If you ask casual baseball fans which DFS app they use, the answer ten years ago would have been DraftKings or FanDuel. Today it's almost always PrizePicks. Or Underdog. Or — newer entrant — DraftKings Pick6. All three are pick'em apps, a format that's increasingly become the way most casual players engage with baseball, football, and basketball every night.
Pick'em looks deceptively simple on the screen. Pick two to six players, tap "over" or "under" on each of their projected stat lines, submit your slip, watch the games. But the three big pick'em apps have meaningful differences in how their lines are set, how their payouts work, what sports they emphasize, and which states they're available in. This guide walks through what pick'em actually is, how a slip works from the moment you open the app to the moment your entry settles, and how PrizePicks, Underdog, and DraftKings Pick6 compare — so you can figure out which one fits the way you actually want to play.
What "pick'em" actually means
Pick'em is a DFS contest format where you pick a small group of players and forecast their individual stat outcomes — over or under on each — rather than building a full lineup against a salary cap. It's the simpler of the two main DFS formats and the dominant entry point for casual players.
The format that came before — and still exists — is salary-cap DFS: you build a full lineup of 8–10 players whose total salaries have to stay under a budget, and your lineup competes against thousands of others in a tournament. That's the original DraftKings and FanDuel DFS product. We covered both formats at a higher level in our intro guide to DFS.
Pick'em emerged in the late 2010s as a lighter-weight alternative. Smaller slips. No salary-cap optimization. No tournament leaderboards. Just pick a few props you have an opinion on, submit, and see if your read holds up. The combination of low friction and quick decisions is most of why pick'em grew so fast — and why three operators now dominate the market.
How a pick'em slip works in practice
Every pick'em app has different branding, different multiplier tables, and different state availability, but the core mechanic is the same across all three. Here's the flow.
1. Browse the player board. When you open the app, you see every player in tonight's games with their projected stat lines. Aaron Judge — 1.5 total bases. Tarik Skubal — 6.5 strikeouts. Bobby Witt Jr. — 1.5 hits + runs + RBI. You can filter by sport, team, or stat type.
2. Build your slip. Tap "over" or "under" on each player you want to include. Minimum slip size is 2 picks across all three apps; maximum is usually 6. You can mix sports on a single slip (an MLB pick and an NBA pick on the same ticket) at all three operators. We covered the underlying prop types in detail in our guide to MLB prop bets.
3. Pick your entry type. Most apps offer two flavors:
- Power (sometimes called "standard"). All picks must hit; one miss kills the slip. Pays the highest multiplier — roughly 5x for 3-pick, 10x for 4-pick, 20x for 5-pick, with operator-specific variation.
- Flex. You get partial payouts if most picks hit but one or two miss. Lower multipliers than power on the all-hit outcome, but a backstop when one pick gets unlucky.
4. Choose your stake and submit. Most apps allow entries from $1 up to a few hundred. The slip locks at the first pitch of the earliest game it contains, after which you can't edit or cancel.
5. Watch and settle. Each pick resolves when its player's game ends. The slip is final when the last game finishes. Winning slips usually pay out within minutes.
How the three pick'em apps compare
The core mechanic is the same, but each operator has its own flavor. Here's how they differ in practice.
PrizePicks
PrizePicks is the largest pick'em operator by user base, and it's probably the easiest place for a new player to land. Lines are set across a broad range of sports — MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, soccer, college football, tennis, and others — and the player board on a given night usually has the deepest catalog of players to pick from. The signature PrizePicks feature is tiered lines: in addition to the "standard" projection on a given player, you'll often see "demon" and "goblin" alternatives. A demon is set above the standard (harder to hit, pays more); a goblin is set below the standard (easier to hit, pays less). It gives you a way to dial difficulty up or down on each pick within the same slip. PrizePicks is available in most U.S. states, though specific products have shifted in and out of certain markets (New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, and a few others have been in flux).
Underdog Fantasy
Underdog runs a pick'em product that looks similar to PrizePicks on the surface — same slip-of-picks structure, similar payouts — but with a few real differences. Underdog historically built its identity around Best Ball, a snake-draft fantasy format that's especially popular for NFL. Their pick'em product launched later and has stronger integration with their broader fantasy ecosystem; if you already use Underdog for season-long Best Ball, the pick'em sits in the same app. Underdog's sport coverage is solid but tends to lean harder toward football and basketball than PrizePicks does. Flex format details and multiplier tables differ in small ways from PrizePicks — the exact numbers move around, so it's worth checking the in-app payout chart before you commit to a format. Availability is broadly similar to PrizePicks, with the same caveat that specific states have been on-and-off over the past two years.
DraftKings Pick6
DraftKings Pick6 is the newest of the three, launched in 2024 to compete with PrizePicks and Underdog on their home turf. The product is recognizably pick'em — slips of 2 to 6 picks, over/under on each, multiplier payouts — but with DraftKings' visual style and ecosystem integration. If you already have a DraftKings account for sportsbook or salary-cap DFS, your Pick6 account sits inside the same app with shared wallet and identity. The multiplier scale is in the same family as PrizePicks and Underdog, with format-specific quirks that you'll want to read inside the app before submitting. State availability has been narrower than PrizePicks and Underdog because DK Pick6 is newer and has had to navigate state-by-state approval; check whether it's live in your state before signing up.
Picking the right product for you
The honest framing here is: pick the app you'll actually use, which usually means the app whose ecosystem you're already in or the one your friends are on. A rough framework:
- If you're brand new to DFS, PrizePicks tends to be the path of least resistance — broadest sport coverage, biggest user base, demon/goblin variety, the most casual users go there first.
- If you already play NFL or college football fantasy on Underdog Best Ball, their pick'em product sits in the same app and is the natural next click.
- If you already have a DraftKings account for the sportsbook or salary-cap DFS, DraftKings Pick6 is the easiest to spin up — same wallet, same identity, same notifications.
Most casual pick'em players lose money over time across all three apps. That's not a knock on the products — it's the structural reality of any operator-rake contest where a service charge gets taken on every entry. Pick the app that fits how you actually want to play, but size your entries to what you can afford to lose. Bankroll discipline matters more than which app you choose.
Where RunsLeft fits
The signal RunsLeft surfaces — model-driven probability estimates on player props — translates across all three pick'em apps because the underlying prop projections are largely the same product from contest to contest. Hits is hits, total bases is total bases, strikeouts is strikeouts. The only thing that changes is the operator wrapping the prop and the multiplier paying out the slip. Our tonight's DFS edges page shows where our model disagrees with the market line on a player, with the reasoning attached. You can apply the same edges to PrizePicks, Underdog, or DraftKings Pick6 — the work is the same.
Where to go from here
If pick'em is the first kind of DFS you've encountered and you want the broader context, start with our intro piece — What is Daily Fantasy Sports? A Plain-English Guide — which covers the difference between pick'em and salary-cap formats and walks through a sample contest. More guides on prop selection, pitcher props, and operator-specific strategy are on the way in /learn.