Chips are the biggest single-week swings available in Fantasy Premier League. There are four types — Wildcard, Free Hit, Bench Boost and Triple Captain — and the current season gives you two of each, one usable in the first half of the campaign and one in the second. Chip allocations below are read from the official FPL API.

You can only play one chip per gameweek, and once played it cannot be cancelled. Timing is everything: the same chip is worth a handful of points in a bad week and thirty or more in the right one.

Wildcard

What it does: unlimited transfers for one gameweek with no points deduction. The resulting squad is permanent.

The Wildcard is a rebuild tool, not a repair tool. If one player is injured, use a normal transfer. If five of your fifteen are wrong — bad fixtures, injuries, players who have lost their place — that is Wildcard territory.

When it tends to work well:

• After the opening weeks, once you can see which pre-season assumptions were wrong.
• Ahead of a clear fixture swing, restructuring towards teams with a good run coming.
• Before a congested period, to set up a squad that needs less weekly maintenance.
• To prepare for another chip — many managers Wildcard into a Bench Boost so all fifteen players are worth fielding.

Common mistake: playing it in a panic after one bad gameweek. A single red arrow is noise. Wildcarding on emotion in Gameweek 3 leaves you without the tool when you genuinely need it.

Squad rules still apply — 15 players, the standard positional split, the budget and a maximum of three per club. The Season Planner lets you map chip windows across all 38 gameweeks.

Free Hit

What it does: unlimited transfers for a single gameweek. At the next deadline your squad reverts to exactly what it was before.

This is the specialist chip, and it exists mainly for two situations:

• Blank gameweeks, when fixtures are postponed and you might only have five or six players actually playing. A Free Hit lets you field a full eleven for that week without wrecking your long-term squad.
• Double gameweeks, when a set of teams play twice. You can load up entirely on doubling teams for one week and revert afterwards.

Worth understanding: because the squad reverts, nothing you do with a Free Hit persists. Price rises on players you bring in do not benefit you. Any transfers you had banked are unaffected — they are still there afterwards.

Blanks and doubles are announced by the Premier League when fixtures are rearranged; they cannot be reliably predicted far in advance, which is why FPL360 does not pretend to forecast them.

Bench Boost

What it does: all fifteen of your players score for that gameweek, not just your starting eleven.

The value of this chip is entirely determined by your bench. Four players who barely feature return almost nothing, and the chip is wasted. Four genuine starters with decent fixtures can add a meaningful chunk of points.

Getting it right:

• Plan a gameweek or two ahead so your bench is full of players who will actually start their matches.
• A double gameweek amplifies it — fifteen players each with two fixtures is the ideal scenario.
• Check that your bench players’ clubs are not in a blank that week.
• Pairing it with a Wildcard the week before is the standard approach: rebuild so all fifteen are playable, then boost.

Common mistake: playing it reactively at the end of the season simply because it would otherwise expire. That usually produces a very ordinary return.

Triple Captain

What it does: your captain scores triple instead of double for that gameweek.

The highest-variance chip in the game. You are concentrating everything on one player having one big afternoon.

What to look for:

• A premium attacker in strong form — the ceiling matters more than the floor here.
• A genuinely favourable fixture, ideally at home against weak defence.
• Nailed-on starting status. A rotation risk is a poor Triple Captain regardless of quality.
• A double gameweek if one is available, since two fixtures roughly doubles the chances of a haul.

Be realistic: even the best captain picks blank often. Triple Captain has the widest range of outcomes of any chip — sometimes it returns three points. That is the nature of it, not a mistake in itself.

The FPL Assistant ranks captain options by projected ceiling rather than average, which is the relevant measure for this decision. The Captain Impact tool shows how your past calls have played out against your rivals.

Planning your chip strategy

A few principles hold up regardless of season:

1. Do not hoard. Unplayed chips are worth nothing. Two of each is a reasonable budget — use them.
2. Do not burn them early either. The first-half chips expire at the halfway point, so there is a real deadline, but Gameweek 2 is rarely the answer.
3. Chips work best in combination. Wildcard into Bench Boost is the classic pairing.
4. Save flexibility for the run-in. Blanks and doubles cluster in the second half of the season, which is exactly what Free Hit and Bench Boost are for.
5. One chip per gameweek. You cannot stack a Triple Captain onto a Bench Boost week.

The Season Planner includes a 38-gameweek chip timeline you can place chips onto, alongside a league-wide fixture-ease chart to help identify candidate windows.

Frequently asked questions

How many chips do I get?

Two of each type — Wildcard, Free Hit, Bench Boost and Triple Captain — split so one of each is available in the first half of the season and one in the second.

Can I use two chips in the same gameweek?

No. One chip per gameweek, without exception.

Can I cancel a chip after playing it?

Once the deadline passes it is committed. Before the deadline you can generally undo an activated chip, but do not rely on it — treat activation as final.

Do my transfers carry over after a Free Hit?

Yes. Your squad reverts, and any banked free transfers you had remain available.

What happens to unused chips?

They expire — first-half chips at the halfway point, second-half chips at the end of the season. There is no carry-over and no compensation.

Which chip is most valuable?

The Wildcard, for most managers, because it fixes structural problems rather than delivering a one-week spike. Bench Boost and Triple Captain have higher ceilings in a single week but need the right conditions to pay off.