A waiver period is the length of time a player must spend on waivers before waiver claims are processed.
The Standard league waiver process begins daily between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. ET. To help prevent players from cycling through free agency, a player who is added and released on the same day will remain a free agent. (Exception: Players dropped via waiver processing will return to waivers normally.)
Example:
- 3:04 a.m. ET – Team 1's waiver claim on Colts D/ST processes, and the player is added to Team 1's bench.
- 9:24 a.m. ET – Team 1 drops Colts D/ST later that same day. The transaction log will read "dropped Colts D/ST to Waivers," but because the add and drop happened on the same day, the player does not actually go to waivers.
- 11:23 a.m. ET – Colts D/ST is immediately available as a free agent, and Team 2 adds them.
Note: All drops are logged with the same wording — "dropped [player] to Waivers" — regardless of where the player actually lands. When the same-day add/drop rule applies, the player becomes a free agent immediately even though the log says "to Waivers." Check the player's availability on the Players page rather than relying on the transaction text.
In LM leagues, the Waiver Period setting can be changed by the League Manager at any time during the season. See "League Settings & Roster Lock Times" for more information.
Below are the available LM league options for waiver period:
- No Waivers – If selected, players will never be moved to waivers. Instead, all available players are always free agents.
- 1 Day – This is the default setting. Most players will clear Wednesday mornings.
- 2 Days – Most players will clear Thursday mornings.
If a player is dropped during the week (for example, on Thursday afternoon), the player will be listed on waivers for the total number of days set in your league rules. Suppose your waiver period is set to 1 day. The waiver will process at the next waiver run that is at least a full 24 hours later. So if you drop a player at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, your waiver will run on or about 4 a.m. ET Saturday — the next scheduled running of waivers that is at least 24 hours past the time the player was dropped.
Note: Any waiver claims pending at the time the Waiver Period rule is changed will be grandfathered in. The new setting applies to players moved to waivers going forward.