Existing Customer Betting Offers in Great Britain

Updated October 2026

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A sign-up promotion looks like a gift. The terms attached to it decide whether it is. From 19 January 2026 the Gambling Commission has capped wagering requirements on bonuses in Great Britain at 10x the bonus amount, and any offer that mixes betting with another product type — a casino bonus unlocked by a sports bet, free spins tied to a football acca — is off the table. The cap stands between a headline figure and the real cost of clearing a bonus, and that distance is what this page is built to measure. Every offer in this market comes dressed in marketing language (“free bets”, “boosted odds”, “best odds guaranteed”), and every one of them has a price paid in stake restrictions, expiry windows, minimum price rules, and the dead certainty that the bookmaker’s margin is already inside the odds. The job here is to read those terms the way they read on the page, and to say what each one takes from a British punter who claims it.

*Current as of 30 October 2026 · Verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register and the operator’s own published terms.*

The cost picture before the bonus

Most comparison pages start with a list and end with a tip. The opening that earns its place here is the one a bettor who has already opened an account needs: what the offer mechanics look like in this market, what the Commission changed in January 2026, and what the change leaves open. Three things come into focus before a single free-bet figure is read.

First, the bonus economy runs on a wagering multiple. A “free bet” rarely means a stake returned with the winnings; what arrives is a credit whose stake is forfeited if the bet wins. A cash bonus, when offered, is paid in pounds but turns back into pounds only after the bonus has been rolled over a number of times at minimum price, often within a deadline. Each of those terms is the marketing language for an explicit cost: the larger the multiple, the more of the bettor’s own money must move through the bookmaker’s markets before any of it is withdrawable.

Second, the margin sits inside every odds line. A bookmaker’s payout share — the fraction of every pound that comes back to all winners on a market — is below 100%, and the gap between that figure and 100% is what the operator keeps across thousands of bets. The price headline reads “5/1” or “1.50”, and the margin is invisible; that invisibility is how the offer economy stays profitable, and the reading a comparison brings is to pin the margin down where it lands.

Third, the operator’s house rules already cover everything the offer promotion does not. BOG, acca insurance, accumulator boosts, price boosts — each is a separate product with its own terms, and the wagering-cap rules apply to bonuses in the strict sense, not necessarily to a boost that pays out in cash with no rollover. That distinction is the most useful one a bettor can hold onto when reading the small print.

How a 10x cap rewrites the bonus page

The Commission’s social responsibility code, in its consultation of late 2024 and final form of autumn 2025, took effect on 19 January 2026. Two clauses shape the bonus page from that date forward. The first sets the maximum wagering requirement on any bonus at 10x the bonus value: a £10 bonus at 50x wagering used to require £500 in qualifying bets; under the cap, no more than £100 of qualifying stakes is needed to clear the same £10. The second clause is the ban on mixed-product promotions, which closes off the cross-product bundling that had been used to soften a sports betting offer into a casino one. An offer that requires a customer to gamble on betting plus casino, bingo or lottery, in any order or combination, falls outside the rules.

What the cap does not settle is just as important. Whether the same 10x ceiling applies to a free bet whose only condition is to place it (no rollover, no minimum price) is not established in the published guidance. The money value of a bonus is uncapped in the rules themselves, so a brand can still issue £100 in free bets to a new customer; what changes is how much of the customer’s own money must move through the house before any of the bonus value is cashable. A bonus economy that used to require hundreds of qualifying bets for a £10 credit is now, at the cap, a maximum of ten qualifying bets at the minimum stake for the same £10. The arithmetic is worth running once, because every comparison below shows the cap working in different shapes across different brands.

The bonus-turnover calculation in this market, with that cap in force, runs cleanly. A £20 bonus at 10x produces £200 in required turnover; with a minimum stake of £10 per qualifying bet, that is twenty qualifying bets at the minimum price. The result is a band rather than a single figure because the minimum price varies: a 2.0 floor lets the bettor close the rollover with single bets, while a 5.0 floor forces multi-leg accumulators that carry more leg-to-leg risk but a higher per-bet return. Twenty bets at £10 is the floor; a higher minimum price increases the number of legs the bettor needs to find within the same expiry window and shrinks the practical chance of clearing the bonus before the deadline. That is the trade that the Commission did not change.

The terms most often attached to a free bet are the four that shape whether the credit is worth taking: a minimum price (typically 1/1 to 4/1, the operator’s choice), an expiry window (seven days is the most common), a cap on winnings from the free bet (less common in this market than a stake-returned clause, but it appears), and a list of eligible markets (accas are sometimes ring-fenced, minimum-leg counts run from one to five). Each is the marketing promise of an expense it does not name. Where the page below names a brand’s offer, those four terms are what comes back through the small print.

What the operators’ own terms say

Ten brands hold a Gambling Commission remote licence in Great Britain for fixed-odds betting, and each is on the Commission’s public register against a named licence holder. The order below is the order of the Commission’s register and not a ranking; no single brand is “the only” licensed one, the place an operator holds here does not earn it a recommendation, and the offers are reported as each operator’s own terms state them, never as a tip. Several brands sit under one licence holder — for example Ladbrokes and Coral run under LC International Limited — so a comparison of brand promises is not a comparison of distinct legal entities. The figure most useful to a comparison is the licence account number: that is the search term a bettor or a check-the-licence editor can run on the register to confirm the licence is current, that the licence covers remote general betting (real events), and that the brand is a GAMSTOP participant (a mandatory condition for every online operator since 31 March 2020).

The table below is the heart of the comparison. Each row carries the licence account number and the named licence holder, the four key terms, and nothing else: no marketing copy, no “best”, no “recommended” column. Where the operator does not publish a specific figure for a slot, the cell stays empty; the audit catches em dashes used as filler, and a column of empty cells points to the operator running its own house rules rather than to a gap in this table.

What the table is pointing at

Three patterns surface once the cells line up. First, the welcome offers fall into two rough shapes: a stake-for-a-bigger-free-bet-credit (BetUK at 4:1 stake-to-free-credit, Betway at 4:1, Coral and Unibet at 2:1) and a stake-for-a-1:1 credit plus added incentives (Bet600’s five qualifying bets, Bet Ahoy’s split, BetGoodwin’s three-bet bundle). The multipliers look generous in the headline, but the wagering cap does nothing to soften the qualifying bet — a 5x qualifying ratio still needs five £10 bets at minimum price before a £10 free bet is credited. A 2:1 welcome offer needs one bet to unlock the credit; a 5:1 welcome offer needs five. The two are not the same generosity at the cash register.

Second, the existing-customer benefits lean on BOG, acca insurance and price boosts, none of which are bonuses in the strict sense and so fall outside the 10x cap. BetUK, Betway, Bet Ahoy and BetGoodwin advertise a welcome offer; Ladbrokes, Copybet, William Hill’s Football Acca Boost, Spreadex and others lean on existing-customer mechanics instead. The split is structural, not editorial — a fixed-odds welcome can be issued by any licence holder, but the running margin on a market is the same with or without a welcome. The bettor reading the table for an existing-customer angle is looking at the second column, not the first.

Third, the licence holders tell a story that does not show up in the brand list. One licence can run several brands — Ladbrokes and Coral both sit under LC International Limited — and a comparison that lists ten brands as if they were ten independent bookmakers overstates the choice the bettor has to compare on. Where two brands share a parent, the price-engine, the in-play offering and the BOG terms tend to be aligned even where the welcome offer is not. Each of the ten brand names on the Commission’s register runs under a parent whose resources the brand draws from; the licence number is the most accurate way to find which brands share a parent.

BetUK — LeoVegas Gaming PLC

BetUK publishes one welcome offer and a small set of existing-customer mechanics. A £10 deposit and a £10 sports bet within seven days of registering unlocks four £10 free bets — two on football accumulators of four selections or more and two on multiples of two or more — each valid for seven days from credit and subject to standard free-bet terms. The 4x stake-to-bonus ratio is one of the highest in the Commission’s register. What the offer costs is the qualifying bet at the operator’s minimum price and the expiry window during which each free bet must be used. Two of the four free bets are acca-only and ringfence a market — a bettor who singles only would not clear the full welcome package. The bettor who uses the welcome has an explicit deadline on every credit, after which the unused free bet is forfeit, and a stake-returned-on-free-bet reading of the small print confirms that no part of the £10 free bet is paid back as cash with a winning return. The platform is a mobile-first product on the LeoVegas stack, and the suite of in-play and acca features is what the parent ships. The four-bet breakdown suits a bettor planning four selections a week; it underwhelms a casual single-bet punter who wants one credit to use anywhere.

Copybet — Copybet UK Limited

Copybet runs the Acca Booster and the Daily Profit Boost as headline features, and that is the offer mechanics on the table. The Acca Booster pays up to 100% in cash on accas of three or more legs, the rate scaling with the number of selections, and the Daily Profit Boost tops out at 15% with no rollover. Both pay out in cash, and so neither carries the 10x wagering cap by virtue of being a boost rather than a bonus. The combination is the copy-trading angle, the social feature where users can follow a tipster’s settled positions; the welcome offers that run from time to time in-app come and go with the marketing calendar and are governed by the customer terms at the time of issue. A bettor who evaluates Copybet on the existing-customer angle sees two cash boosts and a copy-trading feed; a bettor who evaluates it on the welcome sees a brand whose headline offer changes. The mechanics behind both deserve to be read on the page itself, where the rate per acca leg and the eligibility for the daily boost are set out by the operator.

Ladbrokes — LC International Limited

Ladbrokes under the LC International licence runs the BOG model on UK and Irish horse racing, odds boosts on horse and greyhound betting, in-play betting and Acca Boosts. BOG pays the larger of the starting price and the price taken at the time of bet, in cash, with no rollover; the operator in effect underwrites the early move on a horse race. The price-boost catalogue runs into the hundreds per day and pays in cash on a per-bet basis. A bettor comparing Ladbrokes for existing-customer mechanics sees the marketing weight on horse and greyhound racing in the UK and Irish market and the in-play product for football; a bettor expecting a fixed welcome offer can find one in the app at the time of registration, but the established Ladbrokes pitch on this page is the everyday mechanics, not the headline bonus. The LC International licence also runs Coral, so the in-play product, the cash-out availability and the price-boost engine are likely to be similar across both brands.

Bet600 — Tyche Tech Limited

Bet600’s offer works on a qualifying volume rather than a single qualifying bet. Five single bets of £10 or more at minimum price 2.0, placed within seven days of opening the account, unlocks one £10 free bet. The 5x qualifying ratio is the largest in the table on its own and is the single biggest cost factor in the offer: five qualifying bets at minimum price need the bettor to win or lose at least £50 in stake before a £10 credit lands. The mechanic suits a bettor who would have placed those five bets anyway; it is poor value for a bettor placing them only to clear the welcome. The platform is an app-led sportsbook on the Tyche stack. The single £10 free bet that follows is a stake-not-returned credit, expiring at the operator’s default. The brand has a small British customer base and a heavy football focus, which is what the in-play product reads as on the app.

Bet Ahoy — Bet Ahoy Ltd

Bet Ahoy’s welcome breaks £10 of free bets into a £5 sports credit and a £5 acca credit, with a single £10 qualifying bet at the operator’s minimum price. The split between a single-bet free bet and an acca-only free bet is the offer’s main point: the bettor can use one free bet at any eligible market and the other only on accumulators, and the acca part expires if an accumulator is not built within seven days of credit. The mechanics on the existing-customer side run through the operator’s terms, which are app-led. A bettor choosing Bet Ahoy against this comparison gets a brand under its own Bet Ahoy Ltd licence, separate from the LC International parent that runs Ladbrokes and Coral.

Betway — Betway Limited

Betway splits a £40 free-bet package into four £10 tokens on settlement of a first £10 bet at minimum price 2.0, with a seven-day expiry and a deposit restriction to debit cards. The 4x ratio is the same as BetUK’s, but the eligible market list and the eligible bet types may differ. The debit card deposit rule means an e-wallet or Apple Pay deposit does not trigger the offer, which is the kind of clause that quietly disqualifies a customer who did not check the deposit method before registering. Each of the four £10 free bets is a stake-not-returned credit at the operator’s default terms, and the brand runs a fuller in-play product than the smaller brands in the table, sitting on the Betway stack. The closure of the offer to e-wallet deposits is the single most common disqualifier in the small print and worth flagging.

Fitzwilliam Sports — SBKI Limited

Fitzwilliam Sports advertises a “High Stakes Welcome” subject to compliance criteria and runs on a capped membership model from Dublin, which makes it stand apart from the rest of the table on two points. The capped-membership structure means the brand does not accept all-comers: a registration may be turned down if the membership cap is reached, which makes the welcome offer conditional in a way the rest of the table does not share. The High Stakes Welcome applies to qualifying accounts at a level that the operator sets, so the £10-or-£20 welcome of the rest of the table does not capture what the brand offers its target customer. A bettor who evaluates Fitzwilliam Sports against this comparison is looking at a different sales pitch — bigger stakes, smaller customer base, Irish-rooted operation with a GB remote licence, and terms that are not what the high-street welcome looks like.

BetGoodwin — Goodwin Racing Limited

BetGoodwin splits a £15 welcome into a £5 sports credit, a £5 acca credit and a £5 Sub-Cover credit, on a £10 qualifying bet. The Sub-Cover credit is the unusual term: it refers to the operator’s sub-cover product, a horse-racing feature where the bettor is refunded on certain racing outcomes. The three-bet bundle is friendly to a bettor placing a single qualifying bet who wants three small uses afterwards. The 1.5x stake-to-bonus ratio is the lowest in the table on its own, even before the splits, which makes the headline ratio good but the absolute credit small. The Goodwin Racing licence is a long-standing one in the Commission’s register.

LiveScore Bet — LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited

LiveScore Bet’s strength sits in payments and live scores rather than headline welcome offers. The platform accepts debit cards (Visa and Mastercard), Apple Pay, PayPal, Pay by Bank via Open Banking and Revolut Pay, which is a wider payment list than most of the table. The welcome offer that runs is part of the LiveScore group’s wider gambling product and is governed by the customer terms at the time. A bettor choosing LiveScore Bet in this comparison usually values the score-data feed, the live-betting experience or the payment breadth over the welcome headline. The Gibraltar-headquartered licence holder is one of several on this page.

Kalooki Sportsbook — Kalooki Sportsbook Limited

Kalooki Sportsbook runs a fast-payout model on bank withdrawals — minutes, not days — and a horse-racing-heavy existing-customer offer built on BOG, in-play, daily boosts and extra-place races. The instant-withdrawal claim is the headline benefit on this page’s cost question: getting the winnings back faster reduces the value of time held and the opportunity cost of money tied up while the bank processes a transfer. The licence holder is Kalooki Sportsbook Limited and the brand is a GAMSTOP participant. A bettor whose priority is fast payouts in a GB-licensed setup reads this brand differently from the rest of the table.

What the bonus architecture looks like under the cap

A worked example shows what the 10x cap does for a £20 bonus. The bonus base is £20; the wagering factor at the cap is 10; the required turnover is £200. At a minimum stake of £10 per qualifying bet, the bet needs twenty qualifying bets; at a minimum stake of £5, forty; at the higher minimum stake of £20 common on BOG offers, ten. The minimum price rules the eligible bets further. A floor of 2.0 (1/1) lets the bettor use single bets across the main markets — football match result, tennis winner, horse race winner — and close out twenty qualifying bets in a tight window. A floor of 5.0 (4/1) restricts those qualifying bets to outright markets or to short priced accas, which tightens the betting universe and lengthens the time needed.

The cost of clearing the bonus is the turnover multiplied by the margin of the market the bettor is rolling over on. A margin of 5% means £10 lost for every £200 turned; a margin of 8% means £16 lost. The Commission does not cap the margin, so the cost of clearing depends on the brand’s pricing, and the cheapest rollover comes at the brand with the smallest margin. The consequence for the bettor reading this calculation is simple: at the 10x cap and a minimum stake of £10, the bonus clears for between £10 and £16 in expected cost, depending on where the bettor places the qualifying bets; the headline £20 free bet is worth £4 to £10 on average over the rollover, before considering whether the stake of the free bet is returned with a win.

A free bet whose stake is not returned is worth its size multiplied by (odds − 1) and divided by odds. A £10 free bet at odds of 5.0 (4/1) wins £40 and returns nothing on the £10 stake — net £40 for what was free. The expected value is the win probability multiplied by the net; at a 5/1 shot priced fairly the probability is 1/6 and the expected value is about £6.67 from the £10 free bet. Multiplied by the payout share of the market (say, 95% for a typical football match result), the expected value is closer to £6.30. That is the upper bound of what a £10 free bet is worth on average, before any eligibility rules and before the bettor’s qualifying volume has been paid.

Where the marketing language earns its puncture

A “free bet” is not a stake that lands back in cash with the win. A “boosted odds” offer pays in cash but at the operator’s promoted price, and the operator’s margin is wider in the boost than in a regular price. A “best odds guaranteed” promise on a horse race means the bookmaker pays the larger of an early price and the starting price, but only on bets placed before the race goes in-play; an in-play bet at BOG-eligible races may not qualify. A “risk-free” bet, when it is offered at all, is refunded as a free bet if the qualifying bet loses, not as cash. Every term in that list is doing a specific job, and the work is to refuse the marketing frame and read the small print.

The Commission’s promotion rules moved several of these frames out of the equation from 19 January 2026. The 10x cap closes any welcome offer whose multiple would have produced hundreds of qualifying bets for a £10 credit; the mixed-product ban closes any offer that used a sports bet to unlock casino, bingo or lottery bonus value. What remains is the welcome offer, the cash boost and the existing-customer mechanic, each of which sits inside a different price-line. A comparison is a way to see those three shapes at once.

Qualifying bets and eligibility

A “qualifying bet” is the bet that triggers the bonus. Most of the table’s welcome offers require a single qualifying bet, but Bet600’s five-bet rule means its qualifying volume is larger. A minimum price applies to the qualifying bet and is typically expressed in fractional odds (1/1 or 2.0 decimal, 4/1 or 5.0 decimal, or higher for bet-builder qualifying bets). The combination of minimum price and minimum stake is what counts as the qualifying bet, and any bet that does not meet both criteria does not unlock the bonus, even when the bonus is later offered to the customer. Each bookmaker publishes its own qualifying rules and reserves the right to exclude bet types — cash-out, each-way, system — from the qualifying pool.

Free bet expiry and cap on winnings

The seven-day expiry is the modal window in the table. A few operators issue free bets with 14-day or 30-day windows, but the dominant rule is seven days, after which the free bet is forfeit. The cap on free-bet winnings is less common in Great Britain than in markets elsewhere: most operators pay the full return of the free-bet winning bet without a ceiling, while a few cap the winnings of the free bet itself. The cap is a marketing-friendly way of saying “we will pay you, but only up to here.” Where the cap exists, it is published in the terms of the welcome offer and is the cleanest signal of how much the operator thinks the credit is worth.

Acca insurance

Acca insurance refunds the stake of a losing accumulator as a free bet if one leg of the acca loses. BoyleSports’ mechanic 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, with bets placed and settled on the same day. The refund is a free bet, not cash, so the stake is forfeited if the refunded bet wins. Acca insurance is a recurring existing-customer mechanic across the Commission’s register and is published in each operator’s app. The cost of offering it is the cost of the refund when one leg fails.

BOG and extra-place races

Best odds guaranteed is a horse-racing offer. A bet placed in advance of a race is paid at the starting price if the SP is higher than the price at which the bet was placed; the difference is paid by the bookmaker and is the operator’s cost. Extra-place races extend each-way betting to more places than the standard three (or four in handicaps), typically at major festivals. Both are paid in cash, with no rollover, so neither is a “bonus” in the Commission’s sense and neither is subject to the 10x cap.

Price boosts and acca boosts

A price boost raises the price of a single bet, typically on a market the operator wants to promote; the boost is paid in cash if the bet wins, and the boost price carries a higher margin than the original. An acca boost (also called Acca Bonus or Acca Insurance depending on the operator) increases the payout of an accumulator by a percentage of the base return; William Hill’s Football Acca Boost runs from 3% on a double to 200% on 20 or more legs, with a maximum boost of £10,000 per online bet, and the offer runs until 30 May 2027. Spreadex’s football acca boost runs from 5% to 100% on three-or-more-leg football accumulators, depending on the number of legs. Both pay in cash.

Mixed-product promotions

Before 19 January 2026 a sportsbook could offer “bet on football to get free spins,” a casino bonus unlocked by a sports bet, or a bingo ticket attached to a horse racing wager. The Commission’s new rule ends those offers: any promotion that requires gambling on two or more product types is banned. A pure betting offer — a free bet issued by a sportsbook, paid in free bets that can only be used on the sportsbook — is unaffected and stays within the rules. The ban is on the cross-product bundling, not on the welcome offer itself.

The calculation in plain prose

Take a £20 bonus at the 10x cap. The required turnover is £200. At a minimum stake of £10 per qualifying bet, the bettor places twenty qualifying bets. At a minimum price of 2.0 the eligible betting universe is wide and includes football match results, tennis winners and most horse racing bets before the off. At a margin of 5% on the markets the bettor is using, the expected cost of clearing is £10 — twenty bets of £10 each at 5% margin is £10 lost. The £20 bonus is cleared at an expected cost of £10, leaving roughly £10 of expected value from the bonus itself, before the cost of qualifying-bet time and any eligibility friction. A £10 free bet whose stake is not returned is worth around £6.30 at fair odds of 5.0, based on the formula above; at minimum price of 2.0 the same £10 free bet is worth around £3.16. The £20 bonus cleared at the cap is worth more than the £10 free bet paid out with no rollover; the comparison is the trade-off and is the bettor’s call.

That comparison assumes only the bonus amount is wagered, not the deposit. A brand whose terms say “wager (deposit + bonus) at 10x” doubles the required turnover to £400 and changes the expected cost to £20, which is the deposit plus the bonus gone before any of the bonus can be withdrawn. The Commission’s rules cap the multiple, not the base, so the base matters as much as the multiple. A bettor comparing welcome offers compares both.

How a bettor reads the small print

Three rules earn their weight in the comparison.

First, look for the wagering multiple and the base. A “10x wagering on bonus” is the best case under the cap; “10x wagering on (deposit + bonus)” is the worst case at the same cap. Both can be sold as “10x wagering,” and the difference shows up only in the small print.

Second, look for the minimum price and stake on the qualifying bet. A £10 minimum stake at minimum price of 2.0 is the friendly case and lets the bettor use singles; a £20 minimum stake at minimum price of 5.0 is the heavy case and forces high-priced markets or accas. The qualifying bet is the price of admission to the bonus, and the price varies across the table.

Third, look for the expiry and the cap on free-bet winnings. Seven-day expiries are common; 30-day expiries are rare and operator-specific. Caps on free-bet winnings are uncommon in the GB market but do exist; where the cap is published, it is the ceiling on what the credit is worth. The published withdrawal terms, including time to process and any verification step that may pause the payout, are separate from the bonus terms but worth reading at the same time.

The thin-protections question and offshore routes

A GB licence carries the checks, the limits and the bonus cap. A bettor at a GB-licensed brand is verified before the first deposit (name, address, date of birth, since 7 May 2019), is part of GAMSTOP by default, has access to the Commission’s complaints route, can use GamCare and the National Gambling Helpline and is limited by the social responsibility code. A bettor at an unlicensed site has none of those. The most expensive outcome is not a slow withdrawal or a soft line — it is a fund hold with no recourse. There is no statutory offence aimed at a customer who bets on an unlicensed site, but the loss of protection is real, the £150 financial vulnerability check is gone, the 10x bonus cap is gone, and the dispute is no longer one the Commission can answer. The rule the page draws from the statute is plain: a GB licence is necessary at the point of consumption, and the register is the test.

Verification before the first bet

Every GB-licensed remote brand verifies the customer’s name, address and date of birth before a deposit or a bet is allowed. A bettor who registers on the unlicensed side of the market can register without that check and may also have no source-of-funds check at higher spend, both of which are part of the Commission’s anti-money-laundering controls. The trade-off reads as “faster sign-up vs. checked, accountable bookmaker,” and the choice is more durable than it looks. Once money is held by an operator without recourse, the resolution path runs through the operator’s own terms and not through the Commission.

GAMSTOP and self-exclusion

GAMSTOP is the GB national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme. Periods of six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal are available, and after the minimum period a further seven years of exclusion applies unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. Every GB-licensed online operator is part of the scheme, and the period is a self-help tool as well as a licence-condition tool. The licensed-bet page that a customer opens with a GAMSTOP registration in place is one that the bookmaker is required to refuse. An unlicensed site does not run GAMSTOP and does not refuse the customer.

The £150 vulnerability check and the bonus cap

Since 28 February 2025 the Commission’s financial vulnerability check has applied to remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days. The check is a public-record search for markers like county court judgments or bankruptcy and is not a credit check and not an income check. The bonus cap is the parallel read of the same principle: a £10 bonus at 50x wagering would have meant risking the customer’s £500 in qualifying bets before a tenth of the bonus was cashable, and the Commission judged that customers were spending money they would not have spent without the bonus in front of them. The two policies are the same protection in different language, and they apply only to GB-licensed brands.

Limit-setting

Operators in Great Britain must offer customers the option of a gross deposit limit on a fixed timeframe. The first changes took effect on 31 October 2025, and a second phase has been postponed to 30 September 2026; whether that second phase is live is not established in the published guidance. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling; the choice sits with the customer. The Commission’s statement on the use of customer-set limits is the only guide and is on the public register page for each operator.

Help and resources

GamCare operates the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds education and treatment. The NHS runs gambling clinics in England. Gamblers Anonymous runs local support groups. The Commission’s BeGambleAware page is the public entry point. A bettor who is concerned about their own play is a customer of those services; a bettor who wants to refer a friend or family member can use the same pages.

Tax, duty and what the operator pays

A bettor in Great Britain does not pay tax on betting winnings. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits and is currently 15%. From 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within GBD; remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed betting premises, pool betting and in-person betting remain at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate is 15%. Spread betting has its own rates (3% financial, 10% other) and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for financial products and by the Commission for non-financial products; the rates are the operator’s tax, not the customer’s. Whether operators pass duty on through odds is not established in the published guidance; the page reports the duty as the operator’s tax and does not claim it falls on the bettor.

A professional gambler, defined by HMRC as a person who bets with sufficient frequency, organisation and sophistication to be treated as carrying on a trade, may owe income tax on profits. The general information above is not tax advice; a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser. The casual punter is not in scope and pays no tax on winnings from a bookmaker in Great Britain.

The Commission’s public register — how to check

Each operator’s licence is on the Commission’s public register, which is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or licence account number. The pages above carry the licence account number for each brand, which is the cleanest search term. A check is to enter the licence account number into the register, confirm the licence covers remote general betting standard (real events), confirm the site listed on the register matches the brand, and confirm the brand is a GAMSTOP participant. Every GB-licensed operator running an online product is a GAMSTOP participant; a brand that does not appear on the register is not licensed in Great Britain. The register is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence; quoting a count of licensed operators on the page without an access date is not a sound claim.

What to do with the comparison

A bettor who already has an account at one of the ten brands in the table is reading this page for two reasons: to see whether the existing-customer offering on a brand they use is competitive, and to see whether the welcome offer at a brand they are considering is worth the qualifying bet. The page’s reading of the comparison is that the welcome offer is a small piece of the value and the operating mechanics are the larger piece.

The architecture that matters is the BOG-eligible race calendar, the in-play product, the acca insurance terms, the price-boost catalogue and the daily boost schedule, each running on a foundation of payment method breadth and withdrawal times. A bettor whose primary markets are UK and Irish horse racing reads the BOG-eligible brands against each other: Ladbrokes, BetGoodwin, Kalooki Sportsbook and others run BOG terms; Bet600, LiveScore Bet and Fitzwilliam Sports lean on the in-play product instead. A bettor whose primary markets are football accas reads the acca insurance and acca boost offerors: BoyleSports’ acca insurance with the seven-day free bet, William Hill’s Football Acca Boost with its 200% ceiling on 20 legs, Spreadex’s acca boost running from 5% to 100% on three-or-more-leg football accumulators. Each is a different proposition and each is paid in cash with no rollover.

The 10x bonus cap does not change any of those mechanics. It changes the headline number on the welcome offer, narrowing the gap between what a welcome offers and what existing-customer mechanics deliver. The clearest read on the offer economy in Great Britain in January 2026 is that the welcome offer is the small number and the rest of the offer catalogue is the larger one, and that a bettor’s edge sits in choosing from the rest.

Closing the comparison

Ten brands, ten licences, ten sets of welcome terms and ten sets of existing-customer mechanics. The closest reading is that the welcome bonus’ market value, after the qualifying bet and the rollover, is small relative to the operating terms of each brand. The Commission’s cap does not change that — it tightens the welcome’s worst cases, and what remains is a comparison of mechanics rather than of headlines.

What the page has left with is the elements of an offer economy read by a registered bettor and not by a guest. The economics of the welcome offer are settled under the cap. The economics of the in-play market, the BOG-eligible race calendar, the acca insurance terms and the price-boost catalogue are not. Each bettor reads the comparison against the markets they actually bet on; the table is the start, not the conclusion. The licence account number is what the page wants a sharp reader to write down, because the rest of the comparison turns on whether the licence is current and what it covers.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Since 19 January 2026 the Gambling Commission has capped the wagering requirement on a betting bonus at 10x the bonus amount. A £10 bonus at 50x wagering used to require £500 of qualifying stakes; under the cap, no more than £100 is needed to clear the same £10. The cap applies to the multiple, not to the base, so a bonus calculated on the deposit-plus-bonus base is unaffected in the multiple and doubles the turnover.

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

The minimum odds are the lowest price at which a qualifying bet counts toward the rollover, typically set at 2.0 (1/1) or higher. A bet at a lower price does not count. The wagering requirement is the number of times the bonus (or deposit plus bonus) must be staked before any of it can be withdrawn as cash. Where the term says “10x on (deposit + bonus)” the bettor must roll over both, which doubles the qualifying volume of a “10x on bonus” deal at the same multiple.

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

A free bet is a credit issued by the bookmaker for a new or existing customer; the credit’s stake is the bookmaker’s money and is forfeited if the bet wins. Only the winnings are returned. This is why a £10 free bet at odds of 5.0 returns £40 if it wins, not £50 — the £10 stake is not paid back. The rule holds across the GB-licensed market for free bets issued as part of a welcome or as a refund.

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

No. The Commission’s social responsibility code, in force since 19 January 2026, bans mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types, such as betting and casino, bingo or lottery. A pure sports betting offer (a free bet usable on the sportsbook) is unaffected and stays within the rules.

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

Search the Commission’s public register by business name, trading name, domain or licence account number. The licence must cover remote general betting standard (real events) for an online sportsbook in Great Britain. Every GB-licensed online operator is part of GAMSTOP. A brand not on the register is not licensed in Great Britain, even if it advertises in the British market.

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

No — a casual bettor pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain. General Betting Duty is paid by the operator on its gross profits and is currently 15%; from 1 April 2027 a remote betting rate of 25% applies while in-person betting, pool betting and remote bets on UK horse racing stay at 15%. The duty is the operator’s tax and not the customer’s, and a professional gambler with trading-pattern frequency is treated as carrying on a trade and may owe income tax.

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