Best FPL Goalkeepers: The £1.6m That Buys 4.8 Points

Every other position in FPL rewards you for spending. Goalkeeper does not, and the numbers on it are blunter than most managers expect.

The Algorithm projects every player over the next eight gameweeks. Across that window, from the snapshot of 23 September 2026, the best goalkeeper in the game reads 29.8 expected points and the cheapest regular starters read a shade under 25. That is the whole argument. The gap between the most expensive keeper you can buy and a £4.5m one who plays every week is 4.8 points over two months of football.

So the goalkeeper pick is not a football decision. It is a budget decision, and most squads are getting it slightly wrong in the same direction.

How much is a premium FPL goalkeeper actually worth?

Raya, £6.1m, Arsenal, is the best keeper on our board at 29.8 for gameweeks 6 to 13. He has 30 points from 450 minutes and 42.2% of the game owns him. He is not overrated. He is genuinely first.

The question is what the £1.6m above the floor price buys. Against Rushworth at £4.5m on 25.0, it buys 4.8 points over eight gameweeks, which is 0.6 a week.

Now put the same money in defence. Gabriel, £8.0m, Arsenal, tops our defender board on 41.1 across the identical eight gameweeks. He costs £1.9m more than Raya and projects 11.3 more. That single upgrade is worth more than the entire spread of our goalkeeper top 20's regular starters, which runs from Raya's 29.8 down to 20.7.

You cannot lose much at goalkeeper and you cannot win much either. That is the position in one line.

The eight-gameweek goalkeeper board

Projected points for gameweeks 6 to 13, as of 23 September 2026. Ownership and prices are current.

The shape of that table is the point. Eleven of the fourteen sit inside 5 points of each other over two months.

Which cheap FPL goalkeeper should you actually own?

At £4.5m, four starters are separated by 0.4 points across eight gameweeks: Rushworth 25.0, Petrović 24.9, Verbruggen 24.8, Leno 24.6. Treat those four as interchangeable, because on these numbers they are.

One breaks away, downward. Kinsky, £4.5m, Spurs, reads 22.4, which is 2.6 behind the best option at his own price, and 17.4% of the game owns him. He is the only budget keeper in the set where the cheap price is not buying the cheap-price return. If you hold him and you are choosing between £4.5m keepers anyway, that is a free upgrade.

I would take Verbruggen. He is 0.2 off the top of his price bracket, he has 23 points from 450 minutes, and our model is more confident he takes the field each week than it is about anyone else in the position. Rushworth projects marginally higher, but the board is least sure of his starting place among the £4.5m group, and a goalkeeper who does not play is worth nothing at all, unlike a rotated midfielder who might come off the bench.

At 21.6% owned, Verbruggen is not a differential. He is not supposed to be. The differential money belongs in your front eight.

Where our board disagrees with the scoreboard

Two calls here are worth stating plainly, because both could be wrong.

Tzolakis, £4.7m, Hull City, is the highest-scoring goalkeeper in the game on 34 points, and the best value in the position at 7.23 points per million. Our board has him last of the starters on 21.6. That is a real disagreement, not a rounding error, and it rests on what is coming rather than what has happened.

Martinez, £5.0m, Chelsea, is the inverse. He has 9 points from 360 of a possible 450 minutes and sits second on the board at 28.1. Buy him and you are buying the projection over the evidence so far.

Why goalkeepers are paid so flatly

A clean sheet pays a keeper 4 points. Saves pay 1 point per 3. Those two revenue streams pull against each other: the keepers behind the best defences make the fewest saves, and the keepers making the most saves are conceding. The position self-levels in a way that FPL's scoring by position does not allow for defenders or midfielders, who can add attacking returns on top.

That is why the board compresses, and why it will keep compressing.

FAQ

How much should I spend on a goalkeeper in FPL? £4.5m to £5.0m on a keeper who starts every week. On our eight-gameweek numbers the premium upgrade returns about 0.6 points a week, and the same money in defence returns roughly double that.

Is Raya worth £6.1m? He is the best goalkeeper in the game on our board at 29.8. Whether he is worth the price depends entirely on what the £1.6m would otherwise do, and in most squads it does more elsewhere.

Should I play two playing goalkeepers? Only if you are buying the cheaper one for a specific reason. Two £4.5m starters costs £9.0m for one starting slot, and the second keeper's points sit on your bench unless you rotate him deliberately.

Check every keeper's projection for yourself on the free FPL predicted points table, then read where the saved money goes in our defender rankings.

Want The Algorithm to price your own squad's goalkeeper slot? Get a free rating on your team.