What a sign-up free bet is really worth in 2026 — and what the rule book now requires

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

A welcome offer is the smallest financial decision a bookmaker and a new account make together, and it is also the one with the most written about it. The amount in pounds is the headline. The wagering multiple, the minimum odds, the seven-day or thirty-day clock, the markets the free bet will not settle on — those decide what the headline is worth, and they are the parts that decide whether the offer moves the needle for the punter placing it.

The data in the table and the operator write-ups below is current as of 26 October 2026 and was checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register, the named operator’s customer terms page and, where relevant, the GB App Store listing for the operator’s app. Prices and margins age quickly; the rules age less quickly but still age.

Statute and the rule book every welcome offer sits inside

A free bet sign-up offer does not exist in a marketing vacuum. It sits inside a regulatory frame that was tightened in January 2026, and the shape of every welcome offer on the British market since then reflects that frame. The frame is the Gambling Act 2005, administered by the Gambling Commission, with the social responsibility code and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice doing most of the daily work. The marketing code sits separately with the Advertising Standards Authority under the CAP Code for non-broadcast and the BCAP Code for broadcast. None of these pieces is theoretical: each one shows up in the small print of an offer.

The rule that changed the market in 2026 is the one in force since 19 January 2026. Wagering requirements on bonuses are now capped at 10x. A £10 bonus with a 50x rollover used to ask the customer to place £500 of qualifying bets; under the cap, no bonus offered to a British customer may ask for more than £100 of qualifying turnover. The rule applies to bonuses. Whether the cap also binds free bets with no wagering condition attached is not established, and the honest answer is that operators are writing their welcome offers around the new ceiling rather than testing it. A second rule from the same date bans mixed-product promotions — any offer that asks a customer to gamble on two or more product types, betting and casino for example, or betting and bingo. “Bet on football to claim free spins” is no longer a permissible welcome offer from a British-licensed brand.

The consequence for a new account is concrete. Welcome offers in 2026 tend to look smaller than the same brand’s offers two years ago, and they ask for less. That is the cap working. They also tend to come in tokens of £5 or £10 rather than a single large credit, which means a missed expiry on one token does not eat the whole package. The price of that tidier offer is that the headline £40 in free bets is rarely the amount the punter keeps: a token of £10 at minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50) on a single selection returns at most £5 of profit, and the stake is not paid back with the winnings. That arithmetic is the subject of the bonuses section below.

A licensed brand is the only kind that has to follow these rules. The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 brought every operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain into the Commission’s regime, regardless of where the operator is based. A Curaçao licence, a Malta licence, a Gibraltar licence — none is a substitute. The Commission maintains a public register searchable by trading name, domain, business name or account number; that register is the test. The brand domains in this article all appear on it. None of them is the only licensed brand: there are far more licensed remote operators than any comparison can feature.

The punt side of the frame is shorter. Minimum age is 18. Identity is verified before the first deposit — name, address and date of birth, with a credit-card-style check that catches obvious mismatches — and that verification runs even before a free bet can be used. There is no anonymous play at a licensed site. 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 the bank-based payment methods are not covered by that ban. The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain; General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15% and rising to 25% on remote bets (other than on UK horse racing) from 1 April 2027. Whether the operator passes duty on through worse odds is not established; it is not the punter’s line on the form.

The unlicensed alternative is the one that needs no rule change to be cheaper, because it offers none of the protections. No GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no recourse if funds are withheld, none of the bonus cap, none of the vulnerability check. The Commission’s enforcement is disruption rather than blocking: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars and payment providers, and court-order DNS blocking powers either granted or imminent. The honest framing is not “unlicensed is illegal to use” — no offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site was found in the statute — but “unlicensed gives up the consumer protections the licence buys”. The British customer who bets on an unlicensed site keeps their winnings, if they get them, and gives up everything else.

What safer gambling tools actually do for the welcome offer

The single most-misunderstood piece of the British frame is what safer-gambling tooling costs a welcome offer and what it does not. It costs the offer nothing. It costs the operator a fair amount of compliance work, and it gives the customer a series of levers the customer alone sets: deposit limits, loss limits, wagering limits, time-outs, self-exclusion through GAMSTOP. None of those levers is set by the regulator for the customer. The regulator sets the floor — operators must offer the controls — and the customer sets the ceiling. There is no state-imposed deposit or loss cap on sports betting in Great Britain. Operators may restrict stakes on individual accounts and frequently do, but that is their commercial judgement and not a rule.

The two checks the operator does run are the ones to know about. The first is identity verification before the first deposit, since 7 May 2019; it is the reason the sign-up form asks for a date of birth and a proof of address before a free bet unlocks. The second is the financial vulnerability check that took effect on 30 August 2024 and which the Commission tied to a specific spend pattern from 28 February 2025: when deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, the operator must run a public-record check — bankruptcy registers, county court judgments — and act on what it finds. It is not an income check and not a credit-reference check. A wider “affordability check”, the kind the press has called the financial risk assessment, was announced on 7 July 2026 in a staged plan with no start date. The honest description is “announced, staged, no start date”, not “in force”.

GAMSTOP is the part the welcome-offer comparison has to mention. Every British-licensed online operator is a GAMSTOP member, by licence condition since 31 March 2020. Self-exclusion periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal; after the minimum period ends, the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps. The betting shop uses a separate scheme. For a punter trying to control their own betting, GAMSTOP is the lever that closes every British account at once, and it is the lever that holds even when the individual account limits do not.

The help lines behind the controls are not advertising. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and education. The NHS runs gambling clinics in several regions. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer support. None of these is a brand. None of them promotes a welcome offer.

The practical consequence for the welcome offer is straightforward. A punter who has self-excluded through GAMSTOP cannot claim a welcome offer at any of the brands in the comparison below. A punter who sets a deposit limit of £50 for their first month cannot place the qualifying bet most welcome offers ask for, because the qualifying bets in this market are mostly £10 or £20 with a card deposit on top. A punter whose deposits minus withdrawals cross the £150 rolling-30-days threshold will be asked a public-record question on their next top-up, and that question does not pause the welcome offer but it does pause the top-up until it is answered. None of that is a flaw in the offer. It is the offer sitting inside the frame.

What a sign-up free bet really costs the bookmaker to give

The marketing word is the first thing to deflate. “Free bet” is a credit whose stake is not paid back with the winnings, which makes it less generous than the same nominal cash. “Risk-free” is, in practice, a refund as a free bet on a losing first wager — the stake is returned in tokens, not in money. “100% bonus” is a matched deposit that almost always comes with turnover. “Boosted odds” is a price concession that may or may not beat the best price already on the market. Each of these is worth what the small print says it is, and the small print in this market is the small print the Commission now caps at 10x turnover on bonuses.

The arithmetic of the credit itself is the same regardless of brand. Take a free bet of £10 on a single selection at decimal odds of 1.90. If the bet wins, the punter receives £9 of profit and keeps nothing of the £10 stake — the bookmaker never returns the stake. If the bet loses, the punter loses the £10 token and is down £10. Across many such bets at the same odds and the same kind of market, the expected value of the credit is the stake multiplied by the edge the punter gives up to the margin of the market. A two-way market priced at 1.90 against 1.90 holds 5% margin (the bookmaker keeps 5p of every £1 wagered on that market over the long run); on a free bet whose stake is not returned, the £10 token is worth £10 × (1.90 − 1) ÷ 1.90 × 0.95, which works out at £4.50. Stated as a band with its condition: a £10 free bet at 1.90 on a two-way market with 5% margin returns roughly 45% of face value on average; at shorter odds the share is smaller (a £10 token at 1.50 is worth about £3.17), at longer odds it is larger (£10 at 3.00 is worth about £6.33). The honest way to read this is that a £40 welcome package split into four £10 tokens is, on the average bet a punter actually places, worth between £12 and £27 depending on which markets and at which odds the tokens are used.

That arithmetic is why the welcome offers in the comparison below are short on multiples and long on constraints. Sky Bet’s free bets, for instance, expire 30 days after crediting, can be placed only as singles or each-way bets (no multiples, no virtuals), are non-withdrawable, and do not return the stake. Betway’s free bets carry 1x wagering at odds of 1.75 or higher. Spreadex’s £60 package is gated on a £10 fixed-odds bet at minimum odds of 1/2 placed within 28 days of account opening. Coral’s £40 package needs a deposit and a £20 sports bet at minimum odds of 2.0, with the free bets issued within 7 days and expiring 7 days after issue. The pattern is the new cap working through the offers: smaller headline, narrower conditions, tighter clock.

Calculation mechanics

For a free bet whose stake is not returned, the value is the stake multiplied by the edge the punter gives up to the margin of the market. The free-bet terms are: nominal stake, no stake return, 30-day expiry, single or each-way markets only. The illustrative two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 against 1.90 (fractional 9/10) carries 5% margin. At those odds, a £10 free bet is worth £10 × (1.90 − 1) ÷ 1.90 × 0.95, which works out at £4.50. Stated as a band: a £10 token is worth roughly £3 to £6 of expected value depending on the odds actually used; a £40 token package is worth £12 to £24 on average; a £60 token package is worth £18 to £36 on average. The band holds because the margin of any single two-way market varies with the sport and the timing, and because a punter who places a free bet at minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50) gives up more edge than one who places it at 3.00.

The calculation is an estimate over many bets at the stated assumptions, not a guarantee for any single punter. A free bet at long odds on a single bet that wins pays its full headline; one at short odds on a single bet that loses pays nothing. The average sits between those extremes.

The constraint each offer adds changes the number, sometimes sharply. A 7-day expiry on a £10 token that the punter cannot get to is worth £0, not £4.50. A minimum-odds rule of 1.75 cuts the markets on which the token can be used in half and pushes the punter toward the more efficient prices, which improves the realised value; a 1/2 rule does the opposite. A package that hands out four £10 tokens rather than one £40 token gives the punter four shots at a market rather than one — and four shots at the average is, on average, the same as one shot at the same average, but the variance is smaller. The compound effect is that the headline is a ceiling and the realised value is some way below it.

What minimum odds really do to a welcome offer

A minimum-odds rule is the second most common constraint after the expiry, and it is the one most likely to be skim-read. Minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50) sound low; they are not. They exclude any selection priced at evens or shorter, which is most favourites in most sports, and they steer the punter toward underdogs and outright markets. Minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1) exclude favourites entirely and leave the punter with outsider prices and combination markets. Minimum odds of 3.0 (2/1) leave the punter with three-way football match odds, longer-priced outrights and the long tail of each sport’s prices. The Commission does not cap a minimum-odds rule. Operators set their own, and the rules are not interchangeable.

What minimum odds cost the punter is twofold. The first cost is that the markets the offer excludes are the markets the bookmaker prices most efficiently. The second is that the average edge per bet is higher on the markets the offer forces the punter into, which means the realised value of the free bet is lower than the headline arithmetic would suggest. A £10 free bet usable only at 3.0 or longer on a market with 8% margin is worth less than £3 on average; the same token on a market priced at 1.90 is worth £4.50. Read the small print, then read the prices on the markets the small print allows.

What to look for in a welcome offer, and what to skip

A welcome offer has four moving parts, and three of them are written in the small print while the fourth is written in the operator’s terms and conditions more broadly. The four are the headline amount, the qualifying bet, the wagering rule, and the expiry. There is also a fifth moving part that matters more than the first four and that almost no marketing line mentions: the markets on which the free bet can be settled.

The qualifying bet is the wager the punter must risk to release the free bet. Coral and Unibet both ask for a £20 sports bet at minimum odds of 2.0. Sky Bet, Betway and BetGoodwin ask for less. Hollywoodbets asks for a losing accumulator of three legs or more at combined odds of 4/1 or greater. Hollywoodbets’ qualifying condition is the one most likely to be misunderstood: the refund is on a losing first qualifying accumulator, not on any first bet, and the punter who places a single and loses gets nothing back. Read the qualifying bet carefully. A £20 qualifying bet at minimum odds of 2.0 on a market the punter would bet on anyway is a free option; a £20 qualifying bet on a market the punter would not otherwise touch is a forced bet at the operator’s prices, and the operator’s prices carry margin.

The wagering rule is the multiplier on the bonus or free bet that must be turned over before any winnings become withdrawable. Sky Bet has none on its free bets. Betway has 1x. Most operators in the comparison have either no wagering rule on free bets (the better outcome for the consumer) or a small one (1x at minimum odds of 1.75). Where the wagering rule is heavier — a 5x bonus with a £50 deposit match — the offer stops being a free bet and becomes a turnover exercise, and the expected cost of clearing it is the turnover multiplied by the margin of the market in which the turnover is cleared.

The expiry is the clock. Seven days is the most common expiry for token-style welcome offers. Thirty days is the Sky Bet number. Twenty-eight days is the Spreadex qualifying window for the first fixed-odds bet. The shorter the expiry, the more likely a token is to die in the account; the longer the expiry, the more the punter can wait for the market they actually want. The expiry is the variable that decides whether the headline is real money or theoretical money, and it is the one most often missed.

The fifth moving part is the market restriction. Sky Bet’s free bets can be used only on singles or each-way markets, excluding virtuals. QuinnBet’s free bets are valid for 7 days at odds of 1/2 (1.50) or greater, with maximum odds of 50/1; straight accumulators are allowed but Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not. Each of these rules shrinks the markets on which the free bet can be settled, and each one is worth more than the headline in deciding what the offer pays.

Comparing the welcome offers in this market

The comparison below covers the brands whose licences and welcome offers are included on this page, and the order is not a recommendation. Two of the three image slots land in this section, the table with the licence data and the operator write-ups that follow.

Each row in this table reads as the operator’s own terms. The cells are not editorial. The judgement sits in the write-ups that follow.

Betway

Betway’s UK offer is “Bet £10, Get £40 in free bet tokens”, four £10 tokens credited on settlement of a first bet of at least £10 at minimum odds of 2.0. The qualifying deposit has to be a debit card; e-wallets and prepaid cards do not count. Free bets carry 1x wagering at minimum odds of 1.75, which means any winnings from a free bet have to be wagered once more before they leave the account. The 7-day expiry is short; a punter who does not have a betting card ready will lose the package.

The wider Betway book is the kind most of the comparison sits inside: football in depth, horse racing, the American sports, an in-play product across the lot. The £40 package is roughly the median of the brands in this comparison by headline, and the 1x wagering is the median of the wagering rules. What sets Betway apart in this comparison is the 1.75 minimum odds on the wagering step. A punter who routinely bets on football match odds at 1.85 or longer has no trouble; a punter who bets on short-priced favourites cannot clear the wagering without dropping to a different market. For the punter whose betting card sits above 1.75 by default, this is the median offer and works. For the punter whose card does not, it is the offer that quietly dies in the account.

Coral

Coral’s £40 in free bets for a £20 qualifying bet at minimum odds of 2.0 is the same headline as Unibet’s, and the qualifying conditions line up almost line for line: debit card or instant bank transfer for the deposit, 7-day expiry on the tokens, 7-day window for the tokens to issue. The wider Coral book is one of the older high-street brands, now on LC International’s remote licence, with a Reward Shaker game, an Odds Booster on hundreds of markets, and free-to-play games such as Football Super Series with a £10,000 jackpot.

The Coral differentiator in this comparison is the free-to-play product around the welcome offer. A punter who would have played Football Super Series regardless of the welcome offer gets the £40 tokens as a free add-on; a punter who would not has no reason to switch. The £20 qualifying bet at 2.0 is large enough that it changes the shape of a punter’s first weekend of betting, and the 7-day window is short enough that the bet has to be planned.

BetGoodwin

BetGoodwin’s “Bet £10 & Get £15 in Free Bets” is the smallest package in the comparison by headline, and the structure is the most useful to understand. The £15 is three tokens, not one: a £5 sports bet, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet. Sub-Cover is a market in which a punter’s bet pays out if a named selection from a match finishes as a substitute; the detail is specific to BetGoodwin’s book, and it is the reason a token is dedicated to it rather than rolled into the sports-bet pool. The package is small enough that it cannot carry a punter’s first weekend of betting on its own, and it is targeted enough that a casual punter who bets on singles and the occasional acca will use the first two tokens and lose the third. The minimum deposit from a brand-new account is the £10 qualifying bet itself.

The wider BetGoodwin book sits under Goodwin Racing Limited, which has been on the Commission’s books under the same account for years. The book is horse-racing-led, with the rest of the sports offered around it. For a punter whose betting card is dominated by horse racing, the £15 package reads as a free add-on; where football dominates instead, the Sub-Cover token is the part that does not fit.

Spreadex

Spreadex is the only brand in the comparison that combines spread betting and fixed-odds betting under one roof. The spread side is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission; the fixed-odds side is regulated by the Commission, and that is the side the welcome offer sits on. Spreadex’s offer is £60 in free bets for a £10 fixed-odds bet at minimum odds of 1/2, with the qualifying bet placed within 28 days of account opening and the free bets usable across both fixed odds and spread betting. The 28-day qualifying window is the longest in the comparison, and the £60 headline is the largest. The FCA-regulated side carries a separate warning in Spreadex’s own materials: spread betting losses can exceed deposits.

The Spreadex differentiator in this comparison is the combination product. A punter who would have used a sportsbook for fixed odds and a separate account for spread betting gets both at one brand and a £60 welcome package as the inducement. A punter who wants only fixed-odds betting gets the £60 package but no use for the spread side; the package is the offer, the spread book is the option. For a punter who already uses both products at other brands, Spreadex is the consolidation play. For a punter who has never used spread betting, the FCA warning is the part to read first and the 28-day window is the part to plan around.

Hollywoodbets

Hollywoodbets’ UK offer is unusual in the comparison: a stake-back as a free bet of up to £30 on the first qualifying losing accumulator. The qualifying bet is an accumulator of three or more legs at combined odds of 4/1 or greater, with a stake of £10 or more, settled within 7 days of placement. If the accumulator wins, the punter keeps the winnings; if it loses, the stake is refunded as a free bet of up to £30. The free bet is one per customer and is non-withdrawable.

The Hollywoodbets differentiator is the structure. Most welcome offers in this comparison refund the punter if the qualifying bet loses, but they refund in tokens that expire quickly and cannot be used on the markets the punter would have used the stake on. Hollywoodbets’ refund is on a losing accumulator specifically, which means the punter who would have bet an accumulator anyway gets a useful product; the punter who would have bet a single or a double does not. For a punter whose card already includes a weekly acca at 4/1 or longer, this is the welcome offer to take. Anyone who bets mostly singles will find that the qualifying bet does not fit and the £30 free bet is unreachable.

Betboro

Betboro’s “100% matched free bet of up to £25” is the offer with the most moving parts in the comparison. The qualifying conditions are a debit card deposit of at least £10 and a first bet of £5 to £25, with at least three selections each at 3/5 (1.60) or higher. A £25 first bet earns a £25 free bet token; a £5 first bet earns a £5 free bet token. The matched nature of the offer is the part most often misread: the free bet matches the stake of the qualifying bet, not the deposit. A punter who deposits £25 and bets £10 on the qualifying bet gets a £10 free bet, not a £25 one.

The Betboro differentiator in this comparison is the size of the offer relative to the qualifying bet. A £25 first bet at minimum three-leg combined odds above 1.60 is a real bet on a willing punter’s card; a £5 first bet is a low-stakes punt with a small free bet to show for it. The structure rewards the punter who plans the first bet rather than the punter who places the smallest qualifying bet to unlock the offer. The licence is held by Webmedia Development N.V., a Curaçao-incorporated holder with a Commission remote licence; the brand is GB-licensed and is not an offshore operator, but the holder’s corporate domicile is worth checking against the Commission’s register.

Octobet

Octobet’s welcome package is 50% back as a free bet up to £50, plus a £10 casino bonus. The casino bonus is the part to flag: under the Commission’s January 2026 rules, mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types — are banned. The package as listed in the App Store description appears to bundle the sports free bet and the casino bonus as one offer to a new customer; whether the casino bonus is gated on the sports bet, or whether the two are independently claimable, depends on the operator’s own terms and is the part to check before claiming. The licence is held by Octopus Game Limited, a recently incorporated UK company.

The Octobet differentiator is the package structure and the licence check. For a punter whose betting card is dominated by sports, the casino bonus is the part of the offer that does not fit; the 50% free bet up to £50 is the part that does, and the 50% structure means the offer scales with the qualifying bet. Where the betting spans sports and casino, the bundled structure may be exactly what they want — but it has to be claimed as written, and the small print on the casino bonus is the part of the package that decides whether the offer is worth taking.

10bet

10bet’s offer is “100% up to £50 betting bonus” for UK sign-ups, plus daily free bets and free spins. The headline is the largest in the comparison on the bonus side, but a “betting bonus” with a 100% match is a deposit-match structure, not a free-bet structure: it comes with a wagering requirement on the bonus, capped at 10x under the Commission’s January 2026 rule, and the wagering is the part that decides what the bonus pays. The daily free bets are a separate offer and operate under their own terms.

The 10bet differentiator is the deposit-match structure and the wagering cap. A punter who deposits £50 and clears a 10x wagering requirement at minimum odds is taking on a real turnover exercise. The expected cost of the exercise is the turnover multiplied by the margin of the market in which the turnover is cleared; the realised value of the bonus is the bonus amount minus that expected cost. For a punter whose card is high-volume and on the markets the operator prices efficiently, the bonus reads as a margin on turnover; on a low-volume account the 10x turnover is the part that quietly expires.

Swifty Sports

Swifty Sports’ welcome offer is not publicly documented. The book is on a Commission remote licence held by Swifty Global (UK) Ltd, with Best Odds Guaranteed, Cash Out on horse racing and football, daily price boosts, live streaming and in-play betting on the app. Bet Builder is listed as coming soon at the time of writing. The Commission’s register is the source for the licence; the app store listing is the source for the features.

For a punter who places welcome-offer value at the bottom of the comparison and product features at the top, Swifty Sports is the brand to put on the shortlist after the welcome offers have been worked through. For a punter who places welcome-offer value at the top, there is no documented welcome offer and no number to put against the brand in the comparison.

Smarkets

Smarkets is a betting exchange licensed under a betting intermediary licence, not a sportsbook licence. The exchange welcome offer is not documented; the sportsbook arm, SBK, runs a separate £60 welcome package in £20 first-deposit and £20-bet form at minimum odds of 3.0 for £60 in free bets within 48 hours. SBK offers Cash Out, Bet Builder and live horse racing streams.

The Smarkets differentiator is the exchange underneath the sportsbook. A punter who would have used the exchange for price discovery and a sportsbook for the welcome offer gets both at one brand and a £60 SBK package as the inducement. For a punter who would have used the sportsbook only, Smarkets is the brand with the deepest exchange underneath the betting slip and the welcome offer on the sportsbook side. For a punter whose betting card is built around singles at the largest brands, Smarkets is the offer to read last and the exchange to read first.

The fundamentals the welcome offer sits on

The welcome offer is the smallest financial decision in the comparison, and the fundamentals underneath it are the largest. A sign-up offer is, at its core, a marketing cost the operator takes on to acquire a customer, and the cost is set against the lifetime value the operator expects from that customer. The Commission’s January 2026 cap on bonuses and the ban on mixed-product promotions are the regulator’s intervention in that economics, and the shape of every welcome offer in the comparison is the result of that intervention combined with the operator’s commercial judgement.

The same fundamentals shape the markets the welcome offer does not touch. Bet Builder, the same-game multi, is a Commission-permitted product that several brands in the comparison run. Bet Builder+ at bet365 combines markets from one event into a single bet, available pre-match and in-play; kwiff runs a “Supercharge” feature that boosts odds instantly on a single bet. Unibet runs Uniboosts and Best Odds Guaranteed on horse racing. BoyleSports runs Acca Insurance — opt-in, minimum stake £5, minimum odds 1/2, maximum refund £20 as a free bet, settled the same day — and Acca Loyalty, which requires a minimum combined odds of 3/1 and 5 or more settled legs. Each of these is a separate product, governed by its own terms, and each one is a separate calculation from the welcome offer.

The honest read is that the welcome offer is the part of the bookmaker relationship the customer sees first, and it is not the part that decides whether the relationship pays. A punter who finds the markets they want at the prices they want at a brand whose compliance record is clean and whose safer-gambling tooling works as advertised will get more out of the relationship than a punter who chases the largest welcome offer and bets on markets they would not otherwise touch. The welcome offer is the door; the book behind it is the room.

The shape of the comparison in 2026

The shape of the welcome-offer market in 2026 is the shape the Commission’s January 2026 rules left it in. Headlines are smaller than two years ago. Wagering requirements are capped at 10x. Mixed-product offers are banned. Free bets are tokenised, expiring quickly, restricted to narrow market types and governed by minimum-odds rules that exclude favourites. Each operator in the comparison has adapted to the cap in a different way, and each one has chosen a different balance between headline amount, qualifying bet, market restriction and expiry. The table above is the data; the write-ups are the reading.

For the punter, the consequence is that the headline is no longer the answer. The qualifying bet, the wagering rule, the expiry and the market restriction decide what the headline is worth, and they are the four parts of the offer to read before claiming. The arithmetic in the calculation mechanics above puts a band on what a £10 free bet is worth on average; the band is the same for every brand, and what differs between brands is which markets the band applies to and how long the punter has to place the bet.

For the regulator, the consequence is that the bonus cap is doing the work it was designed to do. The market is tidier. The offers are smaller. The wagering is lower. The mixed-product promotions that used to pull a punter from one product into another are gone. None of that is a flaw in the cap; it is the cap working. Whether the cap also binds free bets with no wagering condition is not established, and operators are writing their offers around the new ceiling rather than testing it. That is the part the comparison below cannot answer, and it is the part a punter should check at the operator’s own terms page before claiming.

What to check before claiming any offer in this comparison

The short version: read the small print, then check the operator’s own terms page, then check the Commission’s public register. The longer version is below.

The small print covers the qualifying bet, the wagering rule, the expiry and the market restriction. The four parts together decide what the headline is worth; none of them is a friendly detail; each one is a binding condition. A punter who reads only the headline has read the offer wrong.

The operator’s terms page covers the parts the small print does not: the minimum deposit method (debit card only at several brands), the maximum stake per bet, the cap on free-bet winnings, the treatment of each-way bets, the treatment of virtuals and the treatment of ante-post markets. Each of these is in the operator’s own terms rather than the offer’s small print, and each one is a separate variable that can move the realised value of the offer up or down.

The Commission’s public register covers the licence. The Commission’s public register is searchable by trading name, domain, business name or account number, and it is the only test of whether a brand holds a current licence for the product the welcome offer sits on. A punter who claims a welcome offer at a brand whose licence is not on the register is claiming at an unlicensed brand, and the offer is not governed by the cap, the £150 vulnerability check, GAMSTOP or the safer-gambling tooling the licensed brands run. The protection a British punter uses the licence to buy is the protection the offer is a part of, and the protection is the part of the relationship that lasts longer than the welcome offer.

Common questions on sign-up offers and the rules around them

How do I sign up for a betting site in Great Britain?

Pick a brand on the Commission’s public register, complete the online form with name, address and date of birth, verify the identity with a proof of address and a payment document, and deposit with a debit card or bank-based method. Credit cards are banned for gambling in Great Britain, so a credit card deposit will be declined at the registration stage. The verification runs before the first deposit; a free bet cannot be claimed until the verification is complete.

How do I sign up for a sportsbook specifically?

A sportsbook is a remote general betting standard (real events) licence, distinct from a betting exchange licence and a pool betting licence. The sign-up process is the same as for any licensed site: identity verification first, then the deposit, then the qualifying bet that releases the welcome offer. A betting exchange requires an extra opt-in for the exchange side, and the exchange rules on back and lay bets are separate from the sportsbook rules on singles and accumulators.

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

Wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x since 19 January 2026. A £10 bonus at 50x used to ask for £500 of qualifying bets; under the cap, no bonus offered to a British customer may ask for more than £100 of qualifying turnover. The cap applies to bonuses. Whether the cap also binds free bets with no wagering condition is not established; operators are writing their offers around the new ceiling rather than testing it.

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

Minimum odds are the shortest price at which the qualifying bet or the wagering bet will count toward the offer. A minimum-odds rule of 1/2 (1.50) excludes any selection priced at evens or shorter; a rule of 2.0 (1/1) excludes favourites entirely. The wagering requirement is the number of times the bonus or the qualifying bet has to be turned over before any winnings become withdrawable. A 1x wagering on a free bet means the winnings have to be bet once more; a 10x wagering on a bonus means the bonus has to be turned over ten times.

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

A free bet is a credit whose stake is not returned with the winnings. A £10 free bet at decimal odds of 2.0 pays £10 of profit, not £20; the bookmaker never returns the £10 stake. The arithmetic behind the structure is the term structure: the bookmaker’s expected cost of a free bet is the stake multiplied by the edge the punter gives up to the margin of the market. Across many bets, that expected cost is roughly half the face value of the credit on a market priced at 1.90. The structure is the bookmaker’s way of pricing a credit that does not return the stake.

Can a sports bet be tied to a casino bonus under the Commission’s promotion rules?

No. Since 19 January 2026, mixed-product promotions are banned: any offer that asks a customer to gamble on two or more product types, betting and casino for example, or betting and bingo, is not permitted. An offer that bundles a sports free bet with a casino bonus is offering a mixed product and is governed by the ban; the casino bonus is not part of a permitted welcome offer from a British-licensed brand.

Content created by the «AI Betting» team