Sign-up offers from UK bookmakers, weighed by what they actually cost

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Current as of 27 October 2026 against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each operator’s own published terms.

Every bookmaker that takes a Great Britain customer greets them with a headline. “Bet £10, get £30.” “Risk-free first bet.” “Get £40 in free bets when you bet £20.” The arithmetic behind those headlines is the subject of this page — what the offer is, what the small print demands before any of it can be withdrawn, and what changed when the Commission brought its new promotion rules in on 19 January 2026. Ten brands are reviewed in detail further down, each holding a current remote licence for the GB market and each showing a welcome deal to new customers. What every one of them costs the punter in time, in stake and in qualifying bets is the only honest way to compare them.

Sign-up offers and free bets: how the welcome shelf works

A sign-up offer in this market is a one-time promotion tied to opening a new account: usually a free bet, sometimes a matched deposit, occasionally an enhanced price on a first wager. The brands reviewed below run almost the same shape of welcome deal, because the shape is what the market has settled on after the Commission’s 2026 rules squeezed out a few older ones. The headline number on the page is rarely the number that lands in a customer’s account.

A free bet is a token the operator credits to a new account. The customer uses it to place a bet at the bookmaker’s normal odds; if the bet wins, the *winnings* are paid but the *stake* of the free bet is not. A £10 free bet that returns a winning bet at 3/1 pays £30 of profit, not £40. That distinction is the single most expensive thing a new customer learns, and most learn it only when they try to withdraw. A first deposit bonus, by contrast, returns stake and winnings on a winning bet, but the bonus itself has to be turned over a number of times before any of it can be taken out.

Three things decide what an offer is worth to a real punter. The qualifying bet is the bet a customer has to place to unlock the free bets, with its own minimum stake and its own minimum odds. The wagering requirement is how many times any bonus money has to be staked before withdrawal. The expiry is the deadline the operator attaches to the free bets after issue, and a free bet that expires before a customer gets to it is worth exactly nothing. Each of these costs time or money on its own, and the three together decide whether the offer is a fair exchange.

The Commission has spent the last two years pulling this market into a tighter frame. From 19 January 2026, the wagering requirement on any bonus is capped at 10x: a £10 bonus with a 50x requirement, which used to be normal, can no longer be offered, because the customer would have to stake £500 before withdrawing. Mixed-product promotions — a “bet on football to get free spins on the casino” — are banned outright, because the Commission judged that an offer dragging a sports customer sideways into another product type was an unfair pull. The 10x cap is the single most important change in this market in a decade, and it is the reason many of the older-style welcome packages have been reissued since the start of 2026.

What the rules do not decide is the one detail that matters most for free bets specifically: whether the 10x cap applies to a free bet token that carries no wagering condition at all. The Commission’s published guidance is silent on the point. In practice, most operators in this comparison now issue free bets with no turnover requirement — the customer simply has to use the token on a bet at minimum odds, after which any winnings can be withdrawn — and the cap is the ceiling rather than the floor for the bonus offers that still do carry a turnover.

The qualifying bet is where the arithmetic is done. A “bet £10, get £30” headline, with a qualifying bet at minimum odds of 1/1 (2.0), asks the customer to risk £10 of their own money on something that may lose; only after that bet settles do the £30 of free bets appear. If the qualifying bet loses, the customer has spent £10 to chase a headline. If it wins, the customer has £20 of profit and the £30 of free bets to play with — and the £30 of free bets is itself a string of smaller tokens with its own minimum odds and its own seven-day expiry. The headline is the front of a queue, not a payout.

Reading the small print of a free bet

The terms a punter should read before claiming any of the offers below are not long, but they are dense. Six lines carry almost all the cost.

Minimum odds on the qualifying bet. A free bet offer that demands the qualifying bet be placed at minimum odds of 1/1 (2.0) is asking the customer to bet on something where a loss is as likely as a win. The offer is not free; it is conditional on the punter accepting a coin-flip on the bet that unlocks it. A few brands reviewed below set the qualifying minimum at 1/2 (1.5), which is shorter and easier to clear but caps the value of any winning qualifying bet.

Wagering multiple on the bonus. From 19 January 2026 this is capped at 10x across the GB-licensed market. Before the cap, a £10 bonus might have carried a 35x or 50x requirement. After the cap, no GB-licensed operator may lawfully offer more than 10x. A reader comparing two welcome offers can ignore the multiple if both brands are GB-licensed; the cap makes them equal on that point. The size of the bonus, the minimum odds and the expiry are what now separate them.

Minimum odds on the free bet itself. A free bet token is often restricted to minimum odds of 1/2 (1.5) or 1/1 (2.0) when it is used. The lower the minimum, the easier to place the free bet on something that looks likely, but the lower the value of the bet the customer can put it on. A free bet that can only be used at 5/1 (6.0) or more is a free bet aimed at a longer-priced market.

Stake not returned. This is the rule that decides what a winning free bet actually pays. The stake of the free bet is not paid back with the winnings. A £10 free bet on a winner at 3/1 (4.0) pays £30 of profit and nothing on the £10 stake. This is universal across the offers reviewed here. There is no welcome offer in this comparison that returns the free bet stake on a winner.

Expiry. A free bet that expires in seven days is a free bet that has to be used in a hurry. Most of the offers below give seven days; a few give less. An unused free bet is worthless.

Payment method for the qualifying deposit. A common gate, particularly for the bigger welcome offers, is that the qualifying deposit must come from a debit card or an instant bank transfer. Apple Pay, Google Pay and most e-wallets are usually excluded from triggering the welcome offer, though they may be used to top up the account afterwards. Customers who plan to use a mobile wallet to fund the account should check before they deposit.

A seventh point sits outside the operator’s terms but inside the market’s. Identity verification happens before the first deposit. Since 7 May 2019 every GB-licensed operator has to verify a customer’s name, address and date of birth before the customer can put any money in. The check is fast for most, slow for a few, and a punt cannot be placed until it clears. A customer who plans to bet on a Saturday morning’s football should open the account on Thursday, not Saturday.

The arithmetic of a typical welcome deal

Take a “bet £10, get £30 in free bets” offer, the kind three of the ten brands below run in some form. The customer deposits £10, places a qualifying bet of £10 at minimum odds of 1/1, and on settlement receives three £10 free bet tokens. Each free bet has minimum odds of 1/2 and expires in seven days. The free bet tokens are used; one wins at 3/1, the other two lose.

The result: the customer risked £10 of their own money on the qualifying bet, and staked £30 of free bet money on three further bets, of which one won. The net gain depends on whether the qualifying bet won. If it won, the customer has the £20 of profit from it plus the £30 of winnings from the winning free bet, less the £20 of free bet stakes on the two losing free bets (which were not really stakes — the customer never had that money in cash). The free bets converted to £10 of real profit. If the qualifying bet lost, the customer has just the £10 of winnings from the winning free bet and the £10 of free bet stake is gone, so the customer is down £10 of real money on the day, having played three bets for a net of zero profit and a real-money loss of £10.

The offer is not ungenerous — £30 of free bet tokens for a £10 qualifying bet is roughly £20 of expected value at the typical 5% margin of a Premier League match — but the headline number is the upper bound, not the typical outcome. The free bet tokens are the offer, and the qualifying bet is the price of them.

What the offer actually costs: turnover on a £20 bonus

The page’s calculation this time uses one of the offers in the comparison below as a worked example. Coral’s sports welcome offer for new GB customers is “Get £40 in free bets when you bet £20”: a £20 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, for new GB customers who opt in and qualify with a debit card or instant bank transfer. A similar shape sits behind several of the other offers in the comparison.

The free bets themselves carry no wagering requirement under the current rules. A free bet at 2.0 (1/1) or more that wins pays the winnings only, with the stake of the free bet not returned, and the winnings are withdrawable as cash. The cost of the offer to the customer is therefore the qualifying bet, not a turnover on the free bet tokens. The qualifying bet is a single £20 bet at minimum odds of 2.0, which is one bet in the technical sense but a more expensive one than it looks: a bet at 2.0 carries a margin of around 5% on a typical football match, meaning the customer is paying about £1 of expected loss on the qualifying bet to unlock £40 of free bets.

The required turnover on the offer, on the assumption that any bonus element carried a 10x multiple (the current cap, not the offer’s actual terms), would be £20 × 10 = £200 of qualifying bets, or ten £20 bets at the minimum price the operator allows. The bonus base in this comparison is the bonus alone, not bonus plus deposit. The expected cost of clearing that turnover on a market with a 5% margin would be £200 × 5% = £10, half the value of the bonus — which is why the Commission capped the multiple at 10x in the first place. At a 50x multiple, which is what some welcome offers carried before 19 January 2026, the same £20 bonus would have demanded £1,000 of turnover and an expected cost of £50, well past the value of the bonus itself.

The actual Coral offer, like most in this comparison, is structured so that the qualifying bet is the only real-money outlay: no wagering multiple on the free bets, no turnover on the bonus. The expected cost of the offer is therefore the expected loss on the £20 qualifying bet, which lands in the band of £0.80 to £1.20 on a market with a 5% margin, with the £40 of free bet tokens carrying a separate expected value of around £20 at the same margin. The arithmetic favours the customer, by design, because the welcome offer is the operator’s way of buying a first-time customer; the offer’s expected value is the price the operator pays for that acquisition.

What changes the picture is the qualifying odds. A 2.0 minimum is roughly even money; a 1.5 minimum (1/2) would be shorter and would convert the qualifying bet into a much safer proposition for the customer, but the operator would then trim the headline offer to compensate. A 5.0 minimum (4/1) would be much harder to clear, and the operator would be paying a higher headline for a lower expected-value offer. The minimum odds on the qualifying bet are where the offer’s real generosity lives.

The promotion rules that changed the market in 2026

The Commission’s promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 are the reason the offers in this comparison look the way they do. Three changes matter for a new customer comparing welcome deals.

The 10x wagering cap. A bonus — a sum of money credited to a customer’s account that has to be turned over before it can be withdrawn — may carry a wagering requirement of no more than 10x the bonus amount. A £10 bonus with a 50x turnover, common in the pre-cap market, is no longer lawful in Great Britain. A £20 bonus can require at most £200 of qualifying bets before withdrawal. A free bet with no wagering condition is not a bonus in the technical sense and is not affected by the cap.

The mixed-product ban. An offer that asks a customer to bet on one product type to receive a free bet, bonus or free play on another — for example, “place a £10 sports bet to get 50 free spins on the casino” — is no longer permitted. The Commission’s stated concern was that a sports welcome offer could be used to pull a customer into a casino product on which they had not intended to gamble. A sports-only welcome offer is unaffected.

No preset bonus ceiling. The rules do not cap the *money value* of a bonus; only the multiple. A £100 bonus at 10x turnover is allowed. A £500 bonus at 10x turnover is also allowed. A reader comparing welcome offers in this market is therefore comparing the *size* of the bonus and the *minimum odds* of the qualifying bet, not the multiple.

The rules sit alongside the identity-verification rule (LCCP, in force since 7 May 2019), the credit-card ban (since 14 April 2020) and the GAMSTOP requirement (mandatory for online operators since 31 March 2020). A new customer opening an account with any of the ten brands below goes through all of them before placing a first bet. The practical effect is that a sign-up offer cannot be claimed anonymously, cannot be funded with a credit card and is subject to a self-exclusion check against the GAMSTOP register, which every GB-licensed operator runs as part of sign-up.

A financial vulnerability check sits in this frame as well. From 28 February 2025, an operator must run a public-record check on a customer whose net deposits (deposits minus withdrawals) cross £150 in a rolling 30-day period. The check looks for county court judgments, bankruptcies and similar markers; it is not an income check and it does not ask for payslips. The same framework anticipates staged “financial risk assessments” — the press calls them affordability checks — but the Commission’s published timeline gives no start date, so this page treats them as announced and staged rather than as in force.

The shape of a welcome offer after 19 January 2026

The old welcome offer was a “100% matched deposit bonus”, often with a 35x or 50x turnover on the bonus plus deposit, free spins thrown in for the casino, and a seven-day expiry. That shape is mostly gone from the GB-licensed market for the welcome offer specifically. The new shape, repeated across the ten brands in this comparison, is closer to a free bet bundle:

• a small qualifying bet at minimum odds, often 1/1 (2.0) or 1/2 (1.5);
• a bundle of free bet tokens credited on settlement, usually in £5 or £10 units;
• a seven-day expiry on the free bet tokens;
• a minimum-odds floor on the use of the free bet tokens, often 1/2 (1.5);
• no wagering multiple on the free bet tokens themselves;
• a stake-not-returned rule on the free bet tokens.

The headline number is the total face value of the free bet bundle. The cost to the customer is the qualifying bet, which carries an expected loss of a few pounds on a market with a typical 5% margin. The offers in this comparison are, on the whole, more honest than the offers they replaced: the headline is closer to the value, and the small print is shorter.

Top ten UK bookmakers with sign-up offers in 2026

The ten brands below are the ones this page reviews. Each holds a current remote licence with the Gambling Commission for the GB market, each appears on the public register under a single licensee, and each shows a welcome deal to a new GB customer. This is not a ranking; the judgement of which offer suits which kind of punter is in the review beneath each.

The comparison table that follows lays the ten brands side by side on three points: the Gambling Commission licence that authorises them to take GB customers, the operating company behind the licence, and the headline of each brand’s own welcome offer as published in its own terms. The licence number is the test of whether a brand is lawfully offering bets in Great Britain; the welcome offer is what the brand is offering to a new customer today. Both can change, and the public register and the operator’s own terms page are the only sources that stay current.

Side-by-side: licences and welcome offers

The table is a snapshot, not a perpetual record. Licence accounts are the public-register number to quote when checking a brand; the operating company is the entity that actually holds the licence, which can be a different name from the brand on the app. Welcome offers are as each operator’s own terms state them, and the operator’s terms page is the version that settles any disagreement.

LiveScore Bet

LiveScore Bet is the sportsbook attached to the LiveScore scores-and-results brand, and its licence is held by LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited under Gambling Commission account 56859. The sportsbook runs a debit-card-and-e-wallet payment set: Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, PayPal, Pay by Bank (Open Banking) and Revolut Pay are all listed in the help pages, and the welcome offer is unlocked by a qualifying deposit and first bet using one of them. The welcome offer sits inside the post-19 January 2026 shape: a small qualifying bet, a bundle of free bet tokens on settlement, a seven-day expiry on the tokens. Customers who prefer to fund the account with an e-wallet other than the ones listed should check the qualifying-deposit terms before paying in.

The brand is best suited to the punter who already uses the LiveScore app for scores and wants a familiar bookmaker attached to it. The price depth is mainstream: top-flight football, the obvious horse racing meetings, the major US sports, with an in-play offer on football and basketball. Obscure lower-league football or political props are not the book’s primary focus.

VBet

VBet’s GB licence is account 44662, held by SCGO Limited, with the welcome offer structured as a £10 free bet for a new, verified customer whose first-ever bet of £10 or more loses. That shape — a refund as a free bet, not a refund as cash — is the post-2026 norm. The stake of the free bet is not returned on a win, and the free bet expires within seven days. A punter who reads “risk-free” into the headline and expects a cash refund on a losing first bet has read it wrong, and reading it wrong on a £10 free bet is a £10 lesson.

The product is wider than the welcome offer. VBet covers football deep, including Eastern European leagues, and the in-play product is solid for the obvious sports. The price depth on Premier League football is competitive at the top of the market but falls away on lower-profile events. Punters who appreciate depth in both mainstream markets and niche Eastern European leagues should find a suitable book here.

Betmaster

Betmaster runs under Gambling Commission account 65699, held by BM Solutions GB Ltd, a Maltese-registered company. The welcome offer is visible in the app and follows the standard shape: a small qualifying bet, a free bet bundle on settlement, a minimum-odds floor and a seven-day expiry. The payment set is mainstream, the in-play product is competent and the price depth on the British and European football leagues is reasonable.

The brand is suited to the punter who wants a less-marketed bookmaker with a familiar welcome offer. The trade-off against the bigger names in this comparison is brand recognition: Betmaster does not have the marketing budget of bet365 or Sky Bet, and a punter who values a long-odds outsider price on a Premier League match will find the bigger books sharper.

Geoff Banks

Geoff Banks’ sportsbook runs under Gambling Commission account 54095, held by GB Sports Advisors Limited. The brand is small and the welcome offer is built around the in-play product: live in-play prices and ante-post prices on future events are the main feature, and the welcome offer sits inside that frame. A new customer looking for a deep ante-post book on the major horse racing festivals or the next World Cup will find a use for it. A new customer who wants a deep in-play product on live basketball or tennis is in the wrong place.

The brand is best read as a specialist rather than a generalist. The licence is current, the operator is small and the welcome offer is modest, but the specialism is real and a punter whose interest is in the long-odds end of the market should give it a serious look.

Coral

Coral is one of the better-known high-street names in British betting, and the GB remote licence is account 54743, held by LC International Limited (the same licensee that also runs Ladbrokes). The welcome offer is “Get £40 in free bets when you bet £20”: a £20 or more sports bet at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), with £40 of free bets issued within seven days of the qualifying bet settling and expiring seven days after issue, for new GB customers who opt in and qualify with a debit card or an instant bank transfer. The headline is competitive with the rest of the market; the qualifying bet is at a fair minimum odds; the seven-day expiry is the post-2026 norm. The brand runs an Odds Booster on hundreds of markets, a daily free Reward Shaker and a free-to-play Football Super Series game with a £10,000 jackpot, all of which sit alongside the welcome offer rather than inside it.

The payment set is wide. Apple Pay, Visa, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Revolut Pay, Google Pay, TrueLayer, Earthport and Trustly are all listed in the help pages, and the qualifying deposit for the welcome offer can come from a debit card or an instant bank transfer. A punter who funds the account with one of the e-wallets and then tries to claim the welcome offer will be told that the qualifying deposit has to be a debit card or instant bank transfer, and the offer will be declined.

The brand is best suited to the punter who wants a familiar name, a competitive welcome offer and a steady supply of ongoing promotions on football and horse racing. Punters prioritising the absolute deepest in-play catalogue may find the range competitive but not top-tier; Coral offers a solid in-play experience rather than an exhaustive one.

Smarkets

Smarkets is the betting exchange and SBK is its consumer-facing sportsbook, both run under Gambling Commission account 39173, held by Smarkets (Malta) Limited. The exchange is licensed as a remote betting intermediary; the sportsbook is licensed as a remote general betting standard (real events) operator. The welcome offer on the sportsbook is £60 in free bets for a £20 first deposit and a £20 bet at minimum odds of 3.0, with the free bets issued within 48 hours. The minimum-odds floor of 3.0 is higher than the 2.0 most of this comparison sets, and a punter who picks a short-priced favourite to clear the qualifying bet will be told to try again.

The sportsbook carries Cash Out, Bet Builder and live horse racing streams. The exchange, separately, lets customers back and lay selections at odds set by other users; the welcome offer is on the sportsbook side, not the exchange side. A new customer who wants a betting exchange rather than a traditional sportsbook is in the right place but should read the welcome-offer terms carefully, because the qualifying terms are tighter than most of this comparison.

bet365

bet365 is the biggest name in this comparison, and the GB remote licence is account 55148, held by Hillside (UK Sports) ENC. The welcome offer is stated in the app and follows the standard shape: a small qualifying bet, a free bet bundle on settlement, a minimum-odds floor and a seven-day expiry. The product is wider than the welcome offer: Bet Builder+ combines markets from one event into a single bet, available pre-match and in-play; Super Boosts lift the price on selected markets; Winnings Boosts lift the return on selected Bet Builders and singles; daily Bet Boosts run on a changing list of events. The in-play product is the deepest in this comparison, the live-streaming catalogue is the largest and the price depth on lower leagues is the most consistent.

The brand is best suited to a punter who wants a single bookmaker for everything: football, horse racing, the major US sports, the in-play markets on all of them, the live streams, the bet builder. Punters in search of a deep, specialist book on ante-post horse racing or exclusively long-odds markets might find it less focused; bet365 is a generalist by design, and its strength lies in the breadth of its coverage rather than the depth of any single niche.

Kwiff

Kwiff’s GB remote licence is account 44448, held by Eaton Gate Gaming Limited. The headline feature is Supercharge, which can lift the price of a bet instantly — the marketing example lifts a bet from 2/1 (3.0) to 20/1 (21.0) — and which can apply to single bets and multiples on any sport. The welcome offer sits inside the standard shape. The brand runs a Bet Builder and a Bet Builder+ (the latter combining Bet Builder bets from different games) and a guaranteed weekend acca boost.

The brand is best suited to a punter who likes the surprise of a boosted price on a bet they had not picked as a long-odds outsider. A punter who wants a steady, predictable welcome offer is in the right place but should not be surprised when the Supercharge lands only on selected bets and not on every wager.

BetGoodwin

BetGoodwin’s GB remote licence is account 2927, held by Goodwin Racing Limited. The welcome offer is “Bet £10 & Get £15 in Free Bets”, made up of a £5 sports bet, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet. The structure is unusual: most welcome offers in this comparison hand over a single bundle of free bet tokens, while BetGoodwin splits the offer across three different token types, each with its own rules. A punter who reads the headline as a flat £15 of free bets has read it wrong, and the £5 of Sub-Cover free bets, which is a refund on a near-miss, is the most novel of the three.

The brand is best suited to a punter who wants a small, well-targeted welcome offer from a smaller bookmaker. The product is focused on British and Irish horse racing and football, with a smaller range of in-play markets than the bigger names in this comparison.

NetBet

NetBet’s GB remote licence is account 39170, held by Netbet Enterprises Limited. The welcome offer is stated in the app; the product runs Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers on selected events, with a Bet Builder that has instant dynamic odds and a sports-stats section covering the major leagues. The brand is best read as a mid-sized generalist with a familiar welcome offer and a competent product. A punter who wants the deepest price on a Premier League match will find the bigger books sharper, but the welcome offer is competitive and the product is wide enough for the obvious markets.

What the licence means in practice

Every brand in this comparison holds a current remote licence with the Gambling Commission for Great Britain. The licence is the operator’s permission to take bets from customers in England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland sits under different law and is not covered by a GB licence. The Commission maintains a public register of every licence holder, searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and the register is the only authoritative test of whether a brand is licensed. A reader who wants to check a brand’s licence should look it up there rather than rely on a footer or an “about us” page.

The Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) sit behind every licence. The LCCP sets out the social-responsibility code, the technical standards, the marketing rules and the financial-vulnerability framework. A customer who feels an operator has fallen short of the LCCP can complain to the operator first and, if the answer is unsatisfactory, to an approved alternative dispute resolution body or, in serious cases, to the Commission itself. The Commission does not settle individual disputes, but it does track patterns of complaints and can take regulatory action against a licensee that fails to meet its conditions. That route is one of the practical reasons for sticking to a GB-licensed brand: the route exists.

A GB-licensed brand is also a GAMSTOP member by licence condition. GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme. A customer who has registered with GAMSTOP is blocked from opening a new account or using an existing one at every GB-licensed online operator for the period they have chosen — six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal — and the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years after the minimum period unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. A customer who has self-excluded through GAMSTOP and then tries to open an account with any of the brands in this comparison will be refused at the verification stage. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; the separate self-exclusion service for betting shops is a different scheme.

The identity-verification rule, in force since 7 May 2019, means no anonymous play at a GB-licensed site. A new customer has to verify name, address and date of birth before the first deposit, and the check includes free bets and bonuses: a free bet cannot be claimed by an unverified account. The check is fast for most, slow for a few, and a customer who plans to bet on a Saturday morning’s football should open the account on Thursday.

The credit-card ban, in force since 14 April 2020, blocks credit cards (and credit-card-funded e-wallet payments) from being used to fund a gambling account at a GB-licensed operator. Debit cards and bank-based payments are not affected. A customer who tries to deposit with a credit card is refused at the point of payment. The rule sits alongside the operator’s own payment-method list, which is the practical test of which methods the operator accepts for the qualifying deposit on the welcome offer.

The financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4, in force since 30 August 2024) applies to a customer whose net deposits (deposits minus withdrawals) cross £150 in a rolling 30-day period. The check is a public-record check: county court judgments, bankruptcies and similar markers. It is not an income check, not a credit-reference check and not the “affordability check” the press describes. The Commission’s published timeline on the broader financial risk assessment framework is staged and gives no start date; a reader who sees a press article about “affordability checks” being in force should treat that claim with care.

What’s not covered by a GB licence

A GB licence does not make a brand “the safe choice” by default, and the absence of a GB licence does not make an offshore brand automatically unsafe. The honest framing is on both sides. A GB-licensed brand comes with identity verification before the first deposit, GAMSTOP coverage, the 10x bonus cap, the £150 financial-vulnerability check, the ASA-bounded marketing and the Commission’s complaints route. An offshore brand comes with none of those, and a customer who has a dispute over a withheld withdrawal has no British consumer redress.

A GB-licensed brand is also bound by the credit-card ban, the LCCP’s marketing rules and the Commission’s enforcement power, which includes cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers, and the court-order DNS blocking powers the Commission has been given or is about to receive. A customer who signs up to a GB-licensed brand is inside that frame. A customer who signs up to an offshore brand is not.

The Commission does not maintain a whitelist of approved payment methods, does not maintain a list of permitted bets or markets, and does not set a state ceiling on stakes or losses. A reader who wants a state ceiling on deposits will not find one in the GB rules; the customer sets their own limit with the operator, and operators must offer a deposit-limit tool on a fixed time frame under the Remote Technical Standards (the first changes have applied since 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether the second phase is live is not established).

The wider rules every welcome offer sits inside

The welcome offer is the part of the operator’s marketing a new customer sees first, but the wider market’s rules shape the welcome offer too. The CAP Code (non-broadcast) and the BCAP Code (broadcast), enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority, govern the marketing of gambling in Great Britain, alongside the LCCP’s marketing conditions. Section 16 of the CAP Code requires marketing to be socially responsible, not of strong appeal to under-18s and not to feature anyone who is or seems to be under 25 (with a narrow exception for marketing placed where a bet can be made directly). That rule concerns who may appear in the advertisement, not who may bet.

The whistle-to-whistle rule, in force since 1 August 2019, is an industry code rather than a law: betting advertisements are not shown on TV from five minutes before a live sporting event to five minutes after it, before the 9pm watershed. Horse and greyhound racing are excluded. A reader who watches live sport on free-to-air TV will notice the absence of betting ads around the event itself and the presence of them around the build-up; the build-up is where most of the welcome-offer marketing is now placed.

The Premier League clubs’ withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts (from 2026/27; sleeves and hoardings remain) is a voluntary agreement, not a law. A reader who watches Premier League football in 2026 is still seeing gambling branding on the sleeves and around the ground; the front-of-shirt change is for the season after.

The General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits from betting, currently 15%. From 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within it, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain, and an operator’s decision to pass the duty on through tighter odds is not established as a market-wide practice. A reader who sees odds move between now and 1 April 2027 should not assume the change is a remote-rate adjustment; most odds movement is the market, not the duty.

Financial spread betting is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission. A customer who opens a spread betting account at Spreadex is dealing with an FCA-regulated product on the spread side and a Commission-regulated product on the fixed-odds side; the two are run under different rules and the loss on a spread bet can exceed the deposit. The Spreadex welcome offer covers both fixed odds and spread betting, and a customer who takes the offer and uses the free bets on the spread side is using them under FCA, not Commission, rules.

Staying in control: safer gambling in the GB market

A welcome offer is a marketing product, and the marketing sits inside a market that takes a proportion of every pound bet on it. The arithmetic is not a moral judgement, but it is a number a punter should know. A bookmaker’s margin on a typical Premier League match sits in the 4% to 6% range; on a smaller-market event, the 7% to 9% range is normal; on an in-play market, the margin is usually higher and the price moves faster. A punter who bets occasionally on a Saturday will not be damaged by a 5% margin; a punter who bets daily on lower-profile events at higher margins is paying a larger share of every pound to the operator. The honest framing is that a bookmaker’s margin is the cost of the service, and the welcome offer is a one-time discount on that cost.

The deposit-limit tool is the simplest safer-gambling control. Every GB-licensed operator offers a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame under the Remote Technical Standards, and the customer can set a daily, weekly or monthly limit and lower it at any time. A customer who wants to bet within a budget should set the limit before making the first deposit, because a raise in a limit is usually subject to a cooling-off period. The time-out and self-exclusion tools sit above the deposit limit, and self-exclusion through GAMSTOP covers the whole online market rather than a single operator.

GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline and is the main counselling and support service for problem gambling in Great Britain. GambleAware funds research, treatment and harm-prevention work. The NHS gambling clinics offer specialist treatment in several regions. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. A reader who feels their betting is no longer under control, or who is worried about a family member’s betting, can reach any of these services directly; the contacts are listed at the bottom of every GB-licensed operator’s safer-gambling page, and the Commission links to them from its own site.

The financial vulnerability check is a market-wide control the operator runs, not a self-imposed limit the customer sets. From 28 February 2025, a customer whose net deposits cross £150 in a rolling 30-day period is the subject of a public-record check. A customer who has a county court judgment or a bankruptcy on the public record is likely to be asked for source-of-funds information, and the operator can apply deposit limits or refuse further business. The check is not an income check and not a credit-reference check; the press sometimes calls it an “affordability check”, which is a different thing.

The mixed-product ban under the 19 January 2026 promotion rules is itself a safer-gambling control: a customer can no longer be pulled sideways into a casino product through a sports welcome offer. A reader who used to see a sports welcome offer with a free-spins tail will notice that the free-spins tail is gone, and that is the rule’s purpose.

A reader who is comparing welcome offers and reading this page before opening an account should pick the brand that fits the kind of punter they already are, not the brand with the loudest headline. The arithmetic favours the punter who has set a deposit limit, has chosen a sport or two to focus on, and reads the small print of the welcome offer before paying in. The arithmetic does not favour the punter who chases the next welcome offer with the next deposit, because the qualifying bet on each new account is real money spent on something that may lose, and the free bet tokens are paid back in winnings only, not stake. The honest framing is that a welcome offer is a discount on the first month of betting, and the discount is small against a year of betting at the operator’s margin.

Picking a brand from the ten

The ten brands in this comparison divide into three loose groups. The first is the mainstream high-street names: Coral, bet365, LiveScore Bet and Smarkets (in its sportsbook form). The welcome offers are competitive, the products are wide, the in-play offer on football is solid, the price depth on the major leagues is consistent. The trade-off is specialism: a punter looking for the deepest ante-post horse racing book or the longest long-shot prices on a lower-league football match will find the bigger books less sharp at the edges than the smaller ones. The high-street brands are best for a punter who wants one bookmaker for everything and is happy to trade depth at the edges for consistency at the centre.

The second group is the specialist and challenger brands: Kwiff, VBet, Betmaster, Geoff Banks, BetGoodwin and NetBet. The welcome offers are competitive, the products are narrower than the mainstream, the price depth on the obvious leagues is reasonable, and the specialism is the point. Kwiff’s Supercharge, VBet’s depth in Eastern European football, Geoff Banks’ ante-post focus, BetGoodwin’s split-bundle welcome offer, NetBet’s stats section and Betmaster’s mid-sized generalism are the features that make each one worth a look. The trade-off is brand recognition: a punter who values marketing scale and live-streaming catalogue will find the mainstream brands wider. The challenger brands are best for a punter who has a particular interest — a sport, a market, a price shape — and is willing to open a second or third account to cover it.

The third group is the betting exchange: Smarkets, on its exchange side, sits alone. The welcome offer is on the sportsbook side, and the exchange is a different product: a customer backs a selection at another user’s odds or lays a selection at another user’s odds, and the operator takes a commission on net winnings. A punter who wants a betting exchange is in the right place; a punter who wants a traditional sportsbook should look at the SBK sportsbook rather than the exchange. The exchange is best for a punter who is comfortable with back-and-lay, willing to learn the mechanics, and looking for prices sharper than a traditional bookmaker on the obvious markets.

The judgement across the ten is that no single brand is “the best” welcome offer. The Coral headline is competitive; bet365’s product is wider than the others; Kwiff’s Supercharge is a real feature for a punter who likes a surprise; VBet’s Eastern European depth suits a particular reader; BetGoodwin’s split-bundle is a clever way to use £15 across three token types. The right way to read the comparison is to pick the two or three brands that suit the kind of punter the reader already is, open accounts with them, set a deposit limit, claim the welcome offer, and then judge by the next six months of betting rather than the next six minutes of marketing.

What’s in a sign-up offer, and what’s not

A sign-up offer is a marketing product. It is not a free gift, not a risk-free first bet in the sense most readers first read the words, and not a guarantee of value. The qualifying bet costs real money and may lose. The free bet tokens are paid back in winnings only, with the stake of the free bet not returned on a winner. The expiry is short, often seven days, and an unused free bet is worthless. The minimum-odds floor on the qualifying bet is the operator’s way of making sure the offer is not claimed by a punter who bets on something almost certain to win.

A sign-up offer is also not a reason to open an account. The reasons to open an account are the depth of the in-play product, the quality of the price on the sports a punter actually bets on, the live-streaming catalogue, the bet builder, the cash-out rules, the payment set, the customer service and the safer-gambling tools. A welcome offer discounts the first month of those things. The discount is small, and the better question is which of the ten brands will still be the right bookmaker in month six, not which has the loudest headline in week one.

The honest comparison of sign-up offers is, finally, a comparison of small prints. The headline is the marketing; the qualifying bet, the minimum odds, the wagering multiple (now capped at 10x), the expiry and the stake-not-returned rule are the product. A reader who reads the small print before paying in has read the offer; a reader who reads only the headline has read the marketing.

Help and support

A reader who needs to talk to someone about their own or a family member’s gambling can reach GamCare through the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, or through the live chat at gamcare.org.uk. GambleAware offers information and signposting at gambleaware.org. The NHS gambling clinics offer specialist treatment in several regions, accessed through the GP or through self-referral. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings at gamblersanonymous.org.uk. A reader who has registered with GAMSTOP and wants to discuss the exclusion period can reach GAMSTOP at gamstop.co.uk. The Gambling Commission‘s own site, at gamblingcommission.gov.uk, carries the public register of licence holders and the LCCP.

Frequently asked questions

How do I sign up with a UK betting site?

Pick a brand from the comparison above, download the app or visit the site, and tap the join button. The operator will ask for a name, address, date of birth, email and phone number, and will run an identity check before the first deposit. The check usually completes in minutes; a small share of customers are asked to upload a document. The first deposit can be made once the check has cleared, and the welcome offer is claimed either at the deposit stage or by opting in on the first bet. A customer who plans to use the welcome offer should read the qualifying-deposit terms first, because a debit card or instant bank transfer is usually required and an e-wallet deposit may not qualify.

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

Since 19 January 2026, the wagering requirement on any bonus at a GB-licensed operator is capped at 10x the bonus amount. A £20 bonus with a 10x requirement can require at most £200 of qualifying bets before withdrawal. A 50x requirement, which was common in the GB market before the cap, is no longer lawful. The cap applies to bonuses; a free bet with no wagering condition is not a bonus in the technical sense and is not affected. The cap sits alongside the ban on mixed-product promotions, which prevents a sports welcome offer from being tied to a casino, bingo or lottery product.

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

The minimum odds is the floor the operator sets on the price of a bet that counts toward the welcome offer. A welcome offer with a minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1) on the qualifying bet means the bet has to be on a selection at even money or longer; a bet on a heavy favourite at 1.2 (1/5) does not count. The wagering requirement is the number of times a bonus has to be staked before it can be withdrawn; a £20 bonus at 10x requires £200 of qualifying bets. The two work together: the welcome offer is unlocked by a qualifying bet at or above the minimum odds, and the bonus, where there is one, has to be turned over at or above the same minimum odds a number of times before withdrawal.

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

A free bet is a token the operator credits to a customer’s account for a fixed stake. The customer uses the token to place a bet at the operator’s odds, and on a winning bet the operator pays the *winnings* — stake multiplied by the decimal odds minus one — and not the stake itself. A £10 free bet at 3/1 (4.0) on a winner pays £30 of profit, not £40. The stake of the free bet is the operator’s cost of running the promotion; the winnings are the customer’s share. The rule is universal across the offers in this comparison, and a customer who reads the headline as a refund in cash has read it wrong.

Can a sports welcome offer be tied to a casino bonus?

No. Since 19 January 2026, a GB-licensed operator may not run a promotion that asks a customer to bet on one product type to receive a free bet, bonus or free play on another. A sports welcome offer can offer sports free bets; it cannot offer casino free spins, bingo bonuses or lottery tickets as a tail. The Commission’s stated concern was that a sports welcome offer was being used to pull a sports customer sideways into a casino product they had not intended to play. A sports-only welcome offer is unaffected, and that is the shape of every offer in this comparison.

How can I check that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register, at gamblingcommission.gov.uk, is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and is the only authoritative test. The register entry shows the licence account number, the operating company that holds the licence and the categories the licence covers (for example, remote general betting standard, real events). Every brand in this comparison appears on the register; the licence number and the operating company are in the side-by-side table above. A brand that does not appear on the register is not licensed to take bets from customers in Great Britain, and a customer who opens an account with such a brand has none of the protections — GAMSTOP, the 10x bonus cap, the £150 vulnerability check, the Commission’s complaints route — that come with a GB licence.

Content created by the «UK betting» team