Free prediction leagues: what to look for
There is no reason to pay to run a football prediction league. The fixture list is public, the results are public, and any group with a spreadsheet can keep score. The real cost is not money, it is the work of running the thing and the arguments you inherit when the setup leaves room for them.
Three ways of doing it are common: a spreadsheet, a group chat, or a dedicated site. Each has honest trade-offs, and which one suits you depends mostly on how much admin you are willing to absorb.
The five questions that actually matter
Before comparing anything, be clear about what a free prediction league has to do. How much work does the organiser do each week. What happens when two people disagree about a score or a rule. Do the results score themselves, or does somebody type them in. Can an entry be changed after kickoff. And what happens to the standings when a player forgets a week.
Everything else is decoration. A setup that answers those five well will still be running in April.
The spreadsheet
A shared spreadsheet is the most flexible option and the most demanding one. You can score it however you like, you own the data, and it costs nothing.
The admin burden falls entirely on one person: entering the fixtures, entering the results every weekend, and fixing the formulas when somebody types a score into the wrong cell. Nothing scores itself. Arguments are resolved by whoever holds edit rights, which is fine until that person is also a competitor. Worst of all, a shared sheet usually lets anyone with the link change a cell after kickoff, and even if nobody ever does, the possibility is enough to sour a close season. When someone forgets a week, their blanks are simply blanks, and the table keeps working, which is the one thing spreadsheets get right for free.
The group chat
Posting entries into a chat is the lowest-effort way to start and the hardest way to finish. Nothing to set up, everyone is already there, and the banter is built in.
But the chat is not a table. Someone has to scroll back through the weekend to collect entries, decide whether a message that arrived at 15:01 counts, and keep a running total somewhere else anyway, which usually means a spreadsheet appears by week three. Results do not score themselves. Arguments are resolved by scrollback, which is slow and often inconclusive. Late edits are technically visible, though nobody wants to be the person checking edit timestamps. And when a player forgets, their absence goes unnoticed until they claim they posted and it did not send.
The dedicated site
A purpose-built site removes the admin rather than redistributing it. The fixture list arrives with the competition, the results arrive automatically, the table recalculates itself and entries lock at kickoff without anyone enforcing it.
The trade-offs are real too. You are working within someone else's scoring rules rather than inventing your own, your group's data lives on their servers, and the service has to still be there in May. Check what it costs, whether it shows ads, and whether it makes you create an account before you can even look. If the scoring rules and the deadline behaviour are not documented before you sign up, that tells you something.
The two things worth being strict about
Locked entries and automatic results. Those two decide whether a league is a contest or a filing exercise. If entries cannot be changed after kickoff, the entire class of arguments about who submitted what disappears. If results arrive on their own, the table is always current and nobody has to be chased on a Sunday night.
Everything else, including the exact points values, is a matter of taste. Get those two right and a free prediction league runs itself.
Where The Hegemon sits
The Hegemon is free for the 2026-27 season. It runs private prediction leagues for the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga: everyone in your group predicts the score of every fixture, entries lock at the matchweek's first kickoff and are revealed to the whole league at that kickoff, results and the table update themselves, and each group gets its own space for the fallout.
Scoring rewards exact scorelines highest, then goal difference, then the correct result, with one nominated match each matchweek counting double. There is a monthly award alongside the season table, and sealed long-range calls made before the season starts. No money passes through the app, between players or otherwise. If you would rather run yours on a spreadsheet, the questions at the top of this page are still the ones to answer first.
Common questions
Is a free prediction league as good as a paid one?
For a private group, the paid features usually solve problems that private leagues do not have. What matters is whether entries lock at kickoff and whether results score themselves, and neither of those requires payment.
Can people change their predictions after a match starts?
On a spreadsheet or in a chat, usually yes, and that is the weakness of both. A dedicated site can lock entries at kickoff so the question never arises. Check how any tool handles this before your group commits to a season with it.
What happens to the standings if someone forgets to enter?
They should score nothing for the matches they missed while everyone else's week is scored normally. Nothing should stall or need a manual fix, which is worth testing early rather than discovering in March.