-line clearance raised from 3 to 9. Every tackle won counted, replacing a net figure. Saves split by shot location, and penalty save cut to 8. |
| 2026-27 | Deduction for being tackled removed. Clearances, blocks and interceptions credited per three in place of per two. Saves rebuilt as 2 for any save with extras, and penalty save cut to 7. |
| Before 2024-25 | A long period of stability after the weights for entries such as saves and tackles were adjusted in the mid-2010s. |
Read down that column and a pattern emerges. Nearly every change moves weight away from one group and towards another in response to a complaint about the previous season: defenders were taking too much bonus, so goals conceded began to cost them; penalty goals were inflating forwards, so they were flattened; defensive contribution points created a double reward, so the clearance credit was cut.
That is healthy, and it is also the reason no BPS figure should be quoted without a season attached. The values in this article are those for 2026-27. A table copied from a 2023 guide will give the wrong answer for a goalkeeper's saves, for a penalty, for a goal-line clearance and for a centre-back's clearances. The structure, a ranking of everyone on the pitch with three awards at the top, has outlasted every revision. The numbers inside it are provisional by design, and the rules page in the game is where each summer's version is published. Other explainers on the English game are gathered on the England hub, with the wider sport under football.