Ours, KeepTradeCut, and FantasyCalc: One Test, Three Calculators

We benchmark our trade verdicts against how real dynasty communities judge real trades, and we've written about that test before. The obvious follow-up question is how other calculators score on the same test. So we ran it, against the two tools dynasty managers cite most, KeepTradeCut and FantasyCalc. Both are excellent free tools that we respect, and each represents a genuinely different way of building a calculator. This article shows the results and the work behind them.

The rules of a fair test

A calculator comparison is only worth reading if every tool is tested as it actually behaves. Grading a competitor on raw value sums when its calculator applies adjustments would produce a strawman, so we implemented each tool's complete verdict logic: KeepTradeCut's value adjustment and its own fairness rule, FantasyCalc's waiver adjustment and its slot-level pick prices, and our production verdicts. We verified the implementations by reproducing live results from both sites exactly, across one-for-one swaps, two-for-ones, and three-for-ones, in both Superflex and one-QB formats.

Every trade is priced with each system's values as of the day the thread was posted, with no hindsight. The grading rule was fixed before any results were computed. The headline numbers come only from months our own engine was never tuned on, and only from trades all three systems could fully price, so nobody gets graded on a trade they couldn't evaluate. And because a calculator can look accurate by only speaking when trades are lopsided, we report how often each tool declines to pick a side, right next to how often it's right when it does.

Three ways to build a trade calculator

KeepTradeCut's values are crowdsourced from millions of community votes, and its calculator applies an adjustment that favors the more consolidated side of a trade. FantasyCalc's values come from real trade data, and its calculator credits the side receiving fewer players. Ours also starts from real trades, but we build the package premium into the value curve itself, so our verdict is a straight comparison with no calculator-side correction. All three are graded on whether their verdicts match how experienced managers actually judge trades.

The full process on two real trades

Here are two real trades, worked through the same way every trade in the study was. Names arrive as the community writes them (“Ladd,” “Ward,” “Gadsden”) and are resolved deterministically against the player database, with ambiguous names resolved to the fantasy-relevant player and unresolvable ones dropped rather than guessed. Each tool then prices both sides from its own values for that exact date, and each tool's real verdict logic renders the call. The community's replies, not ours, decide who was right.

Trade 1, Superflex, March 2026: Ladd McConkey and Cam Ward for Justin Jefferson.

The replies were unanimous: “Jefferson for sure,” “I'm low on Ward so would definitely do this.” A clear community win for the side receiving Jefferson.

On KeepTradeCut's scale, McConkey plus Ward outsums Justin Jefferson by 38%. Its adjustment claws back 2,786 points for the Jefferson side and lands the trade dead even. On FantasyCalc's scale the pair also outsums Jefferson, and its fixed waiver credit closes most of the remaining gap. Both tools end within a few percent of even on a trade the community called in one direction, emphatically. Our curve prices the two good-not-elite players far enough below the superstar that the verdict survives the addition.

Trade 2, Superflex, May 2026: Oronde Gadsden and Parker Washington for Rashee Rice.

The replies: “Rice so easily.” “Accept it before they come to their senses. Pennies on the dollar.” One reply added they roster Rice in a dynasty league and would never accept the other side of this offer.

Same shape, more extreme. FantasyCalc prices Parker Washington, a fringe roster piece, at more than half of Rashee Rice. Two fringe bodies outsum Rice on both other scales, the corrections nudge the totals back toward each other, and both tools call a community-certified fleece a fair trade. The aggregate numbers below are mostly this pattern repeating. Values put piles of decent players level with stars, and corrections re-center the total without re-shaping it.

The results, three ways to score them

On the locked-away months, 265 community-judged trades could be fully priced by all three systems, 224 of them with a clear community winner. There is more than one fair way to grade a calculator against those trades, and the framings reward different things, so we report all three and let you weigh them. Right when it commits measures how often the calculator matches the community when it picks a side. Right answers delivered measures how often, across all 224 trades with a clear community winner, the calculator handed you that answer, where calling it even counts as failing to answer. Exact match is the strictest, requiring the calculator to land on the exact same verdict, win, lose, or even, across all 265 trades including the ones the community called fair. Measured July 2026:

FantasyCalc matches our precision when it commits, but it commits on fewer than half of the trades where the community saw a clear winner. That is the Jefferson and Rice pattern at scale, and it's why the tie in the first column disappears in the second. Counting right answers actually delivered, it's 60% for us, 37% for FantasyCalc, and 38% for KeepTradeCut. Ours is the only calculator of the three that answers “who won this trade” correctly more often than it shrugs or misses.

The exact-match column looks low for everyone. When the community calls a trade fair, they almost never mean the values are equal. They mean “fine deal, take it.” A trade can be a mild overpay and still draw a chorus of “do it,” so a value system agreeing with community-fair verdicts is partly a matter of luck, and always guessing the most common answer already scores 52% on this framing. One calculator of the three beats that baseline. Weigh whichever column matches how you use a calculator; the ordering is the same in all of them.

Split by trade type, every calculator handles one-for-one swaps respectably, and the differences concentrate in the packages. More than 80% of the community-judged sample involved multiple pieces on at least one side.

On several-for-one trades, the most common shape in the sample, we're right on 90% of 81 committed calls. KeepTradeCut commits nearly as often and lands on the community's side less than half the time. FantasyCalc keeps its precision but goes quiet, calling a side on 44 of 104.

Two checks on the conclusion

First, none of this depends on how ties are handled. Force every calculator to always pick a side, with no even verdicts allowed, and the ordering holds: 74% for ours, 71% for FantasyCalc, 54% for KeepTradeCut. Second, on the 39 trades where our calculator and KeepTradeCut's both picked a side and disagreed with each other, the community sided with ours 35 times, 90%. Open disagreements between us and FantasyCalc were nearly nonexistent, two trades in the entire held-out sample. Its difference from us is silence, not opposition.

Values or calculator? Where each system's accuracy comes from

Because we ran every system's real logic, we could also grade each system's values with the calculator layer stripped away, as plain sums. The gap between the two numbers is what each tool's correction layer contributes.

Every calculator has to put the package premium somewhere. FantasyCalc's waiver credit is a well-designed correction doing enormous work, 24 points of it, and the abstention cost is the price of bolting it on at verdict time. KeepTradeCut's adjustment moves in the right direction but recovers less. We think the premium belongs in the value curve itself, because a correction applied at verdict time can only nudge a total, while a curve shapes every value consistently, including the ones you browse on a rankings page.

The placement matters beyond the calculator. Any tool that sums a roster inherits its value scale, and a verdict-time correction never reaches those sums, so on other scales a team hoarding decent depth totals up like a contender even though the trade market would never pay sticker price for the pile. Because our premium lives in the values themselves, our league power rankings weigh each roster the way the market actually pays: stars carry their real weight and replaceable depth doesn't inflate a team. The same property that makes the trade verdicts decisive makes the power rankings the most representative picture of what a roster is truly worth in trade.

Dynasty managers cite KeepTradeCut values constantly, including inside the very threads we scored. Yet when its calculator renders a package verdict, the same community overrides it far more often than not. People trust the crowd's player values and then apply their own package math on top. That gap between the values people quote and the verdicts people reach is exactly what a trade calculator is supposed to close.

Where the other tools are strong

This isn't a takedown. FantasyCalc's precision, when it commits to a side, matches ours, and on clean one-for-one swaps all three calculators perform well. KeepTradeCut's crowdsourced values also respond to breaking news faster than any trade-data system can, because votes move the moment a depth chart does. If you use either tool, you're using a good one. The differences show up in the packages, where most dynasty trades are made.

What we still get wrong

We read every one of our misses on the locked-away months individually. Most fall into three groups: verdicts driven by breaking news the trade market hadn't priced yet, verdicts about roster context like whether a rebuilder should be buying a veteran at all, and future picks the community prices by projecting which slot a struggling team will hand over, information a round-level pick value doesn't carry. On those same trades the other calculators rarely did better. They are hard for every value system, and they set the current ceiling of the test.

Dated results, standing test

All three calculators keep evolving, ours included, so these numbers carry their measurement date: July 2026. New months of community trade debates arrive continuously and become fresh test data that nothing was tuned on. We'll keep running the comparison, and if the picture changes, this page will change with it.

Related reading: We Grade Our Verdicts Against Real Dynasty Communities and Packages, 1-for-1s, and the Value Curve.