Office Football Pool Sites Compared for 2026
Office Football Pool Sites Compared for 2026
Office football pool sites mostly differ on three things: what they charge once your group grows past a handful of people, which pool formats they actually run, and whether they cover the sport you care about. Everything else is packaging. This page compares four hosted pool platforms against Pocket Office Pool, using each provider’s own published pricing and feature pages.
What actually differs between office pool platforms
Pick the platform that matches how your group behaves, not the one with the longest feature list. A twelve-person office running one NFL pick’em pool has different needs than a 300-person company that wants a March Madness bracket, a Super Bowl squares grid and a season-long confidence pool under one login. Still deciding what kind of pool to run? Start with the office pool format guide.
Three questions decide it. Answer them before you look at any feature grid.
What does it cost once your group grows?
Pricing models are not comparable on their face. Some sites charge one flat fee per league regardless of headcount. Some charge per pool, per season. Some charge per player above a free allowance. Some are free and sell an ad-removal upgrade. A $10 league fee is cheaper than per-seat pricing at 50 players and more expensive than free at any size, so the only honest way to compare is to run your actual headcount through each model.
Which formats does it run?
Pick’em and survivor are near-universal. Confidence, margin, play-money, prop and squares pools are not. If your group has run the same format for nine years, that format is a hard requirement and everything else is noise. The rundown of pool types helps if you are not sure what your group has been playing.
Does it handle your sport?
Several of these platforms started in one sport and grew sideways. One is football only. One leans heavily on hockey and golf. If you want a single account to carry you from September through the following June, sport coverage matters more than any individual feature.
Office football pool sites compared
| Platform | Free tier | Cost as the group grows | Formats offered | Sports | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pocket Office Pool | 4 free seats | $3 per player beyond the free four; $2 per seat from 30 players, $1 from 100; annual billing available; billed per unique person across all your pools | Pick’em, Confidence, Survivor, Reverse Survivor, Single Pick | NFL, NCAA Football and MLB preloaded; NCAA Basketball and Premier League also selectable; 13 leagues supported in total | Point spreads and curated weekly slates are part of the plan. Bracket pools and squares games are paid add-ons, not included. |
| OfficePoolStop | Standard plan, free, described as “all core pool features” with ads shown, one player clone and a 100/month email limit | Plus is $10.00 per season as a one-league fee; Premium starts at a $20.00 minimum and is priced at $1.00 for the first 100 players, $0.75 for players 101–400 and $0.50 for players 401 and up | Pick’em, confidence, survivor, margin, play-money “bookie”, Perfect 7, Pick 2, playoff bracket, playoff rankem, prop bet, mock draft, squares | NFL, college football, March Madness, FIFA World Cup, plus custom brackets and custom pick’em leagues | Plus keeps ads; Premium is what removes them for every player. Refunds: 30 days on Plus, 2 days on Premium. |
| OfficePools | Players join and participate at no cost; some pools show a “Start Free Trial” option, with no length stated on the page | Charged per pool to the admin only: NFL pick’em $10.00, NFL survivor $10.00, CFL season pick’em $10.00, Premier League pick’em or survivor $5.00, NHL box, draft and open pools $25.00, PGA $100.00 | Pick’em, survivor, streak, box, draft, open, dynasty, plus a “Pool Lab” builder for custom events | NHL, NFL, CFL, PGA golf, Premier League, basketball, tennis, curling, rugby, swimming, entertainment | States that it does not collect entry fees, hold pooled money or issue payouts. |
| FunOfficePools | Free with “no credit card, no trial, no player cap” | Stays free at any group size; an optional $10 per year premium membership removes ads and adds features | College, NFL and combo pick’em, NFL survivor, football squares, bowl pools, plus reality-TV pools | NFL and college football only, on the sports side | Describes itself as running 20 seasons and states it is not a gambling site. |
| Pooltracker | Free pools with banner ads and unlimited players; scores for free pools are calculated nightly | Player upgrades remove ads and move scoring to within minutes of each game, but the pricing page states “Pricing is not in the system, yet” and publishes no per-player figure. Private-label site templates are listed at $199.99, $399.99 and $799.99 | Pick 6, office pick’em, survivor/streak, playoff bracket, playoff pick’em, Super Bowl squares, prop pool, bowl challenge, Top 25 weekly, conference pools | NFL, college football, CFL, NBA and March Madness, NHL, MLB, Premier League and World Cup, cricket | The published free tier is real and uncapped; the paid tier’s per-player price is not published, so ask before you commit. |
Competitor details checked against each provider’s own pricing page on September 9, 2026. Pricing changes without notice, so treat the numbers above as a starting point and confirm on the provider’s site before you pay anything.
How each platform reads in practice
Pocket Office Pool
Five formats: Pick’em, Confidence, Survivor, Single Pick, and Reverse Survivor, where you pick a team to lose and you survive by losing. Reverse Survivor is the one that tends to keep a survivor pool alive after the usual carnage in Week 3, and it is not a format most platforms carry.
Pricing is four free seats, then $3 per player beyond those four. Ten players costs $18, twenty costs $48. The rate drops to $2 per seat from 30 players and $1 from 100, and annual billing is available. Billing counts unique people rather than pools, so somebody who plays in both your NFL pool and your college pool is one seat, not two. Full numbers are on the pricing page.
Included rather than sold separately: point spreads, with a “Use Point Spreads” setting that scores picks against the line and a “Show Point Spreads” setting that displays the line while scoring stays straight-up, plus optional rules for double points on correct underdog picks and subtracted points for wrong ones. Also included is the curated weekly slate, where only commissioner-selected games appear on Make Picks, and a “picks per week” setting so players choose 10 games out of 40 rather than every game on the board. That pair is the practical answer to college football.
What it does not include: bracket pools and squares games are paid add-ons, not part of the plan. If a one-off March bracket or a Super Bowl grid is the main thing you run each year, that is a real gap, and two of the platforms above bundle both into a free or cheap tier.
OfficePoolStop
The widest format menu of anything verified here. Beyond pick’em, confidence and survivor, it lists margin pools, a play-money “bookie” pool, Perfect 7, Pick 2, playoff brackets, rankem, mock draft and prop bet pools. The free Standard plan carries what the site calls all core pool features with ads displayed and a 100-per-month email limit, which is the constraint most large groups hit first.
The pricing shape is worth understanding. Plus is $10.00 per season as a single league fee, but ads stay. Premium is what removes ads for everyone, tiered at $1.00 for the first 100 players, $0.75 for 101–400 and $0.50 above 401, with a $20.00 minimum. A 40-person league that wants an ad-free experience is looking at the $20 floor, not $10.
OfficePools
Per-pool pricing paid by the admin, with players joining free. NFL pick’em and NFL survivor are each $10.00; Premier League pick’em and survivor are $5.00 each; NHL box, draft and open pools are $25.00; PGA is $100.00. Because the fee attaches to the pool rather than the headcount, cost is flat whether you have 15 players or 150.
Sport coverage is the broadest here and skews away from football: hockey, golf, soccer, curling, tennis, rugby, swimming and entertainment pools all appear, along with a Pool Lab builder for custom events. The site states plainly that it does not collect entry fees, manage pooled funds or issue payouts.
FunOfficePools
Free with no player cap, no credit card and no trial period, running college, NFL and combo pick’em, NFL survivor, football squares and bowl pools. A $10 per year premium membership removes ads and adds features, but the site is explicit that the core stays free. Squares being included at no cost is notable, since that is exactly the piece Pocket Office Pool charges for as an add-on.
The trade-off is scope. On the sports side it is football only, so it will not carry your group into basketball or hockey season, and the format list is short compared with OfficePoolStop.
Pooltracker
Free pools carry banner ads, allow unlimited players and calculate scores nightly rather than immediately. Paid upgrades remove the ads and move scoring to within a few minutes of each game ending, which matters if your group refreshes standings on Sunday evening. The catch is transparency: the upgrade page states that pricing is not in the system yet and shows no per-player figure, so you cannot budget from the published page. Private-label packages, where the pool runs on your own branding, are listed at $199.99, $399.99 and $799.99. Format and sport coverage are broad, including conference-specific college pools, CFL, cricket and the major soccer competitions.
How to choose an office football pool site
Work in this order.
- Count your real headcount, then price all of it. Not last year’s number, the number you expect. Run it through each model. Flat league fees win at scale; per-seat pricing wins for small groups; free wins whenever the ads and the slower scoring are tolerable.
- Write down your non-negotiable format. If your group has run a confidence pool since 2014, a platform without confidence scoring is disqualified no matter what else it does.
- Decide whether you want one platform for the whole year. A single account across football, basketball and baseball reduces the annual re-onboarding tax. If you only run one pool a year, that is worth nothing to you.
- Check who handles money. None of these platforms is a payment processor, and several say so outright. Collection stays your job either way, which is its own separate problem to solve.
When a different platform is the better fit
Two honest cases where Pocket Office Pool is the wrong choice.
If your office’s signature event is a March Madness bracket and a Super Bowl squares grid, and the season-long pick’em pool is an afterthought, pick something else. Brackets and squares are paid add-ons here, not part of the plan. FunOfficePools includes squares at no cost with no player cap, and OfficePoolStop runs brackets, squares and prop pools inside a single league fee. Paying per seat for a product whose included formats you barely use is a bad trade.
If you are running one pool for 200 people on a budget of zero, flat-fee or free pricing wins on arithmetic and there is no argument to make. OfficePools charges $10.00 for an NFL pick’em pool regardless of headcount. FunOfficePools charges nothing at any size. Per-seat pricing is designed for groups where each additional player is a deliberate choice, and it stops making sense somewhere north of a hundred casual participants.
Pocket Office Pool earns its place when the pool is season-long, the group is small to mid-sized, and the rules matter: spreads handled automatically, a curated slate so college weekends are playable, Reverse Survivor when the standard version collapses early, and one seat per person no matter how many of your pools they join. For a weekly NFL pick’em group or a survivor pool of 10 to 30 people, that is the case. Outside it, the platforms above are genuinely better answers, and the comparison of free versus paid pool software goes deeper on where the line sits.
Frequently asked questions
Which office football pool site is cheapest?
It depends entirely on headcount. FunOfficePools charges nothing at any group size, which makes it cheapest in raw terms. For a single pool of any size, OfficePools charges the admin $10.00 for NFL pick’em. Per-seat pricing like Pocket Office Pool’s is cheapest for small groups, where four free seats plus $3 each after that beats most flat fees, and gets progressively less competitive as headcount climbs.
Do office pool sites charge players or just the commissioner?
It varies. OfficePools states that only the pool creator pays and all other users join at no cost. OfficePoolStop charges a single league fee that the commissioner covers. Pocket Office Pool bills the pool owner per unique player beyond the free four, so players themselves are never asked for a card. Check who receives the bill before you promise your group the pool is free.
Which sites run confidence pools?
OfficePoolStop lists an NFL confidence pool where players assign a ranking from 1 to 16 across the week’s games, plus college and playoff confidence variants. Pocket Office Pool runs confidence as one of its five formats. FunOfficePools and OfficePools list pick’em and survivor formats on the pages checked but do not list a season-long confidence pool among them.
Can I run brackets and squares on the same site as my season pool?
On some. FunOfficePools includes football squares at no cost, and OfficePoolStop lists brackets, squares, rankem and prop pools alongside its season formats. On Pocket Office Pool, bracket pools and squares games are paid add-ons rather than part of the plan, so a group whose main event is a bracket should price that separately or choose a platform that bundles it.
Do any of these platforms handle collecting the money?
None of them acts as a payment processor for your buy-in. OfficePools states directly that it does not collect entry fees, manage pooled funds or provide payouts. OfficePoolStop lists online fee collection as a Plus-tier feature. Assume collection and payout remain your responsibility, and check your workplace policy and your state’s rules before you run any pool with money in it.
Ready to test the fit rather than read about it?
The first four seats cost nothing, so you can build the pool, set the rules and see the board before you decide.