Existing-customer bookmaker offers, weighed against the rules they cost

Updated October 2026

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£40 in free bets. £20 back as a free bet. £60 to use on the house. Every betting site in Great Britain splashes numbers like these across a returning customer’s homepage — tokens for sticking around, not for joining. Most of them vanish unless something concrete is done with them: a wagering requirement to clear, a minimum odds floor to honour, an expiry tucked into the small print. The page below is about the live trade between an existing customer and the bookmakers they already have an account with — what is offered, what it costs and where the rules quietly undercut the headline.

A wagering cap of 10x on bonuses has been in force since 19 January 2026, and mixed-product promotions (a betting bonus tied to a casino spin, for example) have been banned in the same package of reforms. The cap sets the ceiling; the spec on each site sets the floor. Between them sit the existing-customer offers that actually justify opening an app and looking. The ten operators in the ranking below are drawn from the Gambling Commission’s public register of remote betting licences and reviewed for what their terms, in their own words, say they give back to a customer who has already signed up. Where the register says no data, the column stays out. Where one brand’s spec is light on a subject, the verdict reflects that gap.

Current as of the 26 October 2026 register pull, checked against the Gambling Commission’s published licence list.

The Commission’s promotion rules, and what they changed on 19 January 2026

The Gambling Commission’s 2026 package of reforms pulled the heaviest lever it has over how bonuses are written. Two changes matter for any existing customer reading an offer today.

The first is the 10x wagering cap. Any bonus the licensed operator hands a customer now carries a turnover ceiling: ten times the bonus amount, expressed in qualifying stakes. A £20 bonus requires no more than £200 of qualifying bets before what is left can be withdrawn. A £50 bonus takes no more than £500. The rule changes the arithmetic of bonuses that used to demand fifty times or more: where a £10 bonus at 50x used to mean £500 of qualifying bets, it now means £100 — a five-times reduction in the betting the customer must do before the money becomes theirs.

The second is the ban on mixed-product promotions. An offer that requires gambling on two or more product types — betting and casino, betting and bingo, betting and lottery — is no longer permitted. The classic “deposit on sports, get free spins at slots” structure has been forced out of the market. Betting-only offers survive, casino-only offers survive, but the cross-sell hook that stitched them together has gone. For an existing customer the practical consequence is that any incoming offer tied to a sports stake now stays on sports — or, where casino value is offered, sits in a separate promotion with its own terms.

A question the new rules do not answer is whether the 10x cap applies to a free bet with no wagering condition at all. The Commission’s published line states the ceiling on wagering; on a stake-not-returned free bet issued in exchange for a qualifying bet (and so already released, with no further turnover requirement attached) the position is not established. That gap matters because the headline “free bet” sits behind it. Operators’ terms remain the only settled source.

The 10x cap and the mixed-product ban share one deadline: 19 January 2026. Anything routed today sits inside the new regime; anything that pre-dates it has by now been reissued or withdrawn, because the regulator’s licence conditions bind from that date.

Safer gambling and the fixed points every UK customer uses

The fixed points of safer gambling in Great Britain sit in three places: GAMSTOP, the Commission’s own licence conditions and the help services that an exclusion cannot substitute for. They apply to every operator in the ranking below.

GAMSTOP has been a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. Joining it excludes a customer from every GB-licensed remote site and app for a period they choose — 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, so the minimum time out of any gambling site a customer has registered for self-exclusion is six months plus seven years. The service covers online only; a separate scheme covers betting shops. There is no fee to join.

The Commission’s social responsibility code governs what each operator owes a customer during play. A financial vulnerability check — a check for items on the public record such as bankruptcy or county court judgments — applies when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days. It is in force. It is not an income check, and it is not the press’s “affordability check”: financial risk assessments, the second stage of the Commission’s protection plan, were announced on 7 July 2026 with no start date. Deposit limits under the Commission’s technical standards have applied in their first phase since 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether it is live is not established. None of this caps a bettor’s stake by law: limits remain the customer’s choice, set inside their account.

Help sits outside the Commission’s perimeter. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline — 0808 8020 133, free from any UK phone — and offers live chat and face-to-face counselling. GambleAware funds treatment and education through the National Health Service and third-sector partners. NHS gambling clinics operate in several English regions. Gamblers Anonymous runs mutual-aid meetings. None of these is a substitute for the licensed operator’s own safer-gambling tools, and the two work best together.

A brief note on what the licence does and does not give back. The Commission’s check verifies name, address and date of birth before the first deposit or bet — even when a free bet is credited — so anonymous play is not available at any site in the ranking. That same licence entitles a customer to the Commission’s complaints route and to an approved dispute-resolution service. It binds the operator to GAMSTOP, the 10x cap and the 6.1.2 ban on credit cards for gambling. It costs a customer the small surrender of identity at sign-up.

Existing-customer offers: the categories, the terms behind them

A bookmaker’s promotion page for an existing customer tends to carry five kinds of offer, sometimes in combination. They behave differently, cost differently and reward differently.

Free bets are the most common. They arrive in exchange for a qualifying stake the customer has already placed — usually at minimum odds, usually within a deadline. The winning part matters: on a free bet, the stake is normally not returned with the winnings. A £10 free bet at odds of 3.00 pays £30 back (£20 profit) and not the £40 a real-money stake would have returned. The £10 has done its job the moment it was credited. Where the headline “£40 in free bets when you bet £20” sits, the actual return on a single winning free bet at evens (2.00) is £40 profit, and at the 7-day expiry the unused balance disappears.

Price boosts are paid in cash, not in free bets, on a specific outcome. The price the customer sees on the bet slip is the price the bookmaker pays at, with no further rollover. The catch sits in the selection menu: the boost is normally restricted to a named match, named market and maximum stake. The structure exists to advertise, not to compound.

Acca boosts are cash top-ups on winning accumulators. They pay as a percentage of the winnings, on top of the standard acca return. The conditions vary: a minimum number of legs (from three upwards), a minimum price per leg (sometimes 1/5 or 1/2), and a cap on the maximum boost. Some chains run an insurance instead — a refund in free bets if one leg of an acca lets it down by a single result — and the refund carries the usual stake-not-returned condition.

Loyalty schemes pay for staying put. Coral’s Reward Shaker, for example, is a free-to-play daily prize that returns free bets or other tokens. The value per shake is small and variable; the value over a year of daily play is modest but real, and the cost is nothing.

Mixed offers, now banned in the form that mixed sportsbook and casino in one promotion, persist in hybrid shapes: a sports free bet paired with a separately credited casino bonus, each with its own terms. The Commission’s rules require the two to be separable, and the operator’s own terms do the separating.

Every existing-customer offer carries a deadline. Coral and Sky Bet both run 7-day expiries on free bets; QuinnBet’s free bets also last 7 days. The 7-day window is the standard in this comparison, but a few operators push longer. Whatever the term, it bites: a free bet unused at expiry is gone.

The 10 operator ranking

Ten operators feature in the comparison. Each holds a remote general betting licence (or, for Smarkets, a remote betting intermediary licence) issued by the Gambling Commission and listed on its public register as of the snapshot this page is built against. Each carries a separate trading style that the shelf below sits beside. The shelf’s role is judgement, not a re-statement of the licence line.

The BetTom column tells most of the existing-customer story itself: a sports free bet paired with a casino free-spin credit, sitting in the same promotion. Under the rules in force since 19 January 2026, the two halves must be separable in their terms; the casino portion does not block the sports portion, but the matched numbers on both sides show how a hybrid was used to be sold.

Coral

Coral’s existing-customer book is built on three repeating assets. The Reward Shaker is a free daily prize on opt-in that returns free bets and other tokens at random; the more bets the customer settles, the higher the tier reached on the shaker. The Odds Booster extends hundreds of markets each week — named matches, named selections, with a maximum stake attached. Football Super Series is a free-to-play prediction game with a £10,000 jackpot, settled weekly. None of these asks the customer to deposit again; all three run on activity the customer already does.

BetTom

BetTom’s welcome offer is unusual inside the comparison for what it pairs: 50% back as a free bet of up to £50 alongside a matching 50% back as free slot funds of up to £50 for casino play. The two halves now sit under a single promotion that has had to be reissued to comply with the 19 January 2026 rules on mixed-product offers; the casino credit does not attach a turnover condition to the sports free bet. Terms apply in full and govern both sides.

Dabble

Dabble’s headline offer returns £10 in free bets on a £10 first stake — straight one-for-one, with a 7-day expiry on the free bet and the stake not returned with any winning selection. Min odds apply on the qualifying bet. The bare 1:1 trade is a fair way to read what a free bet is worth at minimum: the customer risks £10 of their own money, wins £10 in tokens and collects £20 profit on a successful free bet at odds of 3.0 — exactly half what a £20 real-money stake would have netted.

Sky Bet

Sky Bet issues £30 in free bets as three £10 tokens after a £5 minimum deposit and a qualifying bet of at least 5p at minimum odds of 1/1. The token structure is part of the offering: three £10 free bets is friendlier to a customer who wants to spread risk across three events than a single £30 token would be; a customer who only wants to play one bet gets less value. The 5p qualifying bet at 1/1 is the lowest qualifying minimum in this comparison.

Kalooki Sportsbook

Kalooki Sportsbook’s existing-customer shelf is built on horse racing rather than free bets. Best Odds Guaranteed pays the bigger of the price taken and the starting price on UK and Irish racing — paid in cash with no rollover. In-play, daily boosts and extra-place races (paying more places than the standard each-way terms) round out the offer. The brand’s standout feature, by its own terms, is instant withdrawals by bank transfer within minutes; the offer list mentions none of the headline-value free bets the other brands tend to lead with.

Sporting Index

Sporting Index’s offer is the only one in the ranking built around a spread betting licence. A £10 fixed-odds bet at minimum odds of 1/2 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 — a wider shelf than any other brand in the ranking. The qualifying fixed-odds bet must not be placed in-play and cannot be cashed out early. Spread bets are governed by separate trading rules and can lose more than the stake.

Copybet

Copybet’s existing-customer trade is two-fold. The Acca Booster pays up to 100% cash bonus on accumulators of three or more selections; the exact percentage depends on the number of legs. The Daily Profit Boost pays up to 15% extra on named markets each day. Both pay in cash, not in free bets — meaning the boosted winnings withdraw without further turnover.

QuinnBet

QuinnBet’s free bets last 7 days from credit and can be used on any market at odds of 1/2 (1.5) or greater, with maximum odds of 50/1 — the widest market access in the ranking. Straight accumulators are allowed; Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not, on grounds the brand’s help centre names. The 50/1 ceiling is the practical one: high-price winners and outsider-heavy accas fall outside the brand’s reusable free bet envelope.

10bet

10bet’s UK app advertises a 100% up to £50 betting bonus for new sign-ups, with daily free bets and free spins layered on top for returning customers. The bonus structure is a matched deposit with turnover attached; the daily free bets are the existing-customer hook, sized smaller and more frequently than a one-off welcome.

Smarkets (SBK)

Smarkets is the only betting-exchange operator in the ranking. Its sportsbook arm, SBK, runs a separate welcome offer — a £20 first deposit and a £20 bet at minimum odds of 3.0 unlock £60 in free bets within 48 hours. SBK adds Cash Out, Bet Builder and live horse racing streams on the sportsbook side; the exchange itself runs on a commission model outside any existing-customer promotion. The 3.0 minimum odds on the qualifying bet is the highest in the ranking — a stake at 1/1 would not unlock the free bets.

Bet types, and why the offer and the bet aren’t the same thing

A free bet on horse racing is not a free bet on a Premier League match, and an acca boost is not a price boost. The cheapest existing-customer offer is the one that pairs the smallest rollover with the smallest market drag.

QuinnBet’s free bets trade on minimum odds of 1/2 — a price so short that almost any favourite qualifies. The catch is the 50/1 ceiling on the price the free bet itself may be placed at, and the explicit ban on certain each-way multiples. A customer who likes backing favourites at short prices will use every penny; a customer looking to take 100/1 longshots wastes them.

Copybet’s Acca Booster pays in cash on winning accas of three or more legs, with no rollover. A winning acca at minimum odds per leg of 1/5 across three selections becomes a 3/5 → 3.75 → £75 return on a £20 acca — the 100% bonus on three selections doubles a portion of the return. The 1/5 minimum per leg and minimum three-leg floor give the operator plenty of room to scope the offer down.

William Hill’s Football Acca Boost — not in this ranking but worth holding alongside it — runs the acca boost to its widest in this comparison: a 200% bonus on 20 or more legs, capped at £10,000 per online bet, with every leg at minimum 1/5 and the offer running until 30 May 2027. The brand is not on the page’s review shelf, but the structure it documents is the kind of acca boost the in-page operators all approximate.

BoyleSports’ Acca Insurance, again outside the ranking but instructive, is the rollback form: opt in, place a £5 acca with minimum odds of 1/2 per leg, get a £20 free-bet refund if exactly one leg lets the acca down by a single result. Two or more losers voids the insurance. The refund expires in 7 days and the stake is not returned. Acca Loyalty, BoyleSports’ partner offer, opts the customer in to a free bet on accas of five or more settled legs at minimum combined odds of 3/1.

Spread betting, on Sporting Index’s shelf, is not the same trade. A spread bet settles on the size of the outcome, not on the binary outcome itself, and the customer’s profit or loss can exceed the deposit. The £10 fixed-odds-qualifying bet leads to three £5 Total Goals spread bets — a small position that can return more or less than the stake depending on the goal count.

Each-way betting doubles the stake and splits it into a “win” portion and a “place” portion, with the place terms varying by race, sport and operator. A £10 each-way bet is a £20 stake at the total. Extra-place races at Kalooki Sportsbook pay more places than the standard each-way terms; the cost is to the bookmaker’s margin, and the offer exists to advertise.

Cash out, on Spreadex and others, is a feature the existing-customer shelf does not always advertise but that interacts with it. Qualifying bets in offers like Sporting Index’s cannot be cashed out early: locking the qualifying stake in stops the customer trading it back before the offer settles.

The arithmetic of a bonus and the 10x cap

The 10x cap on wagering requirements, in force since 19 January 2026, sets the ceiling on the betting a customer must do before they can withdraw. The arithmetic behind the cap sits in four numbers: the bonus, the wagering multiplier, the minimum odds and the expiry.

A £20 bonus at a 10x wagering factor carries a required turnover of £200. At a £10 stake per qualifying bet, that is twenty settled bets. At minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50), every bet on the menu qualifies. At a 7-day expiry on the bonus itself, twenty qualifying bets across seven days is roughly three per day — a workload that fits comfortably inside the deadline but only if the customer bets every day.

The cap means the practical ceiling on turning bonus into withdrawable cash has changed. A 50x bonus — heavy by today’s terms — at £10 is £500 of qualifying bets, fifty stakes of £10. A £20 bonus at 10x is £200 of qualifying bets, twenty stakes of £10. The 10x reduction in the wagering factor is, for the same bonus amount, a 5x reduction in the betting the customer must do. Where the headline number is the same, the workload has fallen.

A bonus is not the same trade as a free bet. On a £20 free bet at odds of 3.0, the customer wins £40 back (£20 profit) with no rollover — the stake disappears the moment it is credited. On a £20 bonus at 10x, the customer must settle £200 of qualifying bets before the £20 is theirs; the bonus is a chunk of money the bookmaker holds, and the 10x cap is the longest it can hold it.

The same arithmetic, applied to Coral’s headline sign-up offer — £40 in free bets when a £20 qualifying bet is placed — clarifies why it is a free bet and not a bonus. The £40 is issued as tokens, not as a bonus balance with turnover. A winning free bet at minimum odds of 2.0 returns £40 profit (stake not returned). A losing free bet returns nothing, and the £40 has been spent on the chance. There is no further rollover — the 10x cap does not apply, because the offer is structured as tokens, not as a bonus.

Where the offer is structured as a matched deposit with bonus (10bet’s 100% up to £50), the 10x cap binds. A £50 matched deposit at 10x requires £500 of qualifying bets. Across the terms’ window, that is the workload the customer signs up for.

A risk-free bet is not a free bet and not a bonus, and the term is best treated as marketing. There is no bet whose loss is risk-free; the closest structure is a “money back as a free bet if your first bet loses” offer, where the refund itself is in tokens with stake not returned. That structure is consistent with the 10x cap on bonuses — there is no bonus balance — but the headline “risk-free” overstates what is on offer.

How the offer shows up in the bet slip and where the small print sits

Every operator in the ranking publishes its promotion terms in two places: a marketing page that summarises the offer, and a longer terms-and-conditions page that governs it. The Commission’s promotion rules say that the bonus terms a customer agrees to are the ones that count, and those terms are almost always the longer document.

Three things to check before clicking through:

The minimum odds are the lowest price the qualifying bet can be placed at. Anything below the floor voids the offer. Sky Bet’s 1/1, QuinnBet’s 1/2, SBK’s 3.0 — the floor varies, and missing it means no free bet is credited. Payment-method restrictions are common: Coral’s sports welcome offer must be qualified with a debit card or instant bank transfer, not with an e-wallet. The settlement rules dictate whether a cashed-out bet, an each-way bet or an acca leg that pushes counts as qualifying. Sporting Index’s qualifying bet cannot be placed in-play or cashed out early.

The expiry clocks run from the moment the offer is credited, not from the day the account was opened. The 7-day expiry on Coral’s free bets and on QuinnBet’s free bets is strict: a free bet unused on day 8 is gone. The promotional terms also bind on maximum stakes, eligible markets, country restrictions and one-per-customer rules — none of which are usually advertised on the marketing page.

Payments, age checks and the play the licence makes possible

A licensed GB operator verifies a customer’s identity before the first deposit and before the first bet — including on free bets credited as part of a welcome offer. The check covers name, address and date of birth; for higher-spending customers it can extend to source-of-funds requests under the money-laundering rules. Anonymous play is not an option at any site in the ranking.

The credit-card ban — LCCP condition 6.1.2, in force since 14 April 2020 — means a credit card cannot be used to fund a gambling account or to fund an e-wallet that pays into a gambling account. Debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered by the ban. Coral lists Apple Pay, Visa, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Revolut Pay, Google Pay, TrueLayer, Earthport and Trustly among its payment methods; the list is illustrative of the kind of debit-card-and-bank-based mix GB bookmakers run.

There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling for betting. Where a customer wants a deposit ceiling, they set it themselves inside their account — the operator’s tools provide daily, weekly and monthly options. The 31 October 2025 phase of the Commission’s deposit-limit technical standards applied changes to the interface through which those limits are set; a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026 and its status is not established.

Tax: what the customer pays, and what the operator pays

Betting winnings in Great Britain are not taxed at the customer level. A punter keeps the full return on a winning bet, with no tax deducted at source. The framing is general information and not tax advice; a customer whose betting is run as a business should ask HMRC or an adviser.

The operator’s tax is General Betting Duty — charged at 15% on gross profits from betting (after the deduction of winnings paid out). The rate is announced to rise to 25% for remote bets from 1 April 2027, with bets on UK horse racing, on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, on pool betting and on in-person betting remaining at 15%. The change is an operator-side tax and the question of whether it is passed to the customer through lower odds is not established. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge and not a tax on the customer.

Spread betting is taxed differently: 3% on financial spread bets and 10% on other spread bets. Financial spread betting is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission; Spreadex’s licence line is a Commission licence for fixed-odds betting combined with FCA regulation for the spread-betting activity.

Operating without a Commission licence

A bookmaker’s operating in Great Britain without a Commission licence is breaking section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 — an offence at the operator level, with up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment and a level-5 fine, or up to six months in Scotland. The law targets the operator, not the customer.

What it costs the customer is the set of protections tied to the licence. No GAMSTOP membership. No financial vulnerability check. No 10x bonus cap. No approved dispute-resolution service. No Commission complaints route if funds are withheld. British consumer-redress routes are unavailable; recovery of funds is a question of the operator’s home-jurisdiction rules. The Commission’s enforcement on unlicensed operators runs through cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals and work with payment providers, hosts and registrars; court-ordered DNS blocking powers are in train.

The honest framing is what a licence buys and what it costs. A licensed operator verifies identity at sign-up, charges the 15% General Betting Duty on its profits and binds itself to the Commission’s safer-gambling and promotion rules. An unlicensed operator skips all of that. Neither is, by default, the safe choice; the difference is what recourse exists when something goes wrong.

How this ranking scores the operators

The shelf below is drawn from the terms each operator publishes in its own house style, not from any rating outside the Commission’s public register. Each operator is named, licensable and reviewed against the gap between the headline and the small print. Where the offer does not fit a customer — a free-bet token unusable on a Yankee, a £10 minimum odds below the SBK 3.0 floor, an existing-customer shelf that lives on horse racing rather than football — that mismatch is what the verdict names.

The order of the shelf is the order of the ranking. The verdict on each operator is the page’s own judgement based on the facts research carries.

BetTom — Assessing the hybrid offer structure

BetTom’s welcome offer pairs a sports free bet with a casino free-spin credit — a hybrid structure the 19 January 2026 reforms forced into separable terms. The sports half is a 50% back as a free bet, up to £50; the casino half is a matching 50% back up to £50 as free slot funds. The two halves are governed separately, and the casino portion does not attach a wagering requirement to the sports portion. The brand’s existing-customer shelf is small in the data and the headline is the dominant trade. For a customer who wants both halves in one promotion and accepts that the casino side is separate, BetTom’s terms are workable. For a customer whose sportsbook-only business is the point of the offer, the matched casino credit is irrelevant, and the 50% free bet return on a first stake sits below the headline numbers some of the other brands show.

Coral — Recurring value in free-to-play assets

Coral’s existing-customer book sits on three repeatable assets rather than a single large welcome. The Reward Shaker is the daily free-to-play token; the Odds Booster is the weekly price promotion; Football Super Series is the long-running free-to-play game with a £10,000 jackpot. None of these is a wagering requirement to clear; all three scale with a customer’s settled-bet activity. The Operator of Record — LC International Limited — runs both Coral and Ladbrokes; both sites are independent storefronts but share infrastructure. Coral’s welcome offer is also the headline in the comparison: £40 in free bets when a £20 qualifying bet is placed, with the 7-day expiry and minimum odds of 2.0 that already appear further up the page. For a customer with a settled-bet routine, Coral’s shelf rewards regularity with daily and weekly tokens; for a customer who bets once a month and ignores the rest, the shaker and the booster are wasted.

Dabble — Simplification in the welcome trade

Dabble’s welcome offers the clearest 1:1 trade in the comparison: £10 in free bets for a £10 qualifying bet. The 7-day expiry on the free bet, the stake not returned, and the minimum odds on the qualifying bet are explicit in the brand’s app-store terms. The headline does not advertise a daily shaker or a recurring booster — the existing-customer trade is the welcome itself, and for an existing customer the offer has already been used. The shelf value for a customer past the welcome is in whatever the brand adds in the way of social betting and chat-led engagement. For a customer at sign-up looking for the simplest free bet on the page, Dabble’s terms are readable on a single screen.

Sky Bet — Flexible token allocation

Sky Bet’s welcome issues £30 in free bets as three £10 tokens after a £5 minimum deposit and a qualifying bet of at least 5p at minimum odds of 1/1. The token structure favours a customer with three separate selections to make; the 5p minimum stake at 1/1 makes the qualifying bet the easiest in the ranking. Sky Bet’s existing-customer shelf is in the data below the welcome; the wider Sky group runs further brands and further promos that are not on this page. For a customer who prefers to place several small bets across different events rather than one large free bet, the three £10 tokens structure works; for a customer who only wants to play the free bet once, the structure is waste.

Kalooki Sportsbook — Racing-focused value

Kalooki Sportsbook’s offer list is horse-racing-led. Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing pays in cash — no rollover — and is paid at the bigger of the price taken and the starting price. In-play, daily boosts and extra-place races complete the shelf. Instant withdrawals by bank transfer within minutes are the brand’s headline feature. The Licence Holder — Kalooki Sportsbook Limited — and the licence number are straightforward on the public register. GAMSTOP membership is part of the licence conditions. For a customer whose betting is on horse racing, the shelf is built for them; for a customer whose betting is on football, the shelf is thin and the brand’s pricing outside horse racing is the question.

Sporting Index — Broad spread-betting shelf

Sporting Index’s offer reaches across fixed odds and spread betting — a wider spread than any other brand in the ranking. The qualifying fixed-odds bet at minimum odds of 1/2 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, restricting the qualifying routes. Spread bets can return more or less than the stake and are governed by trading rules separate from fixed odds. For a customer happy with the spread-betting side of the book, the offer is wider than anyone else’s; for a customer only interested in fixed-odds free bets, the spread-bet extras are a marketing extra they cannot use.

Copybet — Cash-boosted accumulator model

Copybet’s existing-customer book is two cash boosts. The Acca Booster pays up to 100% cash bonus on accas of at least 3 selections; the Daily Profit Boost pays up to 15% extra on named markets each day. Both pay in cash, with no rollover on the boosted winnings. The terms on what counts as an eligible acca — minimum number of legs, minimum odds per leg, eligible markets — are the practical ceiling. For a customer who bets accas often, the Acca Booster rewards regularity with cash; for a customer who bets singles, the Daily Profit Boost is the shelf. The brand’s copybet premise is following other customers’ bets.

QuinnBet — Market reach and price ceilings

QuinnBet’s free bets last 7 days and can be used on any market at minimum odds of 1/2 (1.5), with maximum odds of 50/1. Straight accumulators are allowed; Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not. The 50/1 ceiling is the practical one — a customer looking to take longshots runs out of usable free bets. The wide minimum-odds floor is the brand’s strength: a customer who likes backing favourites at short prices will use every penny of a free bet. For that customer, QuinnBet’s free bets are generous. For a customer who wants to place each-way multiples on long-priced runners, the brand’s exclusions make the offer narrower than the headline suggests.

10bet — Matched-deposit structure and loyalty hooks

10bet’s UK app carries the headline 100% up to £50 betting bonus for new sign-ups, with daily free bets and free spins layered on top for returning customers. The matched-deposit structure attaches turnover — the 10x cap means a £50 bonus requires £500 of qualifying bets — and the existing-customer shelf is the daily free bets and free spins. For a customer whose trade is matched deposits and who uses the daily free bets often, the shelf is workable; for a customer whose trade is single bets and who skips the matched-deposit structure, the headline is the only offer.

Smarkets (SBK) — High-floor qualifying terms

Smarkets runs a betting exchange under its main licence and a sportsbook under the SBK brand. SBK’s welcome is a £20 first deposit and a £20 bet at minimum odds of 3.0 unlocking £60 in free bets within 48 hours — the highest qualifying minimum odds in the ranking. SBK adds Cash Out, Bet Builder and live horse racing streams on the sportsbook side; the exchange itself runs on commission rather than free bets. The 3.0 minimum on the qualifying bet disqualifies a customer who likes short-priced favourites from the welcome; the SBK existing-customer shelf is what the customer uses past the welcome. For a customer comfortable with betting exchanges, the SBK shelf is one shelf; for a customer who only wants a sportsbook welcome, the 3.0 floor is the obstacle.

The trade that doesn’t appear on the page

Two things this page does not print. The first is any working promo code, bonus code, voucher code or sign-up link for any of the ten operators in the ranking. Printing such a thing is what an affiliate page does; this is a comparison. The second is the tipster’s call — who wins the match, which horse wins the race, what the Saturday acca should be. The page describes the trade between the customer and the bookmaker; it does not pick a winner.

Frequently asked questions

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

A 10x wagering requirement has applied to betting bonuses since 19 January 2026 under the Gambling Commission’s promotion rules. The cap is on the wagering factor attached to the bonus — a £20 bonus cannot require more than £200 of qualifying bets before it can be withdrawn. Where the offer is structured as free bets rather than as a bonus balance, the cap does not bind the free bet itself; the qualifying bet for the free bet is the customer’s stake.

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

Minimum odds are the lowest price the qualifying bet for the offer can be placed at; anything below the floor disqualifies the bet and the offer. The wagering requirement is the volume of qualifying bets the customer must place before the bonus becomes withdrawable. Under the 10x cap, a £20 bonus requires no more than £200 of qualifying bets. Minimum odds often run at 1/2 (1.5) or 2.0 (1/1); the bet, the bonus and the deadline are three separate terms that govern whether the offer is actually cleared.

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

A free bet is a token issued in exchange for a qualifying stake. The token’s value is the chance to place a bet without risking your own money; the price paid for that chance is that the stake itself is not returned with a winning selection. A £10 free bet at odds of 3.0 returns £30 (£20 profit), not the £40 a £10 real-money stake would have returned. The bookmaker funds the winnings; the stake has already been credited by the brand as part of the offer.

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

Since 19 January 2026 the Commission’s promotion rules have banned mixed-product promotions — offers that require gambling on two or more product types such as betting and casino in the same promotion. A bet on sport to unlock a casino bonus is no longer permitted at a GB-licensed operator. The two halves must be separable. A sportsbook welcome followed by a separate casino promotion, each with its own terms, is the structure that complies.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register lets a customer search by business name, trading name, domain or licence account number. Every operator in the ranking above has been pulled from that register as of the 26 October 2026 snapshot. Search the brand name first; if no result is returned, the domain may be the licence holder’s named site rather than the brand. There is no fee for checking. The register is the only proof needed; a brand’s own homepage mentioning a licence number is not, on its own, sufficient.

Are betting winnings taxed in Great Britain, and who pays General Betting Duty?

Betting winnings are not taxed at the customer level in Great Britain. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax: 15% on gross profits (after deducting winnings paid out), with a 25% remote rate applying from 1 April 2027 while bets on UK horse racing, on self-service betting terminals, on pool betting and on in-person betting remain at 15%. Spread bets carry separate rates: 3% on financial and 10% on other. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge and not a tax on the customer. A customer whose betting is a business should ask HMRC or an adviser.

Content created by the «AI Betting» team