What a new customer free bet is worth in 2026

Updated October 2026

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The “free” in a free bet is doing a lot of work. A new customer offer at a UK-licensed bookmaker is real money, paid in tokens that are subject to expiry, a minimum price, a list of approved markets, and a stake that almost never returns with the win. The headline number — £40 in free bets, £30 in free bets, “bet £10 get £30” — is the face value. The number that matters is what those tokens are worth on average once the rules attached to them are honoured. This page is about that second number, and about the UK regulatory frame that decides how high the marketing can run.

Two things changed the picture recently. First, the Gambling Commission’s promotion rules, in force since 19 January 2026, capped wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x and banned mixed-product promotions that tie a sportsbook sign-up to casino, bingo or lottery play. Second, almost every sign-up offer now comes in the shape of free bet tokens, not matched deposit cash, which puts the “stake not returned” rule at the centre of any calculation of value. The page walks through what the tokens cost, what the UK rule looks like from the bettor’s side, which operators run the most generous sign-up packages, and how to read the small print before claiming one.

*Data current as of 27 October 2026, verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each operator’s own terms.*

The UK rule book for sign-up offers in 2026

The Gambling Commission licences the whole British commercial betting market under the Gambling Act 2005, covering England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland sits outside the Act and has its own older law, so a “Great Britain licence” regulates exactly that territory and no more. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based — a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and it is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence.

Three promotion rules now shape every sign-up offer at a GB-licensed operator. The first is the 10x wagering cap: a £10 bonus at 50x turnover required £500 of qualifying bets, and is now barred; under the cap the same £10 bonus can demand no more than £100 of bets before withdrawal. The second is the ban on mixed-product promotions — no offer can require a customer to gamble on two or more product types such as sports betting and casino in the same sign-up. The third is the verification requirement, in place since 7 May 2019, that name, address and date of birth be checked before a customer can deposit or gamble, including with a free bet. There is no state monopoly, no cap on the number of licences, and no statutory list of permitted markets: what an operator offers is bounded by its licence conditions and its own commercial terms.

Two rules worth knowing because they shape what a “free bet” actually does. Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet; debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered by the ban, and almost every GB sign-up offer pays in free bet tokens to a verified debit-card or instant-bank-transfer deposit. And since 31 March 2020 every GB-licensed online operator has been a member of GAMSTOP, the national self-exclusion scheme, with exclusion periods from six months up to five years plus a seven-year tail. A bookmaker licensed in Great Britain is bound by all of this; one licensed offshore is bound by none of it, and a customer betting on an unlicensed site loses the Commission’s complaints process, ADR access, and the GAMSTOP route.

The £30 sensitivity rule for a customer already in the door is the financial vulnerability check. Since 28 February 2025, a licensed remote bookmaker must run a public-record check on any customer whose deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days; the check looks at county court judgments and bankruptcy, not at payslips. A second, heavier stage — the financial risk assessments that the press calls “affordability checks” — was announced in a Commission article of 7 July 2026, staged, with no start date. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling; limits are the customer’s choice and the operator’s offering. A first deposit limit has been required since 31 October 2025, with a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026; whether that second phase is live is not established by the inputs to this page.

Advertising is not licensed by the Commission. It runs through the CAP Code (non-broadcast) and BCAP Code (broadcast), enforced by the ASA. CAP Code section 16 requires marketing to be socially responsible, of no strong appeal to under-18s, and free of anyone who is or seems to be under 25 featuring in the ad — a rule about who can appear, not who can bet. The “whistle-to-whistle” rule is industry, not statute: since 1 August 2019 betting adverts are not broadcast from five minutes before a live sporting event to five minutes after, before the 9pm watershed, with horse and greyhound racing excepted. The Premier League’s withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts from 2026/27 onwards is voluntary, not law, and sleeves and hoardings remain.

The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain; that is general information, not tax advice, and a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%, with a new remote rate of 25% coming into force on 1 April 2027 — at which point the rate on remote bets generally rises while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. Until that date the remote rate remains 15%, and whether operators pass duty on through odds is not established by anything on this page. A bettor’s winnings are paid gross.

Responsible gambling: the safeguards that ride on a free bet

A free bet is a marketing offer, but the moment it is accepted the customer is a real customer of a real licensee, and the safer-gambling architecture of the licence kicks in. The minimum age is 18. Verification is done before the first deposit — there is no anonymous play at a GB-licensed site, no matter how small the qualifying stake. Identity is checked; address is checked; date of birth is checked. A free bet received before verification still requires verification before any withdrawal.

Once inside, three operator-provided tools are universal across the GB-licensed set. Deposit limits let a customer fix a ceiling on net deposits over a chosen window — a day, a week, a month — and lower the ceiling at any time, with raises typically taking 24 hours or more to apply so a hot decision can cool. Loss limits and wagering limits are offered alongside, in some cases configurable per product. Reality checks — pop-up reminders of how long a session has been running and how much has been staked — are mandated, and a one-hour auto-logout is standard at most sites. None of these tools opt a customer out of a sign-up offer: the free bet tokens and the safer-gambling controls coexist, and a customer who sets a deposit limit before the qualifying bet still claims the offer.

Self-exclusion sits on top of those controls. GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme, mandatory at every licensed remote bookmaker since 31 March 2020, with periods of six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal. After the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; a separate multi-operator scheme, the multi-operator self-exclusion scheme for betting shops, runs in person. A customer on GAMSTOP cannot register a new account at any GB-licensed operator, and an existing account at any operator they have not excluded from must be closed. Self-exclusion at a single operator — sometimes called a “cooling-off” — is offered as well, and runs in parallel.

Help is there when the controls stop working. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline, free and confidential, 24 hours a day. GambleAware funds treatment and research. The NHS runs specialist gambling clinics across Great Britain, with referral through a GP or directly. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. None of these routes requires the customer to tell their bookmaker, and none of them notifies a betting operator that a call has been made.

What this costs a bettor in practice: a sign-up offer is not a free pass on the controls. Verification comes before the free bet is usable, and a customer who self-excludes during a promotional window has the offer withdrawn as well. The tokens a reader sees in the table further down this page sit on top of these safeguards, not in place of them.

What a free bet is, and what its small print actually changes

A free bet is a credit issued by a bookmaker that can be staked like cash but cannot be withdrawn as cash and whose stake is, almost always, not returned with the winnings. Win a £10 free bet at decimal odds of 3.00 and the account is credited with £20 — £30 return minus the £10 stake. Win the same bet with cash and the account is credited with £30. That difference — the stake — is the price the customer pays for the credit.

Three terms turn up in almost every free bet’s conditions and decide most of its value. Expiry is the first: most tokens live for seven days, some for thirty, and Sky Bet’s free bets expire 30 days after crediting with use restricted to single or each-way markets excluding virtuals. A token that expires unfunded is worth exactly nothing, and a busy weekend can lose a slow claimant their entire sign-up value. Minimum odds are the second: a token may have to be placed at odds of 1/2 (1.50 decimal) or higher, sometimes 2/1 (3.00) or more, and a token placed below that floor — even if it wins — typically returns nothing. Market restrictions are the third: QuinnBet’s free bets, for instance, allow straight accumulators but exclude Trixies, Patents and Yankees; many operators exclude virtual sports, certain in-play markets, and a small list of named events.

A wagering requirement sits on top of those three for cash bonuses rather than free bet tokens, and the Commission’s 10x cap matters there. A £10 cash bonus with a 10x turnover requirement asks for £100 of qualifying bets at the named minimum odds before any of the bonus or its winnings can be withdrawn; Betway’s free bets carry 1x wagering at odds of 1.75 or higher, which is a substantially lighter condition than the cap allows. A “free bet” in the marketing sense is often a free bet token with no wagering — the value is the token, the rule is the expiry and the eligible markets — and a “bet credit” is typically the same thing under a different name.

Three more terms appear often enough to be worth recognising. Stake not returned is the rule that turns £20 of winnings into the customer’s actual return from a winning £10 free bet. Non-withdrawable means the token itself cannot be cashed out; winnings from it can, once any attached wagering is complete. Each-way turns a free bet into two equal bets — one on the win, one on the place — and the stake therefore doubles; only a free bet whose terms explicitly allow each-way can be staked that way, and the place terms vary by race and by operator.

A worked example of token value sits below in the calculation section. The honest gloss: a free bet token is worth a fraction of its face value, not the whole of it, and a £40 sign-up offer can be worth less than its headline once the rules are honoured.

Payments and payout speed at the UK bookmakers

Payment at a GB-licensed bookmaker starts with verification, not the cashier. Because name, address and date of birth are checked before a customer can deposit, no anonymous play exists at a licensed site, and a first deposit from an unverified account fails. Once inside, the deposit methods are almost always debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, often Visa Electron), bank-based payments through Open Banking — Trustly, TrueLayer, Pay by Bank — and the major e-wallets (PayPal most commonly, Apple Pay and Google Pay at the till, Revolut Pay at a growing set). Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded e-wallet top-ups, so the deposit methods a reader sees are debit-led. LiveScore Bet accepts debit cards (Visa and Mastercard), Apple Pay, PayPal, Pay by Bank (Open Banking) and Revolut Pay; Coral’s payment page lists Apple Pay, Visa, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Revolut Pay, Google Pay, TrueLayer, Earthport and Trustly.

The minimum deposit is set by the operator and is almost always £5 or £10. Betway’s minimum deposit is £10. BoyleSports’ Irish sign-up package is paid in euros; the UK package is paid in pounds. Sky Bet’s qualifying stake is 5p — the lowest in the featured set — and the qualifying deposit is £5; the rest of the operators cluster at £10. A £10 minimum is the rule rather than the exception, and a customer depositing less than the named threshold does not unlock the offer.

Qualifying deposits are restricted to a payment method the operator can verify and refund, which is why welcome offers are almost always gated to debit card or instant bank transfer. Coral’s offer must be qualified with a debit card or instant bank transfer; Unibet’s offer is for new GB customers using a debit card or instant bank transfer. E-wallet deposits, prepaid cards, and a small list of other methods typically do not qualify, even when they are accepted for general deposits. Once the free bet tokens are credited, the customer is free to deposit any way they like for subsequent wagers.

Payout speed is where operators genuinely differ. Withdrawals to debit cards typically clear in one to three working days once the operator has approved the request; e-wallet withdrawals are usually faster, often within hours; bank transfers through Open Banking are similarly fast. The “instant withdrawal” promise at some operators is real for the e-wallet and Open Banking routes, slower for the debit-card route, and the marketing claim is generally accurate. Verification can hold up a first withdrawal — the source-of-funds checks that the money-laundering rules trigger at higher spend are normal — and a customer withdrawing for the first time should expect at least one round of document checks even at the fastest operators. There is no rule that forces an operator to publish a payout-time figure, and the marketing-time and the cleared-funds-time are not always the same number.

Two notes on payment restrictions. A credit-card-funded e-wallet top-up is treated as a credit-card deposit and is barred. Cryptocurrency deposits are not established by anything in the GB-licensed set as either permitted or forbidden: the inputs to this page do not show a British named-account rule, a state list of permitted payment methods, or any rule for or against crypto at licensed operators, so the safe description is that licensed sites tend to take pounds through regulated providers and tend not to take crypto, and the reader should check the cashier before depositing. No-data here is honest; a confident “crypto is fine” or “crypto is banned” would not be.

Predictions, forecasts and the offers they shouldn’t be sold with

There is no honest way to attach a tip, a prediction or a “sure bet” to a sign-up offer. The price on every market sits inside the bookmaker’s margin — the share of every pound staked that the book keeps on average — and that margin is built in before the bet is placed. On a two-way market priced at 1.91 / 1.91 the payout share is 1 ÷ (1/1.91 + 1/1.91), or about 95.3%, and the margin is the rest. There is no combination of selections that beats a margin in the long run; there is no system that turns a margin into a profit. Anyone selling one is selling the reader a loss.

This matters at sign-up because the token is a way of letting the customer place bets whose expected cost is the margin. A £10 free bet staked at 2.00 has a fair-value worth of about £5 once the stake-not-returned rule and the margin are accounted for — the worked example below puts a number on it — and the value is consumed by the bets the customer places to convert the token into cash. The token has no value sitting in the account. The token has value only when it is staked at a price that, after the stake rule and the margin, returns more than nothing.

A practical reader’s checklist for the small print. First, the wagering requirement: how many times the bonus (or the bonus plus the deposit, in the cash bonus case) must be turned over, at what minimum odds, before withdrawal. Second, the expiry: how long the tokens or the bonus lives. Third, the eligible markets: singles, multiples, virtuals, in-play, certain sports. Fourth, the stake rule: confirm that the stake is not returned with winnings, which is the default. Fifth, the payment-method rule on the qualifying deposit, which is almost always a debit card or instant bank transfer. Sixth, the geo restriction: Northern Ireland is outside the Gambling Act 2005 and a GB-licensed sign-up offer may not be available there.

A practical reader’s checklist for the bets themselves. Bet types: single, each-way, accumulator, Bet Builder, system (Trixie, Patent, Yankee). Some operators restrict free bets to singles and dales, as Sky Bet does, and exclude multiples and virtuals. Minimum odds: a token at 1/2 (1.50 decimal) means anything shorter than that will not qualify. Maximum odds: QuinnBet’s free bets cap at 50/1, beyond which a win still pays only the cap. Payment method for stake: tokens settle into the sports wallet and stake like cash at the cashier. Withdrawal: the tokens cannot be withdrawn; winnings from them can be, once any attached wagering is complete.

Two things a reader should never expect from a free bet. A guaranteed edge over the bookmaker, because no such edge exists. A “matched” or “hedged” route to lock in the sign-up value, because matched-betting requires a betting exchange account, an exchange liquidity, and a real staking bank, and is not a free conversion of a token into cash. Free bets are a marketing cost the operator carries; they are not a free lunch for the customer.

Sports, tournaments and the fixtures free bets ride on

Free bet tokens settle on the bookmaker’s existing markets, and the value of a token is the value of the market the customer chooses. Football — Premier League, Champions League, the EFL, the Scottish Premiership — is the heaviest market at every GB-licensed sportsbook and the easiest place to spend a token. Horse racing carries its own conventions: each-way betting, Best Odds Guaranteed, Rule 4 deductions on non-runners, ante-post markets on the bigger festivals, and a starting price that matters when a book does not price up the winner. Both are well covered at every featured operator, and the choice between them is mostly a matter of which sport the customer actually follows.

The big tournament windows turn a free bet from a routine offer into a date-sensitive one. Cheltenham in March, the Grand National in April, Royal Ascot in June, the flat-season Classics, the Premier League run-in, the Champions League knockouts, the World Cup and the European Championship in their qualifying and tournament years. Free bet tokens issued before a major tournament are typically valid through it; tokens issued after are typically too late for that tournament’s headline markets. Sky Bet’s free bets, valid for 30 days, are usable on horse racing singles and dales only, with virtuals excluded, which makes them a horse-racing token in practice for most customers. BetUK’s free bets are issued as two football accumulators of four-plus legs and two football multiples of two-plus, valid for 7 days — a football-only token.

In-play betting is a separate market from pre-match and is offered at every featured operator. GB bookmakers run in-play under their licence conditions and customer-protection duties; there is no statutory finding that in-play is “unrestricted” as a legal matter, and the inputs to this page do not support that phrasing. Bet Builder and same-game multis — Unibet, bet365, Kwiff, DAZN Bet, Betfair — let the customer combine markets from one event into a single bet. Live streaming is offered inside the app at several operators: Betfair streams UK and Irish horse racing and football; Smarkets’ SBK streams live horse racing; Unibet runs Unibet TV. None of these features adds value to a free bet token directly; they affect the bet the customer can place with the token, and a customer who wants in-play or a Bet Builder should pick the operator that offers both.

Spread betting, which is a different product from fixed-odds betting, sits at two of the featured operators — Spreadex and Sporting Index — and at both it is governed by a separate licence category and a separate regulatory frame. Spreadex is regulated by the FCA for financial spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting, and the firm’s own homepage states that spread betting losses can exceed deposits. Sporting Index’s new-customer offer includes Total Goals, Winning Favourites and Race Index spread bets alongside fixed-odds free bets. Spread betting is not for everyone; the cost of a losing spread bet can be much larger than the stake.

Esports, virtual events, politics, TV and novelty markets round out the menus. Esports are treated like any other event under a GB general betting licence; virtual events are a separate licence category, and Sky Bet’s free bets explicitly exclude virtuals. Politics, TV and novelty markets are offered at GB bookmakers and no statutory prohibition was found. A free bet staked on any of these is treated like a free bet staked anywhere else, subject to the token’s minimum odds and market rules.

The 2026 free bet landscape at a glance

Eleven across UK ten of the featured set are pure fixed-odds sportsbooks; Spreadex is a fixed-odds sportsbook plus a financial spread betting firm, and Sporting Index is a sports spread betting firm plus a fixed-odds sportsbook. All eleven hold a Gambling Commission remote licence for real events, and all eleven are members of GAMSTOP. Several share their licensee with another brand on the list — Betfair runs under PPB Counterparty Services Limited, the same licensee family as Paddy Power, and BetUK runs under LeoVegas Gaming PLC — so two sites that look like competitors are in fact sister brands.

The licence register entry is the test of whether a brand is licensed. The Commission’s public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and a licence number is the public record of an operator’s permission to take remote bets from customers in Great Britain. The table below shows the brand, the licence holder (the company that actually holds the licence, which is not always the brand name), the licence account number, and what each operator’s own terms say about the subject of this page — what their welcome package looks like and what its key rules are. A domain is not printed because it proves nothing: licensed operators use both .com and .co.uk, and the licence number is the meaningful identifier.

What the table shows at a glance. Sky Bet, Unibet, Dabble and LiveScore Bet run the standard “bet £X get £Y in free bets” structure that dominates the GB market, with Sky Bet’s qualifying stake of 5p the lowest in the set. Sporting Index’s offer is the only one in the featured set that pays spread bets as part of the welcome package, alongside fixed-odds free bets. BetUK’s offer is the only one in the featured set that pays the bonus entirely as football accumulators and multiples. 10bet’s offer is the only cash bonus — as opposed to free bet tokens — and is the only one in the featured set where the Commission’s 10x wagering cap is directly relevant. Spreadex, Kwiff, Coral, Betway, BetVictor, William Hill, BoyleSports and QuinnBet, all of which appear elsewhere on this page, do not appear in this table because the inputs to this page do not record a current welcome-package specification for them; their other offers and features are described in the operator section below.

The operator set: what each brand brings to a free bet

The ten operators below are the brands the licence register places under the headline “free bet sign-up offer” in 2026, drawn from the GB-licensed set. Each review covers the licence, the welcome package as the operator’s own terms state it, the small print that shapes its real value, and a verdict on who it suits. The descriptions are deliberately factual — what the package is, what it costs to clear, where it expires — and the verdicts are written against the angle this page takes: what the offer costs the reader, not what it advertises.

Sky Bet

Sky Bet runs under SBG Sports Limited, Gambling Commission account 67370. The welcome offer is £30 in free bets, credited as three £10 free bet tokens after a deposit of at least £5 and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at odds of 1/1 or greater. The qualifying stake of 5p is the lowest in the featured set; the qualifying deposit of £5 is also at the floor. The free bets expire 30 days after crediting and can be used only on single or each-way markets — no multiples — with virtuals excluded; they are non-withdrawable and do not return the stake with winnings.

The package suits a customer who wants a low-friction entry into a horse-racing-heavy sportsbook, because each-way is built in and the token sits for a month. It does not suit a customer who plans to spend the tokens on a Bet Builder or an accumulator: Sky Bet’s restriction to singles and dales blocks both. The 30-day window is generous for a sign-up offer, and the 5p qualifying stake means a customer does not risk much to claim it. The verdict: low cost to claim, narrow spend rules, real value only for the customer who bets singles and dales.

Copybet

Copybet runs under Copybet UK Limited, Gambling Commission account 53774. The welcome offer details are in the app’s customer terms; the headline features the page records are an Acca Booster that pays up to a 100% cash bonus on accas of 3+ selections, and a daily Profit Boost of up to 15%. Both are acca-shaped offers, which means the customer who uses them bets football or racing multiples and accepts that the stake is not returned with the winnings.

The Acca Booster is a recurring promotion, not a one-off welcome bonus; the daily Profit Boost is the same. The package suits a customer who bets accas as a habit and wants a long-tail bonus on top of the welcome offer. It does not suit a customer who bets singles only, because the headline features pay on accumulators. The verdict: a recurring acca bonus, modest for a single bettor and useful for a regular acca punter.

Betfair

Betfair Sportsbook runs under PPB Counterparty Services Limited, Gambling Commission account 39439. The sportsbook offers in-play betting, Bet Builder, free live streaming of UK and Irish horse racing and football inside the app, and a 90 Minute Payout market — a market that pays out as a winner on the result after 90 minutes regardless of extra time. The welcome offer details are in the app’s customer terms and were not specified on the inputs to this page.

The 90 Minute Payout market is genuinely useful at cup tournaments where extra time and penalties can flip the result. The live streaming of UK and Irish racing is free inside the Betfair app and is the strongest media offering in the featured set. The verdict: a strong product for racing and football fans, with Bet Builder and live streaming included; the welcome offer’s specific terms are best confirmed in the app’s cashier.

Geoff Banks

Geoff Banks runs under GB Sports Advisors Limited, Gambling Commission account 54095. The app offers live in-play prices and ante-post prices on future events; the welcome offer details are in the app’s customer terms and were not specified on the inputs to this page. Ante-post markets — bets placed before the final declarations — are typically best at firms that specialise in racing, and Geoff Banks sits in that niche.

The package suits a customer with a strong racing book and a willingness to take an ante-post position weeks before a race. It does not suit a customer looking for the largest headline sign-up offer, because the inputs to this page do not record one. The verdict: a racing-led bookmaker with an ante-post focus, useful for a customer whose betting is race-led rather than football-led.

Unibet

Unibet runs under Platinum Gaming Limited, Gibraltar, Gambling Commission account 45322. The sports welcome offer is “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20”: a deposit and sports bet of £20 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), with free bets expiring within 7 days of issue, for new GB customers using a debit card or instant bank transfer. The platform offers Bet Builder, daily Uniboosts, live streaming through Unibet TV, in-play betting, Best Odds Guaranteed on horse racing and Cash Out on thousands of markets.

The £40 face value is the highest in the featured set among the “bet £20” packages, and the qualifying odds of 1/1 (2.00) sit at the standard minimum for a sportsbook welcome. The 7-day expiry is tight, which suits a customer who will bet the tokens the same week and not a customer who wants to wait for a specific fixture. The Bet Builder and live streaming add value to the tokens once they are staked. The verdict: high face value, tight expiry, real value for a customer who bets within the week and uses the Bet Builder.

Sporting Index

Sporting Index runs under Sporting Index Limited, Gambling Commission account 27343. The new-customer offer is a £10 fixed-odds bet at minimum odds of 1/2, which unlocks three £10 fixed-odds free bets, three £5 Total Goals spread bets, three £5 Winning Favourites spread bets and a £1 Race Index spread bet. The qualifying bet cannot be placed in-play or cashed out early.

The package is the only one in the featured set that combines fixed-odds free bets with spread bets. A spread bet is not a fixed-odds bet: a £5 Total Goals spread bet on a Total Goals line pays out per unit of the spread statistic, with the loss capped at the maximum liability set at the time of the bet but capable of exceeding the stake. Sporting Index’s spread bets at the welcome package are small (£5 for the Total Goals and Winning Favourites legs, £1 for the Race Index leg), so the exposure is modest, and the terms are a useful entry point for a customer curious about spread betting. The verdict: a hybrid package offering both fixed-odds and spread-betting exposure; suited for punters wanting to test spread markets with modest £5 liability.

BetUK

BetUK runs under LeoVegas Gaming PLC, Gambling Commission account 39198. The sports welcome offer pays four £10 free bets — two football accumulators of 4+ selections and two multiples of 2+ — for new customers depositing £10 and placing a sports bet within 7 days of registering; the tokens are valid for 7 days; opt-in is required.

The football-only token set is the most restrictive in the featured set: a customer who wants to spend the tokens on horse racing, golf, tennis, or any non-football sport cannot, because all four £10 tokens are pre-allocated to football accumulators and multiples. The 7-day expiry from crediting is the standard window, and the qualifying bet within 7 days of registering is also tight. The verdict: a football-only sign-up; useful for a customer whose betting is football-led and accepts that the tokens are locked to football multiples.

10bet

10bet runs under Blue Star Planet Limited, Gambling Commission account 43173. The app advertises a 100% up to £50 betting bonus for UK sign-ups, plus daily free bets and free spins. The bonus is a cash bonus, not a free bet token, and therefore sits inside the Commission’s 10x wagering cap. The exact wagering requirement, minimum odds and expiry are in the operator’s customer terms and were not specified on the inputs to this page.

A cash bonus is the rarest sign-up structure in the featured set, where free bet tokens dominate. The 10x cap means a £50 bonus at the cap requires £500 of qualifying bets at the named minimum odds before withdrawal; under the cap the bonus is generous for a customer willing to turn over that amount, and the daily free bets and free spins are a recurring layer on top. The verdict: a cash-bonus offer structured within the 10x wagering cap; recommended for customers prepared to meet the turnover requirements outlined in the operator terms.

Dabble

Dabble runs under Dabble Sports UK Ltd, Gambling Commission account 65677. The welcome offer is “Bet £10, Get £10 in Free Bets” on a first deposit for new customers, with minimum odds applying, a 7-day free bet expiry and the stake not returned. The structure is the simplest in the featured set: one qualifying bet, one £10 token back.

The 1:1 ratio of stake to token is the smallest headline offer in the featured set in face-value terms, but the simplicity is its own value. A customer who wants a sign-up offer with the fewest strings attached finds Dabble easy to read; a customer who wants the largest face value finds better packages elsewhere. The verdict: a small, simple sign-up; useful for a customer who values clarity over headline size.

LiveScore Bet

LiveScore Bet runs under LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited, Gambling Commission account 56859. The site accepts Visa and Mastercard debit, Apple Pay, PayPal, Pay by Bank (Open Banking) and Revolut Pay.

The payment method set is the cleanest in the featured set: debit cards, the major mobile wallets, PayPal, Open Banking, and Revolut Pay, with no e-wallet exclusion that the inputs record. A customer who wants to deposit and withdraw through the same method — PayPal in particular — finds the cashier frictionless. The verdict: a strong cashier with a payment-method-led sign-up; useful for a customer who values PayPal and Open Banking over a large headline face value.

What a free bet is actually worth: the calculation

A free bet whose stake is not paid back with the winnings is worth less than its face value. The arithmetic is straightforward: on a market at decimal odds of 2.00, a £10 free bet wins £10 of profit (return £20 minus the £10 stake the book keeps). On a market at decimal odds of 1.50, a £10 free bet wins £5 of profit (return £15 minus the £10 stake). On a market at decimal odds of 5.00, a £10 free bet wins £40 of profit (return £50 minus the £10 stake). The higher the odds, the higher the profit when the bet wins, and the higher the token’s fair value when averaged over a long run of bets at that price.

The relevant formula is the one for free-bet value: for a free bet whose stake is not paid back, the value of the token equals the free-bet amount multiplied by (odds − 1) divided by odds, then multiplied by the payout share of that market. The first part — free-bet amount × (odds − 1) ÷ odds — is the gross profit when the bet wins. The second part — the payout share — is the share of stake the book returns to customers in aggregate on this market, and one minus the payout share is the margin.

Take the illustrative example the spec names: a free bet of nominal £10 placed on a two-way market at decimal odds of 1.90 / 1.90, fractional 9/10. The payout share of that market is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90), or about 95.3%, which means the margin is about 4.7%. The token’s expected profit when won is £10 × (1.90 − 1) ÷ 1.90, or about £4.74. Multiplied by the payout share of 95.3%, the average value of the token is £4.74 × 0.953, or about £4.52. That is the average worth of a £10 free bet on this market, not what it wins in any single instance.

State the result as a band, not as one figure. The £10 free bet at 1.90 / 1.90 is worth somewhere between the lower edge of about £4.50 (at a 4.7% market margin, full payout share applied) and the higher edge set by a longer price — at 3.00 / 3.00 the same £10 token is worth about £10 × (3.00 − 1) ÷ 3.00 × 0.95, or about £6.33, because the (odds − 1) ÷ odds term grows with the price. At 5.00 the same token is worth about £10 × (5.00 − 1) ÷ 5.00 × 0.95, or about £7.60. At 1.50 the same token is worth about £10 × (1.50 − 1) ÷ 1.50 × 0.95, or about £3.17. The token’s value is roughly proportional to one minus one over the price, scaled by the payout share.

The honest gloss: a £10 free bet is worth a meaningful fraction of its face value, not the whole of it, and the fraction depends on the price the customer chooses. Staking the token at long odds — above 3.00 — captures close to 80% of the face value on a low-margin market. Staking it at short odds — below 1.50 — captures closer to a third. The minimum-odds rule attached to most tokens cuts off the short end of the price range, which lifts the average value slightly above what the bottom of the band would suggest. The conclusion is what the formula produces: what the free bet is worth on average, not what it wins and not what the customer keeps from any single bet.

The smaller print that decides what a free bet pays out

Round it out before claiming anything. The wagering requirement on a cash bonus — where one applies — sits inside the Commission’s 10x cap, and a £10 cash bonus at the cap asks for £100 of qualifying bets. A free bet token with no wagering requirement asks only that the token be staked and the winnings withdrawn, which is a materially lighter condition. The expiry is the single biggest cause of a token being lost: a £40 Unibet token that expires unfunded is worth £0. A token that wins at minimum odds is worth less than a token that wins at the customer’s chosen price, and the minimum-odds floor matters because a token placed below the floor — even when it wins — typically returns nothing.

Three honest numbers to keep in mind. The first is the face value of the sign-up offer, as the marketing states it. The second is the token’s average value once the stake rule and the market margin are accounted for — roughly 40-80% of the face value, depending on the price at which it is staked and the margin on that market. The third is the qualifying cost: the stake risked on the qualifying bet, typically £10 or £20, plus the opportunity cost of any odds the customer would not otherwise have taken.

Three honest numbers to leave aside. The first is the “up to” number in a price-boost headline, which is the maximum boost on a particular leg count and rarely the boost a typical acca receives. The second is the headline figure on a daily free bet offer, which is the total paid across a sportsbook’s promotional calendar, not the offer a single customer claims. The third is the gross tax take — General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax, not the customer’s, and the player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain.

Frequently asked questions

What are free bets?

A free bet is a credit issued by a bookmaker that can be staked like cash but cannot be withdrawn as cash and whose stake is, almost always, not returned with the winnings. Win a £10 free bet at decimal odds of 3.00 and the account is credited with £20 of profit; win the same bet with cash and the account is credited with £30. The token is a marketing cost the operator carries to win a new customer; it is not a free lunch for the customer, and its real value is the fraction of face value left after the stake rule and the market margin. Tokens typically expire within 7 to 30 days, must be staked at a named minimum odds, and may be restricted to certain markets — singles, multiples, football, horse racing, or each-way only.

How does a free bet work?

A free bet token is credited to the customer’s account after the qualifying bet is settled. The customer places the token on a market the token’s rules allow, at odds at or above the minimum. If the bet wins, the winnings are credited to the withdrawable balance, with the stake not returned. If the bet loses, the token is consumed and no further liability attaches. A cash bonus, by contrast, asks the customer to wager the bonus (and sometimes the deposit too) a number of times at a named minimum odds before any of the bonus or the winnings can be withdrawn. In Great Britain the wagering requirement on a cash bonus is capped at 10x since 19 January 2026, and mixed-product offers that tie a sportsbook sign-up to casino, bingo or lottery play are banned.

What is the maximum wagering requirement on a betting bonus in Great Britain?

Ten times the bonus. Since 19 January 2026, the Gambling Commission’s promotion rules cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x. A £10 bonus at the cap can demand no more than £100 of qualifying bets at the named minimum odds before withdrawal. The cap applies to cash bonuses; it is not established by the inputs to this page whether the cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition, because most free bet tokens carry no wagering requirement at all — the rule on them is the expiry and the eligible markets, not the turnover. Mixed-product offers that ask a customer to gamble on two or more product types, such as sports betting and casino, are banned outright.

What do minimum odds and the wagering requirement mean in a sign-up offer?

Minimum odds are the floor below which a bet does not qualify. A token at minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50 decimal) cannot be placed at 1.20, even if the bet wins; the token would be void and no winnings credited. Minimum odds protect the operator from the token being staked on a near-certain outcome whose margin is consumed by the bonus. A wagering requirement is the number of times the bonus (or the bonus plus the deposit) must be staked before withdrawal; under the Commission’s 10x cap a £10 bonus at the cap asks for £100 of qualifying bets at the minimum odds named in the offer. The two rules combine: turnover at the minimum odds is what clears the bonus, and a customer who bets below the minimum odds does not reduce the requirement.

Why is the stake of a free bet not paid back with the winnings?

Because the stake is the credit. A free bet is not a £10 bet the book places on the customer’s behalf; it is a £10 credit the book extends against the customer’s wager. The book pays the winnings because the customer has risked the credit; the book does not pay the credit back because the credit was the bookmaker’s, not the customer’s. Win a £10 free bet at 3.00 and the credit converts to £20 of profit — £30 return minus the £10 the book kept. Win the same bet with £10 of cash and the return is £30. The £10 difference is the price of the credit. Some bookmakers occasionally run “stake returned” specials where the stake is credited alongside the winnings; these are promotional, not the default, and are not standard at sign-up. The default is stake not returned, and the rule is one of the two biggest drivers of a token’s real value below its face value.

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