Betting apps with sign-up bonuses: what the offer actually costs

Updated October 2026

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A bookmaker’s welcome screen has a particular talent for turning £40 in free bets into the centre of a reader’s attention and a different condition about a 10x wagering requirement into a footnote. This page is built around the gap between those two things. The ten apps reviewed below are all licensed by the Gambling Commission for remote betting in Great Britain; the comparison ranks them on what each welcome offer actually asks of a new customer, against the framework the Commission has had in force since 19 January 2026 — the day a 10x cap on bonus wagering became the rule and mixed-product promotions stopped being lawful at all.

This page is current as of 26 October 2026 and the licence numbers and welcome-offer terms below were checked against the Commission’s public register and each operator’s own UK homepage or app listing.

How a sign-up offer is constructed in Great Britain

Every welcome offer on a British licensed app is built from the same four parts, and they always appear in the same order on the terms page. The first is the trigger: a deposit of £5 or £10 followed by a first settled bet, or sometimes just the deposit, with a minimum price written as a fraction (1/1) or a decimal (2.00). The second is the reward, almost always a free-bet bundle denominated in pounds, occasionally paid as bet credits or as a single free bet. The third is the wagering requirement — how many times the bonus, or the qualifying stake, must be turned over before any winnings become withdrawable cash. The fourth is the deadline: a window, often seven days, in which the whole cycle has to be completed.

What changes from one app to the next is not the shape of that skeleton but the cost buried in the third and fourth parts. The Commission’s promotion rules that took effect on 19 January 2026 put a ceiling on the first of those costs: no wagering requirement above 10x the bonus on a British licensed site. Before that date, wagering multiples of 30x, 40x and 50x were common on casino bonuses and were beginning to surface on betting sign-up deals; the 10x cap closes the worst of that spread on the betting side. The cap is enforced against the licensee — it is the operator that risks a sanction if a bonus term breaches it, not the punter who accepts one — but the effect on a new customer’s arithmetic is the same: under the rule, a £10 bonus cannot ask for more than £100 of qualifying bets before any winnings are released as cash. The same rule made mixed-product promotions unlawful, so an offer that hands out free bets only after a customer has wagered on a casino game, played a turn on a slot, or staked anything in a bingo room is no longer something a GB-licensed app can run.

The headline figure on the welcome screen is the second part of the skeleton. Everything that follows — the wagering multiple, the minimum price for a qualifying bet, the expiry of the free bets, and the fact that the stake of a free bet is usually not paid back with the winnings — sits underneath it. A £40 free-bet bundle that takes £200 of qualifying turnover at minimum odds of 1/2 and expires inside a week is a different proposition from a £30 bundle that takes £30 of turnover and expires in a fortnight, even though one sounds like the larger prize on a price-comparison screen.

What the offer actually costs the punter

The arithmetic that matters is the one that converts the headline figure into something a bettor can plan around. Two figures do most of the work.

The first is the qualifying bet: the stake the operator demands the punter risk at its minimum price before the free bets are credited. Coral’s terms, for example, ask for a £20 sports bet at minimum odds of 2.0; BoyleSports asks for £10; Sky Bet asks for as little as 5p at 1/1 or greater on a £5 deposit. None of those sums is the cost by itself — what matters is that the qualifying bet has to win to credit the free bets in the first place on most of these offers. A qualifying bet that loses still qualifies the punter for the free bets in the rules, but the punter has spent £20, £10 or £5 to find that out.

The second is the wagering requirement on the bonus, where the operator sets one. With the 10x cap in force, a £30 bonus can ask for £300 of turnover before anything becomes cash; a free bet with no rollover attached asks for nothing beyond settling at the minimum price. The free-bet bundle itself is what the punter bets with next, and most British licensed apps do not return the free-bet stake with the winnings. A £10 free bet at 5/1 returns £50 in cash, not £60: the £10 stake is gone whether the selection wins or loses. That detail is in the small print on every offer covered below, and it is the single most expensive clause in the British sign-up market once a reader has noticed it.

The deadline is the third figure, and it is the one most often missed. A seven-day window from credit is the British norm; Unibet’s free bets expire within seven days of issue, Sky Bet’s expire on the same schedule, Betway’s expire on day seven, BoyleSports’ acca insurance free bet expires after seven days and QuinnBet’s free bets are valid for seven days from credit. A punter who accepts a welcome offer and does not place the free bets inside the week loses them outright. The cost of that clause is paid in unclaimed free bets, not in turned-over cash.

What may not be tied to the offer under Commission rules

The promotion rules that took effect on 19 January 2026 cover more than the 10x ceiling. They also prohibit mixed-product promotions: an offer that asks a punter to place a sports bet in order to claim a casino bonus, or to play a casino game to release free bets, is no longer a lawful promotion on a British licensed site. The rule is aimed at the licensee, but the practical effect for a punter is that a welcome offer at a GB-licensed app will, by construction, sit inside a single product. Sports free bets are credited for sports betting, casino bonuses for casino play, and the two no longer share a wallet.

The Commission has not, at the time of writing, established whether the 10x cap applies to free bets that carry no wagering condition at all. The cap is written in terms of bonuses; free bets without a rollover sit in a slightly different category in the licence conditions, and the public guidance does not yet pin the position down. The welcome offers reviewed on this page are described as each operator’s terms state them, and where a free-bet bundle carries no rollover that is stated plainly rather than read across from a rule that may or may not cover it.

Responsible gambling under a sign-up cycle

The two protections that meet a new account on a British licensed app are GAMSTOP and the financial vulnerability check. GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator self-exclusion scheme; every operator reviewed on this page is a member, and Kalooki Sportsbook’s own homepage states its membership. Self-exclusion runs for 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; the betting shop network runs a separate service. A punter who has registered with GAMSTOP will not be able to open a new account at any of the apps reviewed below while the exclusion is active, and any account they previously held is closed.

The financial vulnerability check is the second protection. It applies on remote betting accounts once a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in any rolling 30-day window — the threshold took effect on 28 February 2025, with the rule itself on the statute book from 30 August 2024. The check is a public-record look-up (bankruptcy, county court judgments, similar entries), not an income check and not a credit reference check. The wider financial risk assessment framework — the affordability checks widely reported in the press — has been announced in a staged plan with no start date. Until a date is published the operative test is the vulnerability check. The deposit limit framework sits alongside: operators must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame, with a first phase live since 31 October 2025 and a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026. Whether the second phase is now in force has not been confirmed in the public guidance, and this page does not state it either way.

Identity verification sits upstream of all of it. Since 7 May 2019 a Commission-licensed operator has had to verify a customer’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit or the first bet, and a free bet or bonus does not change that. No anonymous play is possible at a GB-licensed app, and a sign-up offer cannot be unlocked without going through that check first.

Help outside the apps

GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline, and the NHS runs gambling treatment clinics in several regions. GambleAware funds research, treatment and education. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. None of these is run by a bookmaker, and none of them is a referral from a sign-up offer; a punter who feels the welcome cycle has become a problem can reach them directly.

Reading the comparison

The comparison below ranks ten Commission-licensed remote betting operators on the same four points: the welcome offer as stated in the operator’s own terms, the licence and licence holder on the public register, the practical features that change the day-to-day experience of using the app, and a verdict on who the offer suits. Each operator is named once, with the feature that distinguishes it in this comparison set carried in the section heading — a bare brand name would be the same on every betting comparison site and would not tell a reader why it is in this list.

The terms column quotes the operator’s own language for the headline offer where the listing or homepage uses one; the figure and the minimum price, expiry and qualifying-bet terms follow from the same source. The licence column carries the Commission’s account number and the registered holder, both checkable on the public register.

The table is the headline comparison; the operator sections that follow carry the same data, the qualifying-bet terms, the practical features and the verdict. A reader who only has time for one pass should read the table and the verdicts; a reader choosing between two brands will want the relevant sections.

Betway — the four-token free-bet bundle with a seven-day clock

Betway’s welcome offer for new UK and Ireland customers is £40 in free bet tokens, paid as four £10 tokens, credited on settlement of a first bet of at least £10 at minimum odds of 2.0. Debit card deposits only, with a seven-day expiry on the tokens. The four-token structure is the relevant detail: the £40 is not a single free bet that can be laid on one selection at the punter’s preferred price, it is four separate stakes, each of which has to be used at the minimum price the token carries and each of which expires on its own seven-day clock from credit. A punter who wants to place the bundle on a single four-leg acca can do so; a punter who wants to place the bundle on four separate singles is using the offer as Betway actually issued it.

The free-bet stake is not returned, so each £10 token that wins returns the winnings only; a winning token at 5/1 pays £50, not £60. The qualifying bet has to win to trigger the credit on some British licensed apps; on Betway’s listing the tokens are credited on settlement of the first bet, so a losing first bet of £10 at 2.0 still credits the tokens but at the cost of £10 of stake. Betway is on the Commission’s public register as account 39372 under Betway Limited.

The verdict: the four-token structure suits a punter who already has four selections in mind, and the £10 minimum deposit plus £10 minimum qualifying bet keeps the entry cost at £20 of total exposure. A punter who wants a single high-price free bet to put everything on one outsider will find the four-token structure a constraint rather than a feature.

Fitzdares — premium positioning, fast Visa withdrawals

Fitzdres sits in the premium tier of the British market, and its welcome offer is shown in-app and governed by its customer terms rather than printed as a single headline figure on the App Store listing. The terms page is the binding reference; the listing states only the payment and withdrawal detail, which is the more concrete of the operator’s selling points. Fitzdares accepts Apple Pay, Mastercard and Visa; Visa withdrawals are usually same-day, while Mastercard withdrawals can take up to 48 hours. The same-day Visa turnaround is rare in the British sign-up set and is the practical feature that distinguishes Fitzdares from the apps around it on this page.

The licence is Commission account 400, the lowest in this comparison and one of the oldest on the register, held by Fitzdares Limited. The long-standing licence is a signal of operational continuity; Fitzdares has been a Commission-licensed remote operator since the early days of the online British market.

The verdict: Fitzdares is the right fit for a punter who values the speed of a Visa withdrawal above the headline value of a welcome bundle, and the in-app terms approach means the welcome offer is not comparable on headline figures alone — the punter needs to read the in-app terms page before committing. A reader who wants a single bold figure on the welcome screen will not find it here.

Copybet — acca mechanics as the headline

Copybet’s distinguishing feature in this comparison is not the welcome offer (which is shown on the operator’s own site and is governed by its terms) but the acca mechanics on top of it. The Copybet Acca Booster pays up to a 100% cash bonus on accas of at least three selections, and the operator also offers up to a 15% Daily Profit Boost. Both are paid as a cash bonus on top of winnings, which is a different mechanic from the free-bet-token bundles used by most of this set: a cash boost adds to a withdrawal rather than requiring a further turnover cycle.

The licence is Commission account 53774, held by Copybet UK Limited. The acca focus is the practical feature that places Copybet in this comparison rather than a generic sign-up bundle list — a punter whose staking pattern is already built around accumulators will see more value from a 100% acca boost than from a £30 free-bet bundle that has to be spent inside seven days.

The verdict: Copybet suits a punter who builds accas as their default bet type and wants a percentage on top of acca winnings rather than a one-off free-bet bundle. A punter who places singles will not see the acca mechanics work for them.

BetGoodwin — the three-token £15 with a Sub-Cover bet

BetGoodwin’s sports welcome offer is Bet £10, Get £15 in Free Bets, structured as a £5 sports bet, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet. The Sub-Cover leg is the relevant detail: the bundle is not two tokens of equal status but a three-part structure with one token aimed at a single, one at an accumulator and one at a Sub-Cover market, which is BetGoodwin’s named product for a particular type of insurance-style wager. The qualifying bet is £10, and the reward is 1.5x that figure in three different shapes.

The licence is Commission account 2927, held by Goodwin Racing Limited, a racing-rooted operator. The racing heritage shows in the product naming (Sub-Cover is a horse-racing-adjacent concept) and in the licence category on the register (remote general betting standard, real events).

The verdict: the three-token structure suits a punter who already bets across singles, accas and a Sub-Cover market; a punter who only bets singles ends up with two of the three tokens spent on bet types they would not have chosen. The £15 headline is smaller than the £30 and £40 bundles elsewhere on this page, but the qualifying bet is also £10 instead of £20.

DragonBet — best-price matching on racing, football and rugby

DragonBet’s distinguishing feature is the price-match promise: the operator advertises price boosts on horse racing, football and rugby, and states it will try to match or beat prices seen on other apps or websites. Best Odds Guaranteed is the more familiar industry term for the racing version of this promise, and DragonBet’s version extends beyond racing into football and rugby. The welcome offer terms are shown on the operator’s site and the App Store listing describes the price-boost mechanic rather than a single headline welcome figure.

The licence is Commission account 64908, held by DragonBet Ltd. The Welsh-rooted operation shows in the licence holder’s branding.

The verdict: DragonBet is the right fit for a punter whose staking pattern is already built around racing, football and rugby, and who actively compares prices across apps before placing a bet. The promise to match or beat prices is the practical feature, and the welcome offer is secondary.

NetBet — Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds

NetBet’s distinguishing feature is the Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds: the operator offers Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers, a Bet Builder whose odds update as the punter adds selections, and sports stats for major leagues. The dynamic-odds angle is the relevant detail, because most Bet Builders quote a combined price only when the punter has finished adding selections; NetBet’s version quotes a live combined price as each leg is added, which makes the construction of an acca visible at every step.

The licence is Commission account 39170, held by Netbet Enterprises Limited. The international ownership shows in the holding-company name; the licence on the British register is the binding reference.

The verdict: NetBet suits a punter who builds same-game multis or Bet Builder bets as their default staking pattern and wants the price of the combined bet visible as they add each leg. The Daily Boosts and Profit Boosts add a percentage layer on top of accas, and the sports stats are the practical support feature.

Bet Ahoy — a £10 symmetrical bundle

Bet Ahoy’s sports welcome offer is Bet £10, Get £10 in Free Bets, split as a £5 sports bet and a £5 acca. The 1:1 structure is the relevant detail: unlike BetGoodwin’s three-token bundle or Betway’s four-token bundle, Bet Ahoy’s welcome is a clean £10-in, £10-out at the qualifying-bet level. The qualifying bet is £10 and the free-bet bundle is also £10, so a punter who lays the qualifying bet at the minimum price and uses both free-bet tokens at any price above the minimum ends up with the offer as a 1:1 matched free-bet structure.

The licence is Commission account 100094, held by Bet Ahoy Ltd. The higher account number places Bet Ahoy as a more recent licence-holder on the register.

The verdict: Bet Ahoy suits a punter who wants a clean matched-bet structure without a three- or four-leg token bundle to manage. The £10 entry point is the lowest qualifying bet in this comparison alongside Sky Bet’s 5p minimum, and the simplicity of the bundle is the practical feature.

Geoff Banks — ante-post and in-play, racing-rooted

Geoff Banks’ app is published by GB Sports Advisors Limited and offers live in-play prices and ante-post prices on future events. The racing and ante-post focus is the relevant detail: ante-post is a long-standing British racing term for a bet placed before the final declarations on a race, and a bookmaker that prices ante-post markets is built around a customer base that bets into future events rather than only on the day. The app is racing-rooted in its product set, and the in-play line shows that the operator covers other sports as well.

The licence is Commission account 54095, held by GB Sports Advisors Limited. The personal-name branding (Geoff Banks) sits inside the corporate holder on the register.

The verdict: Geoff Banks suits a punter who bets into ante-post markets on racing and wants in-play prices as a secondary feature. A punter whose staking pattern is football-led will find the ante-post orientation unusual rather than directly useful.

Matchbook — exchange mechanics with a 110-day commission-free window

Matchbook is the only betting exchange in this comparison, and the new-customer offer is structured around that difference: 110 days of commission-free betting from registration for customers who register with the code shown in the listing and make a deposit, with standard commission applying afterwards. The exchange model charges commission on winnings rather than building a margin into the price, so the headline figure on a Matchbook market is the backer’s price net of the exchange’s take — a different mechanic from the fixed-odds bookmakers around it on this page. The licence is Commission account 39504, held by Triplebet Limited, and the licence category on the register covers both remote general betting standard (real events) and remote betting intermediary.

The qualifying condition on the offer is registration with the code shown in the listing — a step that requires the punter to read the App Store listing rather than the operator’s homepage, since the offer is presented through the store rather than the Matchbook site. The 110-day window is far longer than the seven-day free-bet windows on the fixed-odds offers in this comparison, and the commission saving is the practical feature that distinguishes Matchbook.

The verdict: Matchbook is the right fit for a punter who is comfortable with the exchange model (back and lay, commission on net winnings, no margin in the price) and who wants 110 days without commission to learn it. A punter whose staking pattern is built around fixed-odds single bets will not see the commission saving work for them.

Betboro — 100% matched free bet with a three-leg minimum

Bett’s sports welcome offer is a 100% matched free bet of up to £25 on the first qualifying wager. The qualifying condition is a debit card deposit of at least £10 and a first bet of £5 to £25 with at least three selections, each at minimum odds of 3/5 (1.60) or higher. The three-leg, 1.60 minimum is the relevant detail: this is the only welcome offer in this comparison that requires an acca to qualify for the free bet, and the minimum odds of 3/5 per leg rule out very short-priced favourites. The 100% match structure means a punter who deposits £10 and stakes the full £25 on a qualifying acca at 1.60-plus per leg receives a matched free bet of up to £25.

The licence is Commission account 44181, held by Webmedia Development N.V. The Curaçao-rooted holding company is on the British register, and the Betboro.co.uk domain is the British-facing site.

The verdict: Betboro suits a punter who builds three-leg accas as their default staking pattern and wants a 100% matched free bet rather than a token bundle. The qualifying-bet structure is the relevant cost: the first bet must be an acca at 1.60 per leg, which is a tighter condition than the single-bet minimum on most of the fixed-odds offers in this set.

How the wagering requirement turns into a number

The 10x cap that took effect on 19 January 2026 bounds the wagering requirement on a British licensed sign-up bonus. To take a worked example from the welcome offers reviewed above, consider a £30 free-bet bundle that carries a wagering requirement of 10x the bonus amount. The required turnover is £30 multiplied by 10, which gives £300 of qualifying bets at the operator’s minimum price. At a minimum price of 1/2 (1.50), a punter placing £10 stakes needs 30 such bets to clear the requirement. The free-bet stake is not returned, so a winning £10 free bet at 1/2 returns £5 in cash rather than £15. The wagering requirement does not change the free-bet stake treatment — it is a separate clause on top of it.

The Commission has not confirmed whether the 10x cap applies to free bets that carry no wagering condition at all. The welcome offers reviewed on this page are mostly free-bet bundles whose stake is not returned; the wagering requirement on the bonus itself is, where one is set, capped at 10x by the 19 January 2026 rule. A punter who reads a 50x wagering requirement on a betting bonus at a GB-licensed app should treat it as a breach to be reported to the operator and, if not corrected, to the Commission. A punter who reads a 30x wagering requirement on a casino bonus is reading a casino-side term and not a betting-side term, and the cap does not apply on the same basis. The two product types are governed by separate licence conditions.

The cost the punter pays to clear a wagering requirement is the product of the turnover and the bookmaker’s margin on the markets being staked. A punter clearing £300 of turnover on a market with a 5% margin is paying, on average across many bets, £15 of expected cost. A punter clearing £300 of turnover on a market with an 8% margin is paying £24. The margin on Premier League 1X2 is typically tighter than the margin on a niche in-play market, and a punter who picks the qualifying market carefully keeps the expected cost down. The cost is still paid in expectation across many bets; no individual bet is certain to win or lose, and the figure above is an average, not a promise.

What changes between apps on the same welcome offer

Two apps offering the same headline figure can ask for very different qualifying bets. Coral’s 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 £40 in free bets issued within seven days and expiring seven days after issue. Unibet’s sports welcome offer carries the same headline figure — Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20 — and the same minimum odds of 2.0, with free bets expiring within seven days of issue. The qualifying conditions are the same to the pound and the fraction. The difference is downstream of the welcome offer: Coral adds a free daily Reward Shaker, an Odds Booster on hundreds of markets and free-to-play games such as Football Super Series with a £10,000 jackpot, while Unibet 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. Coral’s qualifying deposit must be a debit card or instant bank transfer, and its site lists Apple Pay, Visa, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Revolut Pay, Google Pay, TrueLayer, Earthport and Trustly among its payment options, so the qualifying £20 is a payment-method condition as well as a stake condition.

That downstream difference is the practical content of a comparison. Two £40 welcome offers with the same minimum price and the same expiry differ on what the punter can do with the account after the welcome terms are spent, and a punter who wants live streaming will weight the comparison differently from a punter who wants a free-to-play game with a jackpot. The headline figure is the surface; the qualifying conditions and the post-welcome product set are the substance.

The bet365, William Hill, BoyleSports, Sky Bet, Spreadex, Kwiff, QuinnBet, Smarkets, DAZN Bet and Star Sports picture, in brief

A few of the brands that are most familiar in the British market carry features that did not fit the ten-deep comparison above but matter to a reader building a shortlist. bet365 offers Bet Builder+ for combining markets from one event into a single bet, pre-match and in-play, with Super Boosts, Winnings Boosts on Bet Builders and selected singles, and daily Bet Boosts. William Hill’s Football Acca Boost covers accas of two or more legs with each selection at 1/5 or bigger, with a boost from 3% on a double up to 200% on twenty or more legs, a maximum boost of £10,000 per online bet, running until 30 May 2027. BoyleSports’ sports welcome offer for UK players is £20 in free bets when a £10 bet is placed (€30 in free bets for a €10 bet for Irish players), and the operator’s Acca Insurance requires opt-in, a £5 minimum stake, minimum odds of 1/2 and pays a maximum refund of £20 as a free bet that expires in seven days; bets must be placed and settled on the same day. BoyleSports’ Acca Loyalty requires opt-in, a £5 minimum stake, minimum combined odds of 3/1 and five or more settled legs, with a free bet expiring after seven days.

Sky Bet’s welcome offer for new customers 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. Spreadex is regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting, and its new customer offer is £60 in free bets for a £10 fixed-odds bet, with the free bets usable across fixed odds and spread betting; the qualifying bet must be placed within 28 days of opening the account, and the welcome offer requires a qualifying fixed-odds bet at minimum odds of 1/2. Spreadex’s Acca Boosts give a cash boost from 5% up to 100% on football accumulators of three or more selections, depending on the number of legs. Spread betting losses can exceed the deposit, and that warning is on Spreadex’s homepage: financial spread betting is a separate regulatory category from fixed-odds betting and is not covered by the same consumer-protection framework as a Commission-licensed sportsbook.

Kwiff’s Supercharge feature can instantly boost the odds on a bet, for example from 2/1 to 20/1, on single or multi bets on any sport. Kwiff also offers Bet Builder and Bet Builder+ (combining Bet Builder bets from different games) and a guaranteed weekend acca boost. QuinnBet’s free bets are valid for seven 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; straight accumulators are allowed but Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not. Smarkets runs the SBK sportsbook, whose UK welcome offer is a £20 first deposit and £20 bet at minimum odds of 3.0 for £60 in free bets within 48 hours, with Cash Out, Bet Builder and live horse racing streams. Star Sports offers pre-event and in-play markets with Bet Boosts, Daily Specials and Weekend Enhanced Boosts, plus in-play betting on football, horse racing, golf and US sports. DAZN Bet offers Cash Out, Bet Builder, daily bet boosts and in-play betting; cash out availability is not guaranteed and bets stand if it is unavailable. DAZN Bet provides deposit limits, loss limits and wagering limits as safer gambling tools.

None of these offers is the centre of this comparison — the ten operators in the table carry the headline comparison, and the brands in this paragraph are the wider landscape a reader will meet while comparing. Their welcome offers are described here in the same terms as each operator’s own listing, and the qualifying conditions, minimum prices and expiries are the binding detail.

What changes when the offer is on an unlicensed site

The 10x cap on bonus wagering, the ban on mixed-product promotions, the £150 financial vulnerability check, the GAMSTOP membership and the credit-card ban are all conditions of a Commission licence. None of them applies to an unlicensed operator, and none of them is enforced against a punter who opens an account at one. The Commission’s published position is that the loss of protection — no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, not bound by the 10x bonus cap or the £150 vulnerability check — is the cost of using an unlicensed site. No criminal offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site was identified in the Commission’s published material, but the framing is not “legal to use”: it is that the customer is outside the British regulatory perimeter. Enforcement against unlicensed operators is disruption-led: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers, and a court-order DNS blocking power that has been granted to, or is about to be granted to, the Commission. ISP-level blocking is not in operation at the time of writing and is not stated as such on this page. None of the ten operators reviewed above is unlicensed; every one holds a current remote betting licence on the Commission’s public register.

The British tax picture for the punter

A punter in Great Britain pays no tax on betting winnings. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%, with a new remote betting rate of 25% applying from 1 April 2027 within the same duty; remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate is 15%. Spread betting has its own rates (3% financial, 10% other). Whether operators pass duty on through odds is not established by the public material and is not stated on this page. A professional gambler is in a different tax position and should ask HMRC or an adviser.

What the offer cost looks like across the ten operators in this comparison

The qualifying-bet conditions and the headline reward across the comparison are not directly comparable as a single figure. Betway’s £40 for a £10 qualifying bet at 2.0 has a 4:1 reward-to-stake ratio; BetGoodwin’s £15 for a £10 qualifying bet has a 1.5:1 ratio; Bet Ahoy’s £10 for a £10 qualifying bet has a 1:1 ratio; Betboro’s £25 matched free bet for a £10 qualifying deposit and a £5-to-£25 first bet at 1.60-per-leg has a 2.5:1 ratio on a maximum stake. The reward-to-stake ratio is one number, but it ignores the expiry (seven days is the British norm), the minimum price (1/2 to 2.0 across the set), the token structure (single tokens versus multi-token bundles versus a 100% matched free bet), and the post-welcome product set. A punter choosing between two offers on the ratio alone is reading past the more important detail.

How to read the licence number on the public register

Every Commission licence has an account number, which appears on the register as a plain integer (the lowest account number in this comparison is 400, held by Fitzdares; the highest is 100094, held by Bet Ahoy). The number is the most stable identifier on the register: a trading name can change, a domain can move, a holding company can be renamed, but the account number is fixed for the life of the licence. A punter checking a bookmaker’s licence should search the register by account number first, then by domain. A licence holder’s registered name appears in the register alongside the account number; the licence itself is granted to the holder, not to the trading name or the domain, and several trading names can sit under one licence holder (Ladbrokes and Coral under one; Paddy Power and Betfair under another). The comparison on this page lists the account number and the holder for each of the ten operators, and the register is the test of whether the figure matches a live licence. Every operator reviewed on this page holds a current licence; none has been marked unverified.

Frequently asked questions

How does a punter sign up for a betting site in Great Britain?

A punter downloads the app or visits the site, creates an account with name, address and date of birth, and verifies those details under the operator’s identity-check process — since 7 May 2019, no Commission-licensed operator can accept a deposit or a bet before that check is complete. A deposit is then made by debit card, instant bank transfer or another payment method the operator lists, and a first bet is placed at the minimum price the welcome offer requires.

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

The 10x cap, which took effect on 19 January 2026, bounds the wagering requirements on bonuses. A £10 bonus at the cap can ask for £100 of qualifying bets before any winnings are released as cash. The cap is on the licensee, not the punter, and a punter who reads a higher multiple should treat it as a breach.

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

The minimum odds is the shortest price at which a qualifying bet (the bet that triggers the free-bet credit) has to be placed. The wagering requirement is the multiple of the bonus that has to be turned over in further bets before any winnings become withdrawable cash. Both are stated in the operator’s small print, and both are independent of the headline reward figure.

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

Most British licensed apps do not return the free-bet stake with the winnings: a £10 free bet at 5/1 returns £50 in cash, not £60. The stake is the operator’s cost of issuing the free bet; the winnings are the punter’s return. The treatment is stated in each operator’s small print and is the same across the comparison set on this page.

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

No. The Commission’s promotion rules that took effect on 19 January 2026 prohibit mixed-product promotions. An offer that requires a sports bet to unlock a casino bonus, or a casino game to release free bets, is no longer lawful at a GB-licensed operator. The two product types sit in separate wallets under the new rule.

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

The Commission’s public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The account number is the most stable identifier and is the figure to check first. The register entry shows the licence categories (for example remote general betting standard, real events), the licence holder’s registered name and the trading names and domains the holder operates.

Content created by the «AI Betting» team