DFS lineup optimizer for DraftKings and FanDuel
Martian Flow turns a slate and your opinions into a portfolio of valid, diversified lineups — one lineup or 150 — and exports them in the file DraftKings or FanDuel accepts. You decide what matters; the optimizer handles the combinatorics.
Who it is for
- Players entering multiple lineups who are tired of hand-building every one.
- Tournament players who want real diversification instead of one core repeated.
- Anyone who wants to set a few rules — a lock, a fade, a stack — and let the rest be decided sensibly.
What a DFS optimizer actually does
A lineup optimizer searches every legal combination of players under the salary cap and roster rules and picks the lineups that score best on the projections, subject to your constraints. Doing that for one lineup is easy for software and tedious for a person. Doing it for a portfolio of lineups — where each one has to be good and the set has to be different enough to matter — is where an optimizer earns its keep.
Martian Flow selects the whole portfolio together rather than one lineup at a time, so exposure, overlap and stack coverage are decided with the full set in view.
Choose how much to decide yourself
Just Pick For Me builds with no rules at all: pick Conservative, Balanced or Aggressive and the optimizer decides the rest. Build with my settings keeps every control in your hands. Most people land in between — a handful of locks and fades, maybe a stack preference, everything else automatic.
- Conservative leans on projection and keeps variance low.
- Balanced blends projection with ceiling and spreads exposure.
- Aggressive gives up some projection to chase ceiling and differentiation.
Supported sites and contests
DraftKings and FanDuel, NFL Classic and NFL Single Game (DraftKings Showdown with its Captain seat, FanDuel's MVP), and PGA tournaments on both sites.
How Gus works
Gus is the analyst built into Martian Flow. He reads the slate you have open — the projections, salaries, game lines, injury and inactive statuses, and recent public reporting — and answers questions about it in plain language: who the value plays are, which game sets up best to stack, how much exposure a player deserves in a 150-lineup portfolio.
When you ask Gus to build, he does not hand you lineups from a black box. He writes a plan — exposures, stacks, Captain or MVP targets — shows it to you, and only builds once you approve it. Every instruction he gives becomes a visible rule in the builder, next to the ones you set yourself, and yours win when the two disagree.
Player exposure
Exposure is how often a player appears across your lineups. Set a minimum, a maximum or an exact figure for any player, as a percentage or a lineup count. On single-game slates the Captain or MVP seat has its own exposure, separate from the player's overall share.
With no exposure rules at all, Martian Flow keeps any one player from taking over the portfolio on its own, and the Balanced strategy holds unruled players to about a third of your lineups.
Locks and exclusions
Lock a player into every lineup or exclude him from all of them in one click. On single-game slates you can lock or ban a player from the Captain/MVP seat specifically. Players ruled out, placed on injured reserve or declared inactive are removed automatically, and if news breaks after you build, you can rebuild only the lineups that are affected.
Stacking
Quarterbacks are paired with their own pass catchers automatically, with no settings at all, because a touchdown pass scores for both. The Stacking section lets you require more: QB + 1 pass catcher, QB + 2, a bring-back from the opposing team, or a custom shape, in whatever share of your lineups you choose.
Defenses are kept away from the offenses they face, so a lineup is never quietly betting against itself.
Portfolio review and diversification
Martian Flow builds a portfolio, not the same lineup 150 times. Lineups are selected together, so the set is diversified by design: exposure is spread, near-duplicates are avoided, and different game scripts get coverage.
After the build, Portfolio Review shows every player's exposure, how the portfolio stacks, how similar the lineups are to each other, whether each of your rules was met, and highly rated players the build left out without a reason you gave.
Contest-ready CSV export
Download your lineups as the upload file DraftKings or FanDuel expects, or fill in the contest's own entries file so every entry is replaced in one upload. Lineups are checked against the site's roster and salary rules before they are exported.
Supported platforms
| Contest | DraftKings | FanDuel |
|---|---|---|
| NFL Classic (main slates) | Yes | Yes |
| NFL Single Game | Yes (Showdown, Captain) | Yes (MVP) |
| PGA tournaments | Yes | Yes |
NBA is in development and not yet available. Martian Flow runs in any modern browser; there is nothing to install.
Questions
- Does Martian Flow guarantee winning lineups?
- No. No tool can. Daily fantasy is decided by games played by real people, and most entries lose. What an optimizer does is build lineups that follow your reasoning and are constructed well — valid, diversified and correlated — so that when your read on the slate is right, your lineups are positioned to benefit.
- Do I need my own projections?
- No. Published NFL and PGA slates come with Martian Flow projections built in. If you have your own numbers you can upload them, and the optimizer uses yours instead.
- Is Martian Flow affiliated with DraftKings or FanDuel?
- No. Martian Flow is independent and is not endorsed or sponsored by either site. It produces the files each site accepts for lineup upload.
- How do I try it?
- Create an account and start the free trial. You can build and review a portfolio before you decide.
Keep reading
Build your first lineups
Pick a slate, set only what you insist on, and review the portfolio before you export it. Or open Gus and ask him what he sees on the slate first.
Start the free trial