Howzat Alternative: A Free Prediction App Built Free From Day One
Howzat is India's highest-profile fantasy cricket platform, backed by Junglee Games, with over 40 million users. Following the 2025 Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, Howzat shifted from real-money prizes to a chips-based, free-to-play model — wins are now virtual currency you use to keep playing, not money you withdraw.
Why people look for a Howzat alternative
Howzat's shift wasn't optional — it was a regulatory response, not a product redesign chosen from scratch. That means the underlying product still carries the structure of a platform retrofitted away from real money, rather than one built free and reputation-first from day one. People searching for alternatives are often looking for an app that was never built around cash prizes in the first place, with a cleaner, simpler free experience and categories beyond cricket.
How RIVAL is different
Howzat is cricket-focused fantasy, now running on virtual chips after its 2025 conversion. RIVAL was built free from the start — no chips, no virtual currency to manage, no retrofitted cash mechanic anywhere in its history. Predictions are direct calls rather than fantasy team scoring, and RIVAL covers crypto, entertainment, and world events alongside sports, not just cricket.
The private-league experience is also different in kind: Howzat's structure centers on fantasy contests and rankings; RIVAL's private leagues are built specifically for friend-group competition with a persistent, multi-category accuracy record attached to each person.
| | Howzat | RIVAL | |---|---|---| | Money model | Chips (post-2025 conversion) | Free from day one | | Mechanic | Fantasy team drafting | Direct outcome predictions | | Categories | Cricket-focused | Sports, crypto, entertainment, world events | | Built free originally | No, retrofitted | Yes |
Who should still use Howzat
If you're specifically interested in cricket fantasy team drafting and already have an established presence on the platform, Howzat remains a large, established option in that category.
Who RIVAL is for instead
If you want a prediction app that was free and reputation-based from the very beginning, across more categories than just cricket, RIVAL is built for that.
Why "built free" and "converted to free" aren't the same thing
It's worth understanding why this distinction matters beyond just history. A platform that built its entire product, economy, and user incentives around real-money prizes for years, then had to retrofit a chips-based model after 2025's regulatory shift, is carrying design decisions that were made for a cash-prize world — virtual currency systems designed to mimic the feel of real winnings, progression systems built around what used to be cashable rewards, and a user base that joined expecting real payouts and has had to adjust expectations.
A platform built free from the start never had to make that transition, because reputation, not money, was the reward mechanism from day one. There's no virtual currency standing in for a cash prize that no longer exists, no progression system retrofitted to feel like a payout substitute. The entire structure — private leagues, accuracy records, resolution speed — was designed around the assumption that the prize was always going to be bragging rights, not cash.
What happens if regulation shifts again
This is a real, practical consideration, not a hypothetical one — India's online gaming regulation has already moved significantly once, in 2025, and platforms built around real-money mechanics, even if they've already converted to chips once, remain more exposed to future regulatory attention than products with no money mechanic at any point in their history. A platform like Howzat, having already gone through one major restructuring, is in a fundamentally different risk position than a product that was never built around cash to begin with.
RIVAL's free-from-day-one model isn't just a feature choice — it's a structural decision that removes an entire category of future regulatory risk, regardless of which direction India's gaming policy moves next.
What this means if you're already a Howzat user
If you're currently active on Howzat and have built up chips or rank within its post-conversion system, switching entirely isn't necessarily the right call — that progress has value within Howzat's own structure, and cricket-focused fantasy drafting is a legitimately different activity from RIVAL's direct-prediction model. The more useful framing is to think about what Howzat doesn't cover: crypto predictions, entertainment outcomes, world events, and a direct call-and-resolve format rather than fantasy team scoring.
For a lot of users, the realistic outcome isn't a full switch but an addition — keeping a presence on Howzat for cricket-specific fantasy drafting with whatever community has built up there, while using RIVAL separately for the broader range of predicting a friend group actually does outside of fantasy cricket specifically.
What Howzat's 40 million users signal about India's appetite for this category
Howzat's scale — over 40 million users, backed by Junglee Games, one of India's largest gaming companies — is a strong, independent signal that India has enormous existing demand for cricket-centered prediction and fantasy products. That demand didn't disappear when the platform converted away from real money in 2025; people kept using it, which suggests the appeal wasn't only about the cash prizes, but also about the underlying activity itself: predicting, competing, comparing results with others.
That's an encouraging signal for any free, reputation-based alternative entering the space, including RIVAL. If tens of millions of people kept engaging with a cricket prediction platform even after its cash incentive was removed, it suggests the core loop — predict, compete, see who's right — has real standalone value, independent of whether money is involved. RIVAL is built on that same bet, just without ever having needed to make the cash-to-chips transition Howzat was forced into.
What a forced conversion does to a product's underlying incentives
When a platform is forced to convert from real money to a virtual-currency model after regulation changes, the shift isn't just cosmetic. Years of product decisions, growth strategies, and user expectations were originally built around the assumption that winnings were cashable. Retrofitting that into a chips-based system means finding ways to make virtual currency feel rewarding enough to keep users engaged without the actual cash payout that originally motivated a lot of that engagement.
That's a genuinely hard product problem, and the fact that Howzat retained a large share of its 40 million users through that transition says something about the underlying strength of its core fantasy-cricket mechanic. But it also means the chips system is doing double duty: standing in for what used to be real money, while also trying to feel like a coherent reward on its own terms. A platform that never had real money to begin with doesn't carry that tension, because there was never a cash expectation to manage around in the first place.
Why fantasy drafting and direct prediction attract slightly different instincts
Fantasy cricket, the format Howzat is built around, rewards a particular skill: assembling the best possible team within constraints, weighing player form, pitch conditions, and matchups across eleven or more selections at once. It's closer to a portfolio-construction exercise than a single call, and the people who excel at it tend to enjoy that layered, multi-variable decision-making.
Direct prediction, RIVAL's format, rewards a different and simpler instinct: having a strong read on a single outcome and being willing to commit to it. You don't need to think about a full roster or trade-offs between eleven different player selections — you're answering one question at a time. Some people enjoy the depth of fantasy drafting specifically because of its complexity; others find that complexity gets in the way of the more direct satisfaction of just calling it and finding out. Knowing which instinct describes your own group is a reasonable way to decide which format is actually the better fit, independent of either platform's scale or track record.
Frequently asked questions
Did Howzat used to offer real money?
Yes — Howzat offered real-money prizes before converting to a chips-based, non-cash model following India's 2025 online gaming regulation.
Is Howzat still free to play?
Yes, Howzat now operates on a chips-based, free-to-play model since its 2025 conversion, though it remains structured around fantasy cricket rather than direct outcome predictions.
What's a prediction app that was built free from the start, not converted?
RIVAL was built as a free, no-money app from day one, rather than converting away from a cash model after regulation. It also covers more categories than cricket-focused platforms like Howzat.
Does RIVAL work like fantasy cricket?
No — RIVAL is built around direct predictions (who wins, what happens) rather than fantasy team drafting and player-performance scoring, which is the core mechanic behind Howzat and similar fantasy platforms.
Is Howzat's chips-based model the same as RIVAL's free model?
Not quite — Howzat's chips system was introduced as a retrofit after 2025's regulatory shift, replacing what used to be a cash-prize structure. RIVAL was built free from the very beginning, with no cash mechanic ever existing to retrofit away from.
Could RIVAL be affected by future Indian gaming regulation the way Howzat was?
RIVAL has no real-money or cash-equivalent mechanic of any kind, which structurally removes the category of risk that drove Howzat's 2025 conversion. That doesn't make any product immune to all future regulation, but it does mean RIVAL isn't exposed to the same real-money-specific regulatory pressure.
Can I use RIVAL for the same IPL matches I'd predict on Howzat?
Yes — RIVAL supports predicting on IPL matches and other cricket events the same way Howzat does, but through direct outcome calls rather than fantasy team drafting, and across other categories beyond cricket too.
Does RIVAL have anything similar to Howzat's chip system?
No — RIVAL has no in-app currency of any kind, virtual or otherwise. What you accumulate is a visible accuracy record, not chips, coins, or any currency-like balance.
Is RIVAL exposed to the same kind of regulation that forced Howzat to change?
No — because RIVAL never had a real-money mechanic, it isn't subject to the part of India's 2025 online gaming regulation that specifically targets real-money fantasy and prediction platforms.
Can I predict on the same IPL matches across both Howzat and RIVAL at once?
There's no restriction on using both — many users could reasonably keep their existing Howzat fantasy activity going while separately using RIVAL with friends for direct, no-money predictions on the same matches.
Why would someone choose RIVAL over Howzat if Howzat already has 40 million users?
Scale alone doesn't determine fit — Howzat's strength is fantasy team drafting specifically for cricket, while RIVAL is built for direct, multi-category predicting with a specific friend group. Someone wanting the latter experience would find RIVAL a better fit regardless of Howzat's larger overall user base, since the two products are solving genuinely different problems despite both sitting in the broad "cricket prediction" conversation.
See how RIVAL compares to other apps in our full side-by-side comparison or our India-focused prediction app guide.
RIVAL's waitlist is open now. Join the waitlist to get early access at launch.