Underdog ReviewStrong Best Ball, Fair Pick'em and No Real Sportsbook

The question we were handed was whether Underdog is now the better all-round app because it folds pick'em, drafts and a sportsbook into one place. Two parts of that sentence need correcting before any verdict. By the accounts we found, the sportsbook only ran in North Carolina, and Underdog has published a shutdown FAQ for it. What replaced it as the company's big bet is a prediction-markets exchange. The product is still good, but it is not the product that sentence describes.

What you can actually play

Drafts and best ball. This is the original product and still the strongest. You draft a roster, make no moves afterwards, and the best finishing teams take the prizes. Wikipedia's entry describes best ball as a season-long, weekly and daily format (Wikipedia). One third-party review counts drafts as available in 41 states plus Washington, D.C., excluding places such as Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nevada and Washington.

Pick'em. You choose higher or lower on a player's projected stat, or pick a winner in head-to-head matchups, and chain the picks. The multiplier is fixed by the number of picks and, depending on format, by whether every pick must hit. State access is narrower here: one review says 16 states, another says closer to 30, and a third lists roughly 15 restrictions. Those counts conflict, so open the app's state page at your location before you do anything.

Prediction markets. Since September 2025 Underdog has offered event contracts, and IG Group says the business became the third-largest US prediction-markets venue by regulated notional volume, behind Kalshi and Robinhood. The company began running them on its own exchange from July 18, 2026. We cannot give you sports-market depth numbers, because nobody has published reliable ones.

The pick'em maths is the same maths

A pick'em multiplier is a hidden margin. A 3-pick entry at 6x is fair only if you hit all three more than one time in 6, about 16.7%. A coin-flip pick pays out 12.5% of the time, so you start behind before you add the sportsbook-style lines that shade a prop against you. One comparison reports Underdog's 3-pick multiplier of 6x against 5x at PrizePicks, which is a real, if small, advantage on that one format. Do the arithmetic for each entry. Do not treat one good multiplier as an edge.

Money in and out

The deposit minimum is $10 and deposits post instantly, based on a third-party review. The same source reports a $10 withdrawal minimum, no withdrawal fee and a review window of 48 to 72 hours, with PayPal usually the quickest after approval. Other guides put the whole cycle between one day and a week. Slow, manual approval is the thing we would plan around, not the speed of the app.

What players complain about

The App Store shows 4.8 out of 5 from about 332,000 ratings, which is excellent. The reviews page also carries the criticisms that matter to people who win.

One reviewer describes an account being permanently blocked after cancelled tennis matches were refunded. That is a single complaint, not evidence of policy. It matches a pattern we see across fantasy and pick'em apps: limits and account restrictions are decided by the operator, not by an external regulator, so a winning player has less recourse than a sportsbook customer in a licensed state.

Ownership matters now

IG Group agreed on July 30, 2026 to acquire Underdog for up to $1.3 billion, made up of roughly $1.1 billion upfront and an earn-out of about $200 million tied to profit targets in 2028 and 2029. We could not confirm whether the deal has closed. Expect the product to lean further toward prediction markets, and expect rules and promotions to change.

Verdict

Underdog is a very good drafts and pick'em app with a broad state footprint for drafts, a polished app and fair multipliers by industry standards. It is not a full sportsbook, and the one that existed in a single state now has a shutdown FAQ. Buy it for best ball. Be cautious with pick'em if you intend to win consistently, and check your state first. Every entry carries a risk of losing the full stake, and it is entertainment, not income. If it stops being fun, use the responsible-play controls in the app.