FPL glossary

Autosub

An autosub is an automatic substitution: if a player in your starting eleven does not play a single minute in the gameweek, Fantasy Premier League replaces him with the highest player on your bench who did play. The swap is confirmed when the gameweek locks, from 2026/27 at 09:00 UK time on the morning after the last match, and it is only made if your formation stays legal.

How the bench order decides the swap

Your bench is ordered 1, 2, 3 for the outfield players, plus a separate slot for the reserve goalkeeper. A goalkeeper can only ever be replaced by the other goalkeeper. Outfield replacements are tried in bench order, and each one is only made if the resulting formation is still legal: at least one goalkeeper, three defenders, two midfielders and one forward.

That legality rule is why an autosub sometimes skips your first bench player. If bringing him on would leave you with two defenders, the game moves on to the next name on the bench instead.

What does not trigger an autosub

A single minute counts as playing. A starter who comes off the bench in the 89th minute and scores nothing keeps his place in your eleven, and no substitution is made. Autosubs only rescue the zeroes from players who never appeared at all, which is why bench order is worth a few seconds of thought before every deadline.

Example

You start a forward who is left out of the matchday squad, and your bench reads Watkins, Wood, Mbeumo. Watkins played, so he comes on automatically and his score replaces the forward's zero once the gameweek is finished.

From the archive

The median FPL manager left 278 points on the bench over the 2025/26 season, which is the pool autosubs and the Bench Boost draw from. Figures as of 24 May 2026.

Updated: Season: 2025/26

Related terms

All FPL terms

Source: the gameweek histories of over 2.2 million managers in FPL Butler's 2025/26 season archive. The sample leans towards active managers, so the rates sit slightly above the global average.

Method

Behaviour is computed from each manager's official FPL gameweek history (transfers, points hits, bench points, chips and team value). Picks data is never used. Figures cover managers whose gameweek history runs from the opening gameweek to the final gameweek of the season, so managers who joined after the season started, and managers who stopped early, are excluded. Transfer counts include moves made on wildcard and free hit gameweeks, which cost no points. A hit means a gameweek with a positive transfer cost. Team value is the squad value including bank at gameweek 38, in millions. Percentiles use the nearest-rank method and medians the classic midpoint method. Managers with missing or corrupt data are excluded. The sample skews toward managers in active mini-leagues.

Managers who played the whole 2025/26 season in FPL Butler's season archive, meaning their gameweek history runs from the opening gameweek to the final one, so managers who joined late or stopped early are excluded. Managers enter the archive because they play in crawled mini-leagues or national country leagues. The crawler prioritises leagues that look active, so this sample is more engaged than the full global player base and behaviour rates should be read with that skew in mind.

Derived from publicly available Fantasy Premier League data. FPL Butler is not affiliated with the Premier League or Fantasy Premier League. The figures may be reused with attribution to FPL Butler.

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