Updated October 2026 | All stats are as of the end of IPL 2026 (final played 31 May 2026).
Quick answer: the most expensive player in IPL auction history is Rishabh Pant, who was bought by Lucknow Super Giants for ₹27 crore at the 2025 mega auction. Shreyas Iyer is second at ₹26.75 crore (Punjab Kings, 2025) and Cameron Green is third at ₹25.20 crore (Kolkata Knight Riders, 2026). Mitchell Starc at ₹24.75 crore (2024) and Venkatesh Iyer at ₹23.75 crore (2025) complete the top five. These are auction bids, not salaries.
| Most expensive IPL auction buys | Price | Franchise | Auction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Rishabh Pant | ₹27 crore | Lucknow Super Giants | 2025 |
| 2. Shreyas Iyer | ₹26.75 crore | Punjab Kings | 2025 |
| 3. Cameron Green | ₹25.20 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | 2026 |
| 4. Mitchell Starc | ₹24.75 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | 2024 |
| 5. Venkatesh Iyer | ₹23.75 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | 2025 |
Most Expensive Player in IPL: The Headline Numbers
Rishabh Pant’s ₹27 crore is the largest price ever paid for a player at an IPL auction. It was agreed at the 2025 mega auction, where he was sold to Lucknow Super Giants. Shreyas Iyer, sold to Punjab Kings for ₹26.75 crore at the same auction, finished just ₹25 lakh behind him.
The most expensive overseas player is Cameron Green, bought by Kolkata Knight Riders for ₹25.20 crore at the 2026 mini auction after a bidding war with Chennai Super Kings. That price passed Mitchell Starc’s ₹24.75 crore from 2024. There is a catch for overseas players, though. Under the BCCI’s rule for overseas players at mini auctions, Green’s fee is capped at ₹18 crore and the rest of the bid, ₹7.20 crore, is deposited with the BCCI for player welfare, although KKR’s purse was charged the full ₹25.20 crore. The tables on this page rank the bids themselves.
Pant’s ₹27 crore is equal to 22.5 per cent of the ₹120 crore purse each team started the 2025 auction with. You can read about the players behind these numbers on the Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer career pages.
The 2026 mini auction in numbers
The 2026 mini auction was held in Abu Dhabi in December 2025. Kolkata Knight Riders made the two biggest buys, and Chennai Super Kings set a record for uncapped Indian players.
| Player | Price | Franchise | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cameron Green | ₹25.20 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | Base price ₹2 crore; most expensive overseas player in IPL history |
| Matheesha Pathirana | ₹18 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | Base price ₹2 crore; released by Chennai after the 2025 season |
| Kartik Sharma | ₹14.2 crore | Chennai Super Kings | Uncapped wicketkeeper; base price ₹30 lakh |
| Prashant Veer | ₹14.2 crore | Chennai Super Kings | Uncapped all-rounder; base price ₹30 lakh |
| Liam Livingstone | ₹13 crore | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Base price ₹2 crore |
Kartik Sharma and Prashant Veer each broke the previous record for an uncapped Indian player, which was the ₹10 crore Lucknow Super Giants paid for Avesh Khan in 2022.
What the price actually means
An auction price is not the same thing as a salary or a retention fee, and it helps to keep the three apart. The auction price is the winning bid in the room, and it is what the rankings on this page use. A retention price is the amount a franchise pays to keep a player before the auction, so it never appears in an auction ranking. A salary is what the player actually receives, which can be lower than the bid. Green is the clearest case: a bid of ₹25.20 crore, a salary of ₹18 crore and ₹7.20 crore deposited with the BCCI for player welfare.
The size of the numbers is easy to underestimate. On paper, a team with a ₹120 crore purse could afford four players at Pant’s price (4 × ₹27 crore = ₹108 crore) and little else, which is why very high bids come with real trade-offs.
IPL auction price records at a glance
| Record | Holder | Price | Auction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Most expensive player overall | Rishabh Pant (Lucknow Super Giants) | ₹27 crore | 2025 (mega) |
| Most expensive Indian player | Rishabh Pant (Lucknow Super Giants) | ₹27 crore | 2025 (mega) |
| Most expensive overseas player | Cameron Green (Kolkata Knight Riders) | ₹25.20 crore | 2026 (mini) |
| Most expensive player at a mini auction | Cameron Green (Kolkata Knight Riders) | ₹25.20 crore | 2026 (mini) |
| Most expensive uncapped Indian player | Kartik Sharma and Prashant Veer (Chennai Super Kings) | ₹14.2 crore each | 2026 (mini) |
Full Ranking: The Top 10 Most Expensive IPL Auction Buys
| Rank | Player | Price | Franchise | Auction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rishabh Pant | ₹27 crore | Lucknow Super Giants | 2025 (mega) |
| 2 | Shreyas Iyer | ₹26.75 crore | Punjab Kings | 2025 (mega) |
| 3 | Cameron Green | ₹25.20 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | 2026 (mini) |
| 4 | Mitchell Starc | ₹24.75 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | 2024 (mini) |
| 5 | Venkatesh Iyer | ₹23.75 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | 2025 (mega) |
| 6 | Pat Cummins | ₹20.50 crore | Sunrisers Hyderabad | 2024 (mini) |
| 7 | Sam Curran | ₹18.50 crore | Punjab Kings | 2023 (mini) |
| 8= | Arshdeep Singh | ₹18 crore | Punjab Kings | 2025 (mega) |
| 8= | Yuzvendra Chahal | ₹18 crore | Punjab Kings | 2025 (mega) |
| 8= | Matheesha Pathirana | ₹18 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders | 2026 (mini) |
Three players are tied at ₹18 crore. Pathirana, a Sri Lankan fast bowler, was the second most expensive buy of the 2026 auction. He started at a base price of ₹2 crore, so the winning bid was nine times that, after Chennai had retained him at ₹13 crore for the 2025 season. Yuzvendra Chahal is the leading wicket taker in IPL history as of the end of IPL 2026.
Retained players do not appear in an auction ranking, because they never go to the auction. Heinrich Klaasen, for example, was retained by Sunrisers Hyderabad at ₹23 crore before the 2025 auction, which made him the highest-paid retained player in IPL history at that point. Had it been an auction bid, his price would rank sixth in the table above.
Indian and overseas players in the top ten
The top ten is split evenly between Indian and overseas players, and the combined cost of each group is very close.
| Group | Players | Combined price |
|---|---|---|
| Indian | Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer, Venkatesh Iyer, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal | ₹113.5 crore |
| Overseas | Cameron Green, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Sam Curran, Matheesha Pathirana | ₹106.95 crore |
The 2025 mega auction produced half of the list on its own: Pant, both Iyers, Arshdeep and Chahal. Two players come from the 2026 auction, two from 2024 and one from 2023.
How the Most Expensive Player Has Changed Since 2008
The first auction in 2008 was led by MS Dhoni, who was bought by Chennai Super Kings for US$1.5 million. In 2011 the top price was Gautam Gambhir at ₹11.04 crore (Kolkata Knight Riders). The table below lists the costliest player at each auction from 2014 to 2026.
| Auction | Costliest player | Price | Franchise at the time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Yuvraj Singh | ₹14 crore | Royal Challengers Bangalore |
| 2015 | Yuvraj Singh | ₹16 crore | Delhi Daredevils (now Delhi Capitals) |
| 2016 | Shane Watson | ₹9.5 crore | Royal Challengers Bangalore |
| 2017 | Ben Stokes | ₹14.5 crore | Rising Pune Supergiant |
| 2018 | Ben Stokes | ₹12.5 crore | Rajasthan Royals |
| 2019 | Jaydev Unadkat and Varun Chakravarthy | ₹8.4 crore each | Rajasthan Royals; Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings) |
| 2020 | Pat Cummins | ₹15.5 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders |
| 2021 | Chris Morris | ₹16.25 crore | Rajasthan Royals |
| 2022 | Ishan Kishan | ₹15.25 crore | Mumbai Indians |
| 2023 | Sam Curran | ₹18.5 crore | Punjab Kings |
| 2024 | Mitchell Starc | ₹24.75 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders |
| 2025 | Rishabh Pant | ₹27 crore | Lucknow Super Giants |
| 2026 | Cameron Green | ₹25.20 crore | Kolkata Knight Riders |
Two phases show up clearly. From 2014 to 2022 the top bid stayed between about ₹8 crore and ₹16.25 crore. Yuvraj Singh’s ₹16 crore in 2015 stood as the highest price until Chris Morris went for ₹16.25 crore in 2021. Since 2023 the numbers have jumped: ₹18.5 crore, then ₹24.75 crore, then ₹27 crore, so Pant’s price is almost twice Yuvraj’s ₹14 crore in 2014.
Two other patterns come out of the table. Overseas players were the costliest buy at eight of the 13 auctions (2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2026), and Indian players at five (2014, 2015, 2019, 2022 and 2025). Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals have each paid the top price three times in this period, and two players, Yuvraj Singh and Ben Stokes, topped the list in back-to-back auctions.
Franchise-by-Franchise Comparison
Two franchises account for eight of the ten bids in the top-ten table.
| Franchise | Players in the top 10 | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Kolkata Knight Riders | 4 | Cameron Green, Mitchell Starc, Venkatesh Iyer, Matheesha Pathirana |
| Punjab Kings | 4 | Shreyas Iyer, Sam Curran, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal |
| Lucknow Super Giants | 1 | Rishabh Pant |
| Sunrisers Hyderabad | 1 | Pat Cummins |
Kolkata Knight Riders hold the biggest overseas buys and won the 2024 title in the season after buying Starc, which is covered in our IPL 2024 season review. Punjab Kings spent heavily at the 2025 auction (Shreyas Iyer, Arshdeep Singh and Yuzvendra Chahal) and reached the final that season, as our IPL 2025 season review shows. No other franchise has more than one player in the top ten, so use the IPL teams guide to see how the others built their squads.
What Drives the Price Up or Down
The best way to see the effect of the purse is to compare the top bid with the money each team started with. This uses the three mega auctions, where every team begins with its full purse before retentions.
| Mega auction | Purse per team | Top bid | Top bid as a share of the purse |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | ₹80 crore | ₹12.5 crore (Ben Stokes) | 15.6% |
| 2022 | ₹90 crore | ₹15.25 crore (Ishan Kishan) | 16.9% |
| 2025 | ₹120 crore | ₹27 crore (Rishabh Pant) | 22.5% |
- The purse. The top bid has grown faster than the purse. It rose from ₹12.5 crore in 2018 to ₹27 crore in 2025, more than double, while the purse grew by 50 per cent.
- A bidding war between two teams. One franchise with money and a need is enough to push the price up. Green’s ₹25.20 crore came after Kolkata and Chennai bid against each other.
- Scarcity at the top. Few players in each auction have the profile to start a bidding war, so those who do can reach prices far above the rest of the pool.
- The overseas salary cap. For the 2026 auction a foreign player’s salary was capped at the lower of two figures: the highest retention price (₹18 crore) or the highest auction price from the last mega auction. The cap does not stop a bid reaching ₹25.20 crore, but it stops the player taking home that amount.
- Retention. A star who is retained never reaches the auction, so rival teams can only bid for players who are released. See IPL rules explained for how the rules work.
How the IPL Compares With Other Global Leagues
The IPL fills squads through an auction, and so does South Africa’s SA20, whose rules say teams acquire players through an auction rather than a draft. For years the Pakistan Super League and the Big Bash League used drafts, where franchises pick players in turn instead of bidding against each other. Both have since changed: the Pakistan Super League held its first player auction for the 2026 season, and the Big Bash League scrapped its overseas draft for 2026-27 in favour of direct signings.
Ranking the IPL’s costliest buys is therefore a story about one particular system: a ₹120 crore purse, an open auction and ten franchises that can all bid for the same player. For more on the players themselves, visit the IPL player stats hub and the IPL business and money section.
Related guides: the IPL auction explained, how the IPL auction works, IPL retention rules, IPL prize money.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the most expensive player in the IPL?
The most expensive player in IPL auction history is Rishabh Pant, sold to Lucknow Super Giants for ₹27 crore at the 2025 mega auction. Shreyas Iyer (₹26.75 crore, Punjab Kings, 2025) and Cameron Green (₹25.20 crore, Kolkata Knight Riders, 2026) follow. Green is the most expensive overseas player, although his salary is capped at ₹18 crore under a BCCI rule.
Has this changed recently?
Yes. The record rose from ₹18.5 crore (Sam Curran, 2023) to ₹24.75 crore (Mitchell Starc, 2024) and then to ₹27 crore (Rishabh Pant, 2025). At the 2026 mini auction Cameron Green became the most expensive overseas player at ₹25.20 crore, but he did not pass Pant. Prices could change again at the next auction.