Bracket games against draft pools, and who takes a cut. ESPN, Yahoo, CBS Sports, RunYourPool, Splash Sports and TourneyRun, side by side.
TourneyRun charges the commissioner one flat $20 league fee and never holds the pot: buy-ins go straight from the players to the commissioner. RunYourPool charges the commissioner a per-entry fee for the tournament instead, $15 for up to 10 entries and $1.25 an entry from 11 to 50, per its published fee table. Splash Sports custodies entries and deducts a rake from the prize payout, 10% or 12.5% with Commissioner Rewards on, per its help center, though its self-managed contests are listed with no rake. ESPN, Yahoo and CBS Sports run bracket games that are free to enter per their own pages.
A free bracket game on ESPN, Yahoo or CBS Sports costs nothing to run. Among the paid tools, RunYourPool is $15 for up to 10 entries and TourneyRun is a flat $20 for the league; on Splash a 10-entry, $20 pool pays about $20 in rake.
Not on TourneyRun: they take the invite code, add a Venmo or Zelle handle so you know where their buy-in is coming from, and that is it. Splash is a real-money platform, so entries are funded through it. Check the others on their own sites.
They fail differently. A bracket is one form, and for most entrants it is decided in the first weekend. A draft pool keeps every entrant scoring for as long as their drafted players keep playing, and a player knocked out keeps the points he already scored.