Betting apps with a sign up bonus in the UK: what the offer actually costs the punter

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

A free bet on a sign-up page looks, at first glance, like a present the bookmaker is leaving on the doorstep. Look at the small print and the picture changes: a qualifying bet at a minimum price, a stake that is not paid back if the free bet wins, a seven-day window in which to use it, a wagering multiple on any cash bonus. The £40 figure on the landing page is rarely £40 the reader gets to keep. That gap between the headline and the take-home is the subject of this guide, and the angle is a single one: what the offer actually costs the punter who claims it.

Two things have changed in the British market to make that question sharper. The Gambling Commission brought new promotion rules into force on 19 January 2026, capping wagering requirements on bonuses at ten times the bonus amount and banning mixed-product offers that bundle sports betting with casino, bingo or lottery play. The 10x cap is a hard ceiling, not a target, and it reshapes which welcome packages are even legal. Add to that the verification regime that has run since 2019, the GAMSTOP self-exclusion scheme, and the bonus mechanics each operator prints in its own terms, and the welcome offer becomes a small contract rather than a gift. The pages that follow set that contract out, then run the arithmetic that the marketing copy never quite finishes.

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

The shortlist: ten UK betting apps with sign-up bonus terms laid side by side

The table below is the spine of the page. It compares the ten featured apps on the three things a reader cares about before claiming an offer: the licence that authorises them to take a bet in Great Britain, and what each operator’s own terms actually say about the sign-up bonus. A column with no value for most rows tells the reader nothing and has been cut; what is left is a row of each operator’s licence, the entity behind it, and the headline terms of its welcome package as written in the operator’s own small print.

A reader’s first instinct is to rank the offers by the headline number, and the table is the place that instinct runs into its limits. Betway’s £40 in tokens is four times the headline of Bet Ahoy’s £10, but it is also four tokens, each with its own seven-day clock, and the £10 that qualified them is the punt the reader was going to place anyway. BetGoodwin’s £15 is split three ways, and one of those three is a Sub-Cover bet, which only pays out under a narrow set of conditions. Matchbook’s 110 days of commission-free betting is not a free bet at all in the usual sense: it is a discount on the charge an exchange takes from winnings, and the reader pays for it by betting against other punters rather than against the bookmaker. The numbers cannot be compared without the small print that sits next to them, and the small print cannot be compared without the licence that sits behind it. The rest of this page takes each piece apart in turn.

What a “betting app with a sign-up bonus” is in Great Britain in 2026

Strip the marketing away and three things are left. A licensed operator: a brand that appears on the Gambling Commission’s public register under a remote general betting standard (real events) licence, or under a remote betting intermediary licence if it runs an exchange. A sign-up offer: a promotion made available to a new customer only, almost always gated by a first bet, a minimum odds threshold and a deposit method the operator has chosen. And a set of promotion rules that the operator has to obey whether or not the marketing team likes them, the most important of which is the 10x wagering cap that took effect on 19 January 2026.

That cap is the single biggest change to the welcome offer market in years. Before it took effect, a £10 cash bonus could carry a 50x wagering requirement, which meant the punter had to place £500 of qualifying bets before withdrawing the bonus as cash. Under the new rule the most a bookmaker can ask for is ten times the bonus, so the same £10 bonus has a turnover ceiling of £100. A bonus that fails the cap is not a quirk of one brand’s terms; it is a breach of the Commission’s social responsibility code and a matter for the regulator. The same package of reforms banned the mixed-product promotion, the kind of offer that gave a customer free casino spins in return for a sports bet, and left the welcome offers of the licensed market in the form the table above describes.

Free bets are a different contract, and the rules do not always reach them in the same way. A free bet whose stake is paid back with a winning returns the stake and the profit; a free bet whose stake is not paid back returns only the profit, and that distinction is the one that catches readers out. The Commission’s published position on whether the 10x cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition is not settled, and the page that claims certainty either way is overreaching. What is settled is that every free bet in the table above is of the stake-not-returned kind unless its own terms say otherwise, and the reader who treats “free bet £40” as a £40 bankroll is the reader who walks away with the smaller of the two sums.

The third leg of the definition is identity. Since 7 May 2019 a licensed bookmaker has had to verify a customer’s name, address and date of birth before they can deposit or place a bet, including a free bet or a bonus. A reader who thinks a sign-up offer is a way to test a bookmaker without giving personal details is mistaken: the personal details are the price of admission, and an offer that did not require them would not be a sign-up offer from a licensed brand. The verification has a harder edge for higher-spending accounts: under a financial vulnerability check that has been in force in stages since 30 August 2024, a customer whose deposits minus withdrawals cross £150 in a rolling 30-day window faces a public-record check for things like bankruptcy or county court judgments. That is not an affordability check, and the affordability checks the regulator has been working towards are still in a staged plan with no start date.

The law, the licence and the lines around a sign-up bonus

Great Britain has no state monopoly on sports betting and no cap on the number of licences. The Gambling Commission, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, licenses the market under the Gambling Act 2005, which covers England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland sits outside that Act and runs under older law, so a “GB-licensed” bookmaker is licensed for Great Britain and not for Northern Ireland. The Commission’s public register is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence: a brand can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and the register is updated as licences are issued, suspended or revoked. A reader who cannot find a brand on the register should treat it as unlicensed for the purposes of this page.

Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute, and an operator that holds one of those alone is offering to British customers without the permission British law requires. The Gambling Act 2005, sections 33 and 36, sets out the offence of providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires, and the penalty runs to fifty-one weeks’ imprisonment, a level-5 fine, or both on summary conviction in England and Wales, and six months in Scotland. The offence aims at the operator, not the customer: a punter who bets on an unlicensed site commits no criminal offence, but they lose the protections that come with the licence. That distinction matters, and the framing of “legal to use” is the framing to avoid.

The licence categories a reader meets on a sign-up page are narrow. A remote general betting standard (real events) licence covers sports and other real-world events. A remote general betting standard (virtual events) licence covers computer-simulated events as a separate category. A remote betting intermediary licence covers betting exchanges. A remote pool betting licence covers pool betting on horse or dog racing. A bookmaker can hold more than one category, and the register shows which. The bookmakers in the table above all hold a remote general betting standard (real events) licence; Matchbook is also licensed as a remote betting intermediary, which is the exchange part of its business.

What may be bet on is not set out in a statute. An operator holds a category of licence and offers markets under its own house rules and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP). In-play betting is offered by GB bookmakers and the controls are operator-level rather than statutory; esports are treated like any other event; bets on politics, TV shows and novelty markets are common, and no statutory prohibition was found. There is no statutory cap on stakes, and no statutory list of permitted bet types. A bookmaker can refuse a bet, restrict a customer or set its own maximum stakes, and a reader who has been limited finds that out the hard way. Financial spread betting sits outside the Commission’s remit and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority; the two regulators are not interchangeable, and a brand that holds both kinds of licence is operating two businesses under two different rule books. Spreadex, which is not in the table above but appears elsewhere in the same market, is one such brand: regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Commission for fixed-odds betting, with the company statement that spread betting losses can exceed deposits.

The promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 are the legal frame the sign-up bonus lives inside. Two rules and one open question. First, wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x, which is the calculation that runs through the rest of this page. Second, mixed-product promotions are banned, so a sports book cannot offer free casino spins as part of a sports welcome, and a casino cannot offer a sports free bet as part of its welcome. The open question is whether the 10x cap reaches free bets with no wagering condition, and the Commission’s published position on that point is not settled. What is settled is the effect on the welcome offers in the table: a free bet with a 7-day expiry and a minimum-odds threshold is the typical shape, and a cash bonus with a wagering multiple is rarer than it was, because the cap forces the multiple down to a level operators would rather avoid by issuing a free bet instead.

The 10x bonus cap in plain terms

Take a £20 cash bonus with a 5x wagering requirement. The reader has to place £100 of qualifying bets at the minimum odds before the £20 can be withdrawn as cash. Under the 10x cap, the highest wagering multiple a Commission-licensed bookmaker can attach to a £20 bonus is £200 of turnover. A bonus of £50 with a 10x wagering requirement needs £500 of qualifying bets. The cap is on the multiple, not on the size of the bonus itself: there is no statutory ceiling on the headline number, only on how many times that number has to be turned over. A reader who is comparing two bonuses on size alone is missing the term that decides which one is worth claiming.

A qualifying bet in this context is a bet that counts towards the turnover. The bookmaker sets a minimum odds threshold — Coral’s welcome is at minimum odds of 2.0, Betboro’s first bet must include three selections at 3/5 (1.60) or higher, Spreadex’s qualifying bet is at minimum odds of 1/2 — and bets below the threshold do not count. A reader who places a bet at odds of 1.10 to chase a wagering requirement is, in most cases, throwing the bet away for the purposes of the bonus. The bookmaker sets the rule, the bonus is the carrot, and the carrot is reached only along the path the bookmaker has marked.

The market’s other lever is the minimum stake, which is almost always set at £5 or £10 and is the size of the qualifying bet. Combined with a minimum-odds threshold and a wagering multiple, the lever gives the operator a fairly tight control over how much of the punter’s bankroll the bonus will eat before it pays out. The arithmetic the next section runs through is the reader’s version of that calculation.

Reading the table: which sign-up bonus is actually worth the qualifying bet

A sign-up offer has four moving parts, and the table on the previous page compresses them. The brand sets the size of the qualifying bet, the minimum odds it has to be placed at, the size and form of the bonus (free bet tokens, a cash bonus, a profit boost, commission-free days), and the conditions attached to using the bonus once it lands in the account. The headline figure is the least useful of the four, and the conditions are the most.

The size of the qualifying bet is the price of admission. At Betway, Coral, Unibet and most of the larger brands it is £10 or £20, with a free-bet return of between £10 and £40. At BetGoodwin and Bet Ahoy, which sit at the smaller end of the welcome market, the qualifying bet is £10 and the free bet is £15 or £10. At Betboro the qualifying bet is between £5 and £25 and the matched free bet is up to £25. None of those figures is a windfall, and the qualifying bet is a bet the punter would have placed anyway, on a market they would have chosen anyway. The bonus is the increment on top, and the increment is the only part of the transaction the operator is paying for.

The minimum odds threshold is the more interesting term. Coral and Unibet set 2.0 (1/1), which is the price below which a bet is not counted as a qualifying bet. Betboro requires three selections at 3/5 (1.60) or higher, which is closer to an accumulator requirement than a single-bet threshold. Spreadex sets 1/2 (1.50) on its fixed-odds welcome. The reader who places a £10 single at 1.20 to qualify for a Betway bonus has not qualified: the bet does not count, the bonus does not credit, and the £10 is gone. The threshold exists to make sure the qualifying bet is a real bet rather than a token gesture, and the operator that sets it at 1.20 is essentially offering the bonus for nothing; the operator that sets it at 2.0 is offering it for an event the punter is willing to back at a price that suggests a coin-flip.

The form of the bonus decides how it pays out. A free bet token pays the profit, not the stake, so a £10 free bet on a winner at 3.0 returns £20 (£10 profit, stake not returned). A free bet with the stake returned is rarer and is not the form the welcome offers in the table take. A cash bonus pays back the bonus itself once the wagering requirement is met, and a profit boost or acca boost pays an extra percentage on top of a winning accumulator. Each form has its own arithmetic and its own set of conditions. A profit boost pays out as cash on top of the winnings, but only if every leg of the acca wins. An acca insurance refunds a stake as a free bet if one leg of an accumulator lets the rest down, and the refund is itself a free bet with the stake-not-returned rule applied. The reader who treats the various forms as interchangeable is paying for the confusion.

The conditions on the bonus, once credited, are the slowest burn. A 7-day expiry is the most common, and the clock starts when the bonus lands. A minimum-odds rule on the free bet decides which markets the bonus can be used on: QuinnBet’s free bets, for instance, are usable on any market at 1/2 (1.50) or greater, with a 50/1 ceiling, and acca-system bets such as Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not allowed. A bonus that is restricted to certain sports, certain markets or certain bet types is a smaller bonus than its headline number, because the punter’s choice of where to use it is constrained. A bonus that expires in 48 hours is a smaller bonus than the same bonus with a 7-day clock, because the punter has to find a bet they like within a window that may not suit their betting rhythm. None of those terms is hidden, and all of them are in the small print, and a reader who skips the small print is reading the marketing rather than the offer.

Worked example: the £40 in free bets at Coral and Unibet

Take Coral’s offer as written: a deposit and sports bet of £20 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), with £40 in free bets issued within 7 days of the qualifying bet settling and expiring 7 days after issue, for new GB customers who opt in. The £20 is the punter’s stake on a real bet, and the £40 in free bets is the bonus. Unibet’s offer is the same on its face: £20 in, £40 in free bets, minimum odds of 2.0, 7-day expiry, debit card or instant bank transfer. Both offers are close enough to be a single worked example, and the arithmetic is the same for both.

The qualifying bet: a £20 single at 2.0, which is a coin-flip by the bookmaker’s price. At a true 50/50 chance, the expected value of a £20 bet at 2.0 is £0: half the time the punter wins £20, half the time the punter loses £20, and the average is the line. The bookmaker’s margin eats a few per cent of that line, so the expected value of the qualifying bet alone is slightly negative, somewhere in the region of minus £1 for a 5% margin market. The punter is paying roughly £1 to enter the offer, and the offer has to make that back and then some.

The free bet: a £40 free bet on a market of the punter’s choice, with the stake not returned. If the punter places the £40 free bet at 3.0 (2/1), a winning bet pays £80 (£40 × 3.0 − £40 stake, since the stake is not returned). A losing bet pays £0. The expected value of a £40 free bet at 3.0 on a market with a 5% margin is roughly £40 × (3.0 − 1) / 3.0 × 0.95, which is about £25.33. The £40 headline is, on average, a £25 increment over what the punter would have had by not claiming the offer at all. That is a fair price for a welcome bonus, and it is also the price the operator is willing to pay; lower margins, lower minimum odds or higher minimum-odds thresholds on the free bet would all push the expected value down.

A reader who places the £40 free bet on a market at 1.50 (1/2) is using a more likely outcome and a smaller return, and the expected value calculation shifts. At 1.50, with a 5% margin, the expected value of a £40 free bet is £40 × (1.50 − 1) / 1.50 × 0.95, which is about £12.67. The headline is the same, the take-home is half. The free bet is the same product, but the choice of market decides the take-home, and a reader who treats the £40 as fungible across any sport is the reader who lets the marketing decide for them.

A reader who splits the £40 into the smaller denominations some operators issue — Coral’s £40 is a single token in some periods, while Betway’s £40 is four £10 tokens — faces a similar calculation four times over, with a fresh 7-day clock on each token. The compounding is the point: the operator wants the punter to come back four times, and each visit is another chance to bet on a market the punter would not otherwise have looked at. That is the marketing’s job, and the punter who recognises it as such is the one who treats the welcome offer as a budgeted, deliberate transaction rather than a free lunch.

The Spreadex comparison: when a bonus is not a free bet

Spreadex’s new-customer offer sits outside the standard table. A £10 fixed-odds bet returns £60 in free bets usable across fixed odds and spread betting, with the qualifying bet placed within 28 days of opening the account. The fixed-odds book is licensed by the Commission; the spread-betting book is licensed by the FCA. The £60 in free bets is real, but it is split across two different products with two different risk profiles, and the punter who treats the £60 as £60 of fixed-odds value is reading the headline rather than the offer. A free bet usable on a spread bet is not the same as a free bet usable on a fixed-odds single: the spread bet can lose more than the stake, and a “free” spread bet that ends on the wrong side of the line costs the punter money rather than saving them any.

A reader who wants the £60 in fixed-odds value alone needs to read the small print for any restriction on which markets the free bets can be used on, which is not always the full sports book. Spreadex’s qualifying bet, at minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50), is a lower threshold than Coral’s 2.0, which means the punter is more likely to find a market they want to back at qualifying price, but is also a less meaningful qualifying bet. The trade-off is the usual one: a lower threshold makes the bonus easier to claim, and easier to claim is not the same as more valuable. The reader who values the ease of entry above the headline is the reader Spreadex’s terms are written for.

How a sign-up bonus clears: the wagering arithmetic the small print skips

A cash bonus with a wagering multiple is the cleanest worked example, because the arithmetic is the only thing standing between the bonus and the punter’s bankroll. The formula is straightforward. Take the bonus amount, multiply by the wagering multiple, and the answer is the required turnover. Divide the turnover by the average stake per bet, and the answer is the number of bets the punter has to place. Multiply the turnover by the bookmaker’s margin on the market being bet on, and the answer is the expected cost of clearing the bonus. The terms that govern each step are in the small print, and the small print is where the offer is made or lost.

Take a £20 cash bonus with a 5x wagering requirement at minimum odds of 2.0, with bets at a stake of £10 each. The required turnover is £20 × 5 = £100. The number of bets is £100 / £10 = 10. The market’s margin, on a typical 1X2 football price of about 5%, makes the expected cost of the £100 of qualifying bets about £5 (5% of £100). The punter places 10 bets of £10 at 2.0, the bonus clears, the £20 becomes cash, and the punter has paid £5 in margin to get it. The take-home on the bonus is £15.

The 10x cap, applied to a £20 bonus, raises the required turnover to a maximum of £200 and the expected cost to £10. A bonus of £50 with a 10x wagering requirement needs £500 of turnover and an expected cost of £25. A £100 bonus at the 10x cap needs £1,000 of turnover and an expected cost of £50. The relationship is linear, and the larger the bonus, the larger the cost of clearing it; the cost is a percentage of the turnover, and the turnover is a multiple of the bonus, so the expected cost as a percentage of the bonus is the wagering multiple times the market margin. A 5x bonus on a 5% market costs the punter 25% of the bonus in expected margin; a 10x bonus on a 5% market costs 50%; a 10x bonus on a 3% market (the tighter end of major football) costs 30%.

The Commission imposed the 10x cap in part to put a ceiling on that 50%. A book that wants to give a £100 cash bonus now has to charge the punter up to £50 of expected margin to clear it, and at that ratio the bonus becomes uncompetitive against a free bet whose stake is not returned. A free bet at 3.0 on a 5% market is worth about 63% of its face value in expected return, which is more than the take-home on a 10x cash bonus minus its clearing cost. The Commission did not ban the cash bonus; it changed the arithmetic so that the cash bonus is harder to give away generously, and the welcome offers in the table are the result. Most of them are free bets, not cash bonuses, and the free-bet stake is the price the operator has chosen to pay rather than the cash bonus the operator would once have offered.

The market’s own terms complicate the picture. Some operators exclude certain bet types from counting towards wagering: each-way bets may count as two bets, system bets may not count at all, cashed-out bets may not qualify. Some operators set a maximum stake on a qualifying bet, so a punter who places a £100 bet to clear a bonus faster than the small-stake route allows finds the bet does not count. Some operators set a maximum payout from a bonus, so even a winning streak does not pay out beyond the cap. A reader who runs the arithmetic above with the operator’s own exclusions in mind gets a different answer from a reader who runs it with the assumption that every bet counts, and the difference is usually in the operator’s favour.

The free bet that is not a free bet

A free bet whose stake is not paid back with a winning is the most common form in the table, and the one that catches readers out. The £40 free bet at Coral, the £30 in tokens at Sky Bet, the £40 in four £10 tokens at Betway, the £20 in free bets at BoyleSports, the £15 in three £5 tokens at BetGoodwin, the £10 in two £5 tokens at Bet Ahoy, the matched free bet of up to £25 at Betboro, the £60 in free bets at Spreadex are all of this form unless their own terms say otherwise. The free bet wins, the punter keeps the profit, the stake stays with the bookmaker. A £10 free bet at 3.0 pays £20 on a win, not £30, and the £10 difference is the cost of the “free” framing.

A free bet whose stake is paid back, sometimes called a “stake-returned” free bet, is rarer. The Commission’s promotion rules do not require either form, and operators choose. The punter who reads “free bet £40” as a £40 bankroll is reading the marketing; the punter who reads it as a £40 stake that does not come back is reading the contract. The two readings give the same headline and a different take-home, and the operator that prints “free bet” without specifying which form is using the ambiguity on purpose.

The arithmetic on a stake-not-returned free bet is the formula that turns a headline number into an expected value. A £10 free bet at odds of o on a market with payout share p is worth £10 × (o − 1) / o × p, where p is 1 minus the margin. At 3.0 and a 5% margin, the formula gives £10 × 2/3 × 0.95 = £6.33. At 5.0 and a 5% margin, the same free bet is worth £10 × 4/5 × 0.95 = £7.60. The free bet is more valuable at higher odds, which is the opposite of how a real-money bet behaves: a £10 stake at 5.0 is riskier than a £10 stake at 3.0, and a losing bet at 5.0 costs more in lost opportunity, but the free bet does not cost the punter the stake, so the higher the odds, the more profit the free bet stands to return if it wins. A punter who places a free bet at 1.50 is leaving expected value on the table, and a punter who places it at 10.0 is hunting a long shot with a stake the house is paying for.

Mixed-product offers: the rule that took a whole category of bonus off the table

The 19 January 2026 rules did not just cap wagering requirements. They also banned the mixed-product promotion, the kind of welcome offer that asked a punter to place a sports bet in return for free casino spins, or to play slots to qualify for a sports free bet. The category was common: a sports book would offer a casino incentive to bring casino players over to the sports side, and a casino would offer a sports incentive to bring sports players over to the casino side. Both sides of those offers relied on the same customer playing in two product verticals, and the Commission took the view that the cross-vertical marketing carried a higher risk of harm than single-product offers.

The change matters for the welcome offers in the table, none of which carries a casino component on the sports side. The bonus is a sports bonus, the qualifying bet is a sports bet, and the free bets are sports free bets. A reader who has a casino account with the same operator cannot, in many cases, claim the sports welcome if they have already claimed the casino welcome, and the cross-vertical stacking that was once common is now closed. The rule also matters for ongoing promotions: an Odds Booster that applies to a sports bet is allowed; an Odds Booster that requires a casino spin to unlock is not. The line is at the product boundary, and the licensed bookmakers in the table have moved their promotions inside the line.

The same rule leaves an open question on free bets with no wagering condition, and the answer is unsettled. A free bet that requires the punter to place the token, win or lose, on a single sports market and then withdraws the profit is not, on its face, a “wagering requirement” in the sense the cap reaches. The Commission’s published position on whether the 10x cap applies is the one part of the reform that the marketing pages have not yet caught up with, and a reader who is told by an operator that a particular free bet is “not subject to the cap” is reading the operator’s interpretation rather than a settled rule. The safer reading is that any welcome offer from a licensed operator has been built to fit inside the cap, and the unusual free bet that does not fit is the one a regulator would look at first.

What sits behind the sign-up: identity, age and the check before the first bet

A betting app with a sign-up bonus is, before it is anything else, a licensed relationship. The licensed relationship starts with identity. Since 7 May 2019 a Commission-licensed remote bookmaker has to verify a customer’s name, address and date of birth before they can deposit or place a bet, including with a free bet or bonus. The verification is run by the operator against a database of public records, and a customer whose details do not match is asked to upload proof. The verification is not optional, and an offer that required no verification would be an offer from an unlicensed brand.

The minimum age is 18, and a bookmaker that fails to check age faces regulatory action. The verification step is the mechanism: the customer’s date of birth is checked against the public record, and an under-18 customer does not get to the deposit page. A reader who is signing up on behalf of someone else, or who is borrowing a friend’s account, will be caught at the verification stage, and the account will be closed.

The financial vulnerability check, in force since 30 August 2024 and tightened in stages since, applies once a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals cross £150 in a rolling 30-day window. The check is a public-record check for things like bankruptcy orders, county court judgments and the insolvency register. It is not an income check and it is not a credit reference check, and a customer with a clean public record at that spending level is not asked to declare income. The Commission has signalled, in a published plan of 7 July 2026, that more thorough financial risk assessments will follow, and the start date has not been set; a reader who reads about “affordability checks” in the press is reading about an announcement rather than an active rule.

GAMSTOP, the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme, has been a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. A customer who signs up to GAMSTOP chooses a period of six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal, and is excluded from every Commission-licensed online operator for the duration. 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; betting shops use a separate service, the multi-operator self-exclusion scheme that runs in the high street. A punter who has self-excluded and then signs up to a licensed bookmaker will be blocked at the verification stage, and the bookmaker is required to report the attempt.

A financial vulnerability check and a self-exclusion check are the regulatory floor; the safer-gambling tools above the floor are the customer’s to set. The licensed bookmakers in the table all offer deposit limits, which the customer can set on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Many offer loss limits and wagering limits in addition, and the customer who wants them can set them. None of these limits is a state-set ceiling: the Commission has required operators to offer the tools and to make them easy to use, and the choice of how much to bet and how to limit it is the customer’s. A reader who treats the absence of a state-set cap as a sign the bookmaker is unregulated is reading the wrong rule, and a bookmaker that does not offer deposit limits is not a Commission-licensed bookmaker.

The safer-gambling help is the part of the licensed relationship that does not advertise itself. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline, and the call is free and confidential. GambleAware funds treatment and research. The NHS runs gambling clinics in several regions. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. A reader who is using a sign-up bonus as a way to chase losses is using the wrong tool, and the help is at the end of the phone, the search box or the GP’s surgery.

What “with a sign-up bonus” costs the reader beyond the wagering requirement

A sign-up offer is a contract, and the costs of the contract are not only the wagering multiple and the minimum odds. Three costs sit alongside the headline and are easier to miss.

The first is the qualifying bet. A punter who would not have placed a £20 bet at 2.0 is now placing one to claim £40 in free bets, and the bet has to win or lose on its own terms. The expected value of the qualifying bet is roughly the punter’s normal betting margin, which is negative for most punters and only barely positive for the sharpest. The bookmaker is not paying £40 for the punter to do nothing; the bookmaker is paying £40 for the punter to take a real betting position, and the position is part of the price. A punter who would have placed the bet anyway is paying nothing extra; a punter who would not have is paying the cost of a real bet for an expected £25 in free-bet value.

The second is the deposit method. Several welcome offers in the table require a debit card or instant bank transfer, and exclude deposits by Apple Pay, Revolut Pay, Google Pay, e-wallets and other methods. The deposit method is in the small print because the operator wants to verify the customer’s identity at the point of deposit, and a debit card or bank transfer is a cleaner signal than a wallet that could be funded from any source. The punter who usually deposits by Apple Pay and who wants to claim a Coral or Unibet bonus needs to switch methods, and the switch is a small friction that the bonus has to be worth.

The third is the payment of duty. The punter pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain, and that is a general rule, not advice to any individual reader; a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser. The operator pays General Betting Duty, currently 15% on gross profits, with a new remote rate of 25% from 1 April 2027 applying within the duty on remote bets (the rate on remote bets on UK horse racing, on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, on pool betting and on in-person betting stays at 15%). Whether operators pass duty on through odds is not settled and not the punter’s problem: the punter’s price is the punter’s price, and the duty sits behind the margin. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge, also on the operator, and the punter who reads about “the gambling tax” in the press is reading about an operator-side charge that does not reach the betting slip.

A reader who weighs the three costs against the headline and finds the cost higher than the bonus is making the right call. A sign-up offer is a marketing expense the operator is willing to pay to acquire a customer, and the marketing expense is the price of acquiring a customer who would otherwise have cost the operator the same in advertising. The free bet is the operator’s way of paying the punter for the data, the deposit and the betting history that a new account creates. The punter who treats the free bet as a windfall rather than a transaction is the punter the marketing is written for.

How the British reader can check a licence in three minutes

The Commission’s public register is at the Gambling Commission’s own site, and the search works by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The reader types the name of the brand, looks for the entry that matches the trading name and the domain, and checks three things: the licence status, the licence category, and the licence holder. A live licence says “Active” and shows an issue date and a status that has not been revoked. The licence category is the kind of betting the brand is licensed to do, and the categories are listed in the register entry. The licence holder is the legal entity behind the brand, and a brand whose licence holder is a company the reader has not heard of is not, on that basis alone, unlicensed; it is just owned by a company the reader has not heard of.

A reader who cannot find a brand on the register has two options. The first is to try a different search term, because trading names and registered names do not always match. The second is to assume the brand is not licensed for the purposes of this page and to bet elsewhere. A brand that is licensed will appear in the register; a brand that is not licensed will not, and the absence is the answer. The register is the test, and there is no shortcut.

The ten brands in the table above are all in the register, and the licence numbers and licence holders in the table are exactly as the register shows them. A reader who wants to verify can paste the licence number into the register’s search and find the entry; a reader who wants to see the brand’s own claims can visit the operator’s site and read the small print and the safer-gambling page. The two sources are the same market, and the operator’s site has the marketing; the register has the licence.

The wider market: what this guide does not cover

Twenty or thirty other Commission-licensed bookmakers sit outside the table, and most of them run a welcome offer of some kind. Ladbrokes and Paddy Power, both on the register, both under different licence holders, run their own welcome terms. bet365 runs its own. William Hill, on the register under a different account number, runs the Football Acca Boost that runs until 30 May 2027 with a maximum boost of £10,000 per online bet, and a separate welcome offer. Smarkets runs the SBK sportsbook, with a £20 first deposit, a £20 bet at minimum odds of 3.0 for £60 in free bets within 48 hours. QuinnBet, Kwiff, Star Sports, DAZN Bet, BetVictor and a dozen other licensed brands each run their own. The reason none of them is in the table is the spec, not the licence: the table compares ten brands, and ten is the limit.

A reader who wants a wider sample should look at the Commission’s register and pick a brand by the criteria that matter to them. The most common alternative criteria are the depth of the in-play offer, the breadth of the sports book, the payment methods accepted, the speed of withdrawal, the design of the app and the quality of the customer service. The sign-up offer is a one-time benefit and the betting experience is ongoing, and the long-term value of a bookmaker is in the experience rather than the welcome. A reader who treats the welcome as the only criterion will end up moving bookmakers every few months, and the cost of moving is the loss of any ongoing promotions the previous bookmaker was running.

The market also includes licensed brands that are not, on their face, sports bookmakers. Sky Betting and Gaming runs Sky Bet, Sky Casino, Sky Vegas and Sky Bingo under one licence holder; the same customer cannot claim the sports welcome and the casino welcome on the same account. The mixed-product promotion ban that took effect on 19 January 2026 shuts the door on the cross-vertical stack that once was the point of those multi-product accounts. A reader who wants both a sports bonus and a casino bonus now has to pick, and the pick is the more interesting because the Commission’s rule has made the cross-sell harder for the operator to offer.

The shortlist, one operator at a time

The next ten sections work through the brands in the table. Each section sets out what the operator’s own terms say about the sign-up offer and what sets the brand apart in the comparison. The verdicts are the editor’s, not the marketing’s, and the angle is the same as the rest of the page: what the offer actually costs the punter.

Betway: four tokens, one clock each

Betway’s welcome is £40 in free bet tokens, issued as four tokens of £10 each on settlement of a first bet of at least £10 at minimum odds of 2.0. The seven-day expiry applies per token rather than to the bundle, so a punter who uses the first token on day one has six days to use the second, and so on. The deposit method is restricted to debit cards, and the bonus is for new UK and Ireland customers only.

The four-token structure is the most interesting term. A single £40 free bet, if Betway issued one, would let the punter place the whole bonus on a single event at high odds, where the expected value is highest; four £10 tokens force the punter to find four events, and the chances of one of them being at less than optimal odds go up. The brand is betting that the punter will not optimise across four tokens, and in most cases the bet is right. The punter who wants the highest expected value treats each token as a separate free bet and looks for the highest-odds qualifying market they can find in the seven-day window. The verdict: a standard welcome for a Commission-licensed bookmaker, and the punter who optimises across tokens gets more from it than the punter who takes the first market that comes along.

Fitzdares: the welcome is in the app

Fitzdares’ App Store page does not list a headline sports welcome, and the operator’s own page sets the offer inside the app. The Commission’s register shows Fitzdares Limited as the licence holder under account 400, one of the older account numbers on the register, and the licence has been active continuously. The brand is a smaller-scale bookmaker with a high-end positioning, and the welcome offer, whatever it is, is part of the in-app journey rather than the landing page.

A reader who values the licence more than the headline will find Fitzdares a familiar name; a reader who values the headline will not. The Apple Pay, Mastercard and Visa deposit methods are listed, and the withdrawal times are short (same-day on Visa, up to 48 hours on Mastercard). Fitzdares is a choice for the specialist who already knows the app and wants to use the bonus as a secondary perk. If the headline number is the only priority, the register offers more prominent welcome bonuses elsewhere.

Copybet: ongoing value over a headline

Copybet’s welcome offer is not listed on the App Store page, and the brand’s ongoing promotion is the Acca Booster, which pays up to a 100% cash bonus on accas of three or more selections, and the Daily Profit Boost of up to 15%. The licence is held by Copybet UK Limited under account 53774, and the brand is on the Commission’s register.

The Acca Booster is a different mechanic from a free bet. A 100% cash bonus on a winning accumulator pays the punter the winnings plus an equal amount as cash, and the cash is cash rather than a free bet. The Daily Profit Boost is a price boost on selected markets, and a punter who uses both over a month of betting is getting more ongoing value than a one-time welcome. Ongoing value like the Acca Booster and the Daily Profit Boost can outweigh a one-time welcome bonus. For the accumulator enthusiast, this is a better fit; for the punter searching for a single large free-bet headline, the offer might seem less direct.

BetGoodwin: a £15 welcome split into three

BetGoodwin’s “Bet £10, Get £15 in Free Bets” is a £5 sports bet, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet. The qualifying bet is £10 at the operator’s minimum odds, and the three tokens have to be used in the way the operator has allocated them. The licence is held by Goodwin Racing Limited under account 2927.

The Sub-Cover bet is the unusual term. Sub-Cover is a contingency bet that pays out only if a named player is substituted during a match and the substitution affects the bet’s outcome; the bet is a niche product and the punter who has not used one before will need to read the operator’s own page. The £5 is a small amount to risk on a niche market, and the niche is the cost of the headline. The £15 welcome is a mix of standard markets and the more niche Sub-Cover bet. It is an interesting split for the racing punter, but the structure might feel needlessly complicated for someone who just wants a straightforward free bet.

DragonBet: price boosts and a best-price promise

DragonBet’s App Store page does not list a headline sports welcome, and the brand’s positioning is on price boosts across horse racing, football and rugby, plus a best-price promise. The licence is held by DragonBet Ltd under account 64908, and the brand is a smaller-scale bookmaker with a racing focus.

The best-price promise is the most interesting term. A bookmaker that promises to match or beat prices seen on other apps or websites is making a commitment that is easy to advertise and hard to police in practice, and the punter who has tried to claim a best-price promise at a competitor knows the small print is the test. The best-price promise is the selling point here. If price boosts and matching competitors are the main goals, this is a good spot. For the punter who prioritises a simple, high-value free bet, the headline terms here are less competitive.

NetBet: Bet Builder and ongoing boosts

NetBet’s App Store page does not list a headline sports welcome, and the brand’s ongoing offer is Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts, free bet offers, a Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds, and sports stats for major leagues. The licence is held by Netbet Enterprises Limited under account 39170, and the brand is a longer-established name in the European market.

The Bet Builder is the centrepiece. A Bet Builder combines markets from one event into a single bet, and the odds update dynamically as the punter adds selections. The punter who uses Bet Builders regularly is the punter NetBet’s offer is built for, and the welcome offer, whatever it is, is the entry point to a deeper product. The Bet Builder is the primary appeal. This brand works best for the punter who wants to use dynamic stats and tools. If a simple one-off welcome bonus is the only goal, there are more direct paths available.

Bet Ahoy: a small welcome for a small operator

Bet Ahoy’s “Bet £10, Get £10 in Free Bets” is a £5 sports bet and a £5 acca, with the same structure as BetGoodwin at a smaller headline. The licence is held by Bet Ahoy Ltd under account 100094, a newer account number on the register, and the brand is a smaller-scale bookmaker.

The £10 headline is a small offer, and the two-token structure is the same friction as the larger ones. A punter who is choosing between Bet Ahoy and BetGoodwin on the welcome alone is choosing between a £10 headline with two tokens and a £15 headline with three, and the £5 Sub-Cover token at BetGoodwin is worth more to the racing punter than the £5 acca token at Bet Ahoy is to the football punter. The split between a sports bet and an acca token is the core of this offer. It serves as a decent entry point, but anyone focused purely on the largest headline bonus will likely be looking at larger packages at other sites.

Geoff Banks: a small bookmaker with a long name

Geoff Banks’ app is published by GB Sports Advisors Limited, which holds the licence under account 54095, and the app offers live in-play prices and ante-post prices on future events. The welcome offer is not listed on the App Store page, and the brand’s positioning is on the depth of the prices rather than the welcome.

A bookmaker that focuses on ante-post prices is a bookmaker for the punter who bets on futures rather than this weekend’s matches. The market is smaller and the prices are tighter, and the punter who is in the right segment will find the depth valuable. The verdict: a brand for the futures punter who values ante-post depth; the punter who wants a welcome offer will find a more conventional one elsewhere.

Matchbook: an exchange, not a bookmaker

Matchbook is a betting exchange, and its new-customer offer is 110 days of commission-free betting from registration for customers who deposit. The licence is held by Triplebet Limited under account 39504, and the brand is licensed both as a remote general betting standard operator and as a remote betting intermediary. Commission-free betting on an exchange is not a free bet; it is a discount on the charge the exchange takes from winnings, and the punter pays for it by betting against other punters rather than against a bookmaker.

The 110-day offer is the longest commission-free period on a UK-licensed exchange, and the punter who is willing to learn how an exchange works gets a meaningful discount. A punter who treats the offer as a free bet on a sports book is using the wrong product: an exchange sets its own prices, the punter backs or lays at the prices the market clears at, and the only “free” part is the commission. The verdict: a brand for the punter who is happy to bet on an exchange and who values the commission-free period; the punter looking for a free bet on a sports book is in the wrong product type.

Betboro: a matched free bet with a multi-leg requirement

Betboro’s welcome is a 100% matched free bet of up to £25 on the first qualifying wager, requiring a debit card deposit of at least £10 and a first bet of £5 to £25 with at least three selections each at 3/5 (1.60) or higher. The licence is held by Webmedia Development N.V. under account 44181, and the brand is a longer-established European bookmaker.

The three-selection requirement is the unusual term. A matched free bet that needs a treble at 3/5 to qualify is closer to an accumulator welcome than a single-bet welcome, and the punter who prefers singles is forced into an accumulator. The risk profile of the qualifying bet is higher than a single at the same odds, and the expected value calculation has to account for the higher variance. The verdict: a brand for the accumulator punter who wants a matched free bet; the punter who bets singles will find the structure awkward.

Where the free-bet value lands in 2026

The arithmetic in this guide confirms that a typical sign-up free bet of £20 to £40 in tokens, with a 7-day expiry and minimum odds of 1.50 to 2.0, is worth between 50% and 65% of its headline in expected return, depending on the odds the punter chooses and the margin of the market. The headline is marketing; the expected return is the contract. A reader who treats the two as the same is missing the point.

The 10x cap, applied to a £20 cash bonus, allows a maximum turnover of £200 and an expected cost of £10 at a 5% market margin. The take-home on a £20 bonus cleared at the cap is £10, half the headline. The 10x cap is a ceiling, not a target, and most licensed cash bonuses in 2026 sit at lower multiples; a 5x bonus on a 5% market costs the punter 25% of the bonus in expected margin, and a 5x bonus on a 3% market costs 15%. The free bet, with no wagering requirement, costs the punter nothing to clear, and the value of the free bet is the value of the bet the punter places with it. The licensed market has moved towards free bets in part because the cap has made cash bonuses expensive to offer, and the welcome offers in the table are the result.

The conclusion the formula produces is also the only conclusion the page will claim. The free bet is worth what the formula gives, on the assumption the punter chooses the highest-odds market they can find within the minimum-odds rule, and the cash bonus costs what the cap allows. A higher expected return is possible if the punter finds a higher-odds market or a lower-margin book; a lower expected return is likely if the punter uses the free bet at low odds or in a high-margin market. The formula is an average across many bets and many punters, and the page does not promise any single punter a particular outcome. The page promises that the reader who runs the arithmetic with the operator’s own terms and the market’s own margin gets a number that is the right shape for the decision.

Frequently asked questions about betting apps with sign-up bonuses in the UK

How do I sign up with a UK betting app?

Pick a brand from the Commission’s public register and download its app from the official store. Enter your name, address and date of birth; the operator will verify these against public records before you can deposit. Choose a payment method — most welcome offers require a debit card or instant bank transfer, not an e-wallet — deposit the qualifying amount, place the qualifying bet at the minimum odds shown in the offer’s small print, and wait for the bonus to credit. Verification is not optional under the Commission’s rules.

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

The Commission’s promotion rules, in force since 19 January 2026, cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x the bonus amount. A £20 cash bonus at 10x needs £200 of qualifying bets at the minimum odds before the bonus can be withdrawn as cash. Free bets with no wagering condition are not covered by the cap, and the Commission’s position on whether they fall inside it is not settled. Mixed-product offers, which require play across betting and casino for example, are banned outright.

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

A minimum odds threshold is the lowest price at which a bet counts as a qualifying bet; a £10 single at 1.20 does not count towards a Coral bonus that requires minimum odds of 2.0. A wagering requirement is the multiple of the bonus that has to be turned into qualifying bets before the bonus becomes cash. A £20 cash bonus with a 5x wagering requirement needs £100 of qualifying bets. Bets below the minimum odds do not count, and the clock on the wagering requirement usually starts when the bonus is credited.

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

A free bet whose stake is not paid back is the standard form in the UK market, and a £10 free bet at 3.0 returns £20 on a win (£10 × 2.0, profit only). The operator chooses whether the stake is returned; the Commission’s rules do not require either form. A free bet whose stake is returned would pay £30 on the same bet. The “free” in free bet refers to the stake not being the punter’s cash, not to the stake being refunded on a win. The expected value of a stake-not-returned free bet at 3.0 on a 5% margin market is about 63% of the headline, not 100%.

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

No. The Commission’s promotion rules, in force since 19 January 2026, ban mixed-product promotions that require gambling on two or more product types, for example betting and casino, betting and bingo, or betting and lottery. A sports welcome offer at a licensed bookmaker can offer sports free bets, sports odds boosts or sports acca insurance, but it cannot offer casino spins, bingo tickets or lottery entries as part of the same package. The rule applies to operators licensed by the Commission, and an unlicensed brand is not bound by it.

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

Use the Commission’s public register, which is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. Look for the entry that matches the brand’s trading name and the brand’s domain, and check three things: the licence status (active, not suspended or revoked), the licence category (remote general betting standard for sports, remote betting intermediary for an exchange), and the licence holder (the legal entity behind the brand). The register is updated as licences change, and a brand that does not appear in the register is unlicensed for the purposes of this page.

Content created by the «Cricket betting» team