Free sports bets without a deposit: what they cost and what they pay

Updated October 2026

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A £10 free bet on a football treble sounds like free money until three conditions stack against it: a minimum price, an expiry clock, and the small print that says the stake of the free bet is not paid back when the wager wins. The wagering requirement on any bonus in Great Britain is now capped at ten times its value under rules in force since 19 January 2026, and any promotion that asks a customer to mix betting with casino, bingo or lottery play has been pulled from the menu entirely. The free bet remains, and so do its costs. This page reads them line by line, across ten licensed UK bookmakers, with a worked example of how much a free bet at even-money decimal odds is worth on average and why the headline never tells the whole story.

Current as of 30 October 2026. Cross-checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each operator’s own terms page on the date of access.

What “no deposit” actually means in a free bet

The phrase covers two distinct mechanics, and the difference matters once the wager settles.

A free bet is a credit the operator adds to the account. The bettor uses it like real cash at the betting slip, but the original stake is not returned with winning proceeds. A £10 free bet at 3.00 returns £30 — £20 of profit on top of the £10 stake that simply disappears. That £20 is the whole ceiling.

A no deposit offer is a free bet credited without the customer funding the account first. It is rare in Great Britain, where every licensed operator has to verify name, address and date of birth before any funds — including promotional credits — can be used to bet. The bonus landing on a fresh, unverified account is what made the old “no deposit” promises attractive. The Commission’s verification rules since 7 May 2019 mean the road to that bonus now runs through the same identity checks as a paid deposit, plus an opt-in to the offer’s terms, plus a payment method registered for the eventual withdrawal.

The two phrases collapse into one in marketing copy. They should not collapse in the reader’s head: a free bet with a deposit condition and a free bet with none may share the £10 credit but differ on whether the bankroll has to be loaded first.

What every offer costs before the slip is filled

Three numbers from the offer’s terms decide whether the credit is worth claiming. None of them is the headline figure.

Expiry. Free bets at British sportsbooks expire fast. Sky Bet’s terms give thirty days; Coral’s are tighter at seven; Hollywoodbets’ qualifying window for the stake-back free bet is also seven days. A credit that lapses is a credit lost, and reading the date the wager credits is the easiest money a bettor saves.

Minimum odds. Most welcome offers block the credit on bets at less than the operator’s stated price. Coral’s free bets follow a first settled bet at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1); Betway’s free bets carry 1x wagering at odds of 1.75 or higher; Hollywoodbets’ stake-back credit requires an accumulator of three or more legs at combined odds of 4/1 or greater. The price floor exists because short odds mean a near-certain outcome, and “near-certain” leaves no room for the marketing message that a punt produces a thrill.

Stake not returned. The clearest cost on the page, and the one most often skipped. Sky Bet spells it out in plain English. A winning free bet at 4.00 pays the operator’s terms as £30 profit, not £40. The credit itself vanishes into the settlement screen.

A bettor reading an offer should treat the headline figure as a gross amount, the stake-not-returned rule as the haircut, and the minimum price and the deadline as the conditions that decide whether the haircut actually applies.

How the wagering cap reshapes what an operator can offer

Since 19 January 2026 the Gambling Commission’s promotion rules have set a hard ceiling on bonus wagering. A bonus of £10 may not require more than £100 of qualifying bets to clear. The £500 of wagering the old “50x bonus” terms demanded is no longer licensable in Great Britain.

The cap applies to bonuses and to bonus-like credit. Whether the new rule also catches a free bet that carries no wagering requirement is not settled in the public guidance: the Commission describes the cap in terms of “wagering requirements”, and a free bet that simply expires if unused has none on paper. Several of the welcome offers on this page — Dabb­le’s “Bet £10, Get £10 in Free Bets”, BetUK’s four £10 credits on a £10 deposit — sit in this grey zone, and each operator presents its own reading in its own terms.

Mixed-product promotions are banned outright. Any offer that asks a customer to bet on a sport to qualify for free casino spins, or to play roulette to release a sports free bet, is now off the menu. BetTom’s structure is instructive: it still uses two paired 50%-back credits, one for the sportsbook and one for the casino, on the same qualifying deposit. Each credit is a self-contained promotion rather than a cross-product gate, and the careful separation is the kind of legal drafting the rule change forced.

Free bet value at even money: a worked example

The worth of a free bet whose stake is not returned depends on three numbers: the decimal price on the betting slip, the payout share of the market, and the size of the credit.

Take a £10 free bet at decimal odds of 1.90 on either side of a two-way market (a tennis match, a darts fixture, a method-of-first-goal binary). At a fair book with a 5% margin on each side — a typical margin for major sports at British bookmakers — the market pays back about 95p on every pound wagered. Expected value of the credit: £10 multiplied by (1.90 minus 1) divided by 1.90, then scaled by the 0.95 payout share. That gives roughly £4.50 of expected worth from a £10 credit, before any account-level conditions.

Pile on a minimum-odds condition of 1.75 and an expiry of seven days, and the credit is worth less on average — the bettor has fewer qualifying events to choose from, and rushed selections on the last day tend to drift to shorter prices than the writer of the offer intended. Pile on a free bet whose stake is returned (a rare structure) and the expected value climbs toward the simple “stake by odds” calculation, losing nothing on settlement.

The honest statement is a band rather than a single number. A £10 free bet at even-money decimal odds on a normal market returns somewhere in the region of £4 to £5 of expected worth after the haircut, with conditions outside the slip — minimum price, expiry, the market’s own margin — moving the figure in either direction. That band, not the £10 headline, is what the offer is worth.

How deposits interact with “no minimum” and £5 floors

The cluster of “no minimum deposit” search terms is about how low the cash loader can go, and the picture is uneven. Sky Bet’s minimum deposit is £5 across payment methods, with the operator reserving the right to lift it. Pay by Bank at Sky Bet is published as carrying no minimum at all — entering less than £5 produces an error on the other rails while Open Banking sails through. Betway’s minimum is £10. Hollywoodbets and BetUK require a £10 deposit from a debit card to unlock their welcome credits. The path from “no minimum” to “no offer” is short.

Three rules shape the cash loader regardless of brand. Credit cards have been banned as a deposit method at all British-licensed operators since 14 April 2020; an e-wallet funded from a credit card is caught by the same prohibition. Identity verification sits upstream of every first deposit, so the £5 or £10 that opens the account has been preceded by a name, address and date-of-birth check that older “anonymous play” accounts never saw. A bank-based limit on linked cards exists: Sky Bet allows three linked debit cards per account, a cap that does not apply to Apple Pay.

The practical shape is this. A bettor can open a UK-licensed account with a £5 debit-card deposit on a Sky Bet-style brand, claim no welcome credit worth pursuing, and either move up to a £10 deposit for Dabb­le, BetUK or Betway or take the £5 floor and skip the bonus. The “no minimum” rail is real, the “free bet no deposit” headline is not.

Reading the cashier before depositing

The cashier page is where the offer meets the limits. Four details decide whether the bonus is reachable.

Eligible payment methods. Sky Bet accepts debit cards, Apple Pay, Pay by Bank and Revolut Pay in pounds sterling. LiveScore Bet publishes the same quartet plus PayPal. Betway does not enumerate its rails on the App Store listing but ties its terms to the £10 minimum and the 1.75 floor. Where an offer excludes a payment method (Skrill and Neteller are commonly excluded from welcome bonuses) the cashier throws an error before the bonus credits, not after.

Withdrawal rails. A free bet cannot be withdrawn as cash until its wagering is complete and the resulting real-money balance has been turned over. A request to withdraw before clearing the bonus tends to void the credit. The order in which the operator reads a withdrawal request against an open bonus is its own drafting, and varies.

Time on the cashier page. The card details the credit card ban catches are entered first; the e-wallet funding that ban also catches is selected second; the bank-based rail that bypasses the ban is selected last. In that order, the cashier decides which of the bettor’s rails is willing to load the smallest amount.

Fees and limits. No British-licensed bookmaker charges a deposit fee on a debit-card or bank transfer of normal size. Withdrawal fees and processing times are operator-specific; a payout-speed test is its own comparison, not a deposit test, and is not part of this page.

The ten featured UK bookmakers

The ten brands below hold an active Gambling Commission remote betting licence and operate a GB-facing sportsbook. Several are reviewed as one operator group where one licence holder runs more than one brand; each brand entry below lists the licence as the operator’s own terms and the Commission’s public register state it.

Betfred

Betfred has sat on the high street since the 1960s and on the Commission’s register under Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited since the online era began. Its sportsbook runs the full British catalogue — horse racing, football, greyhounds, US sports, golf — with a Bet Builder on football coupons and an acca-boost ladder that grows the percentage bonus as more legs are added to the bet. The welcome offer is conservative: free bets and a handful of free spins subject to terms, with safer-gambling information and GambleAware support contacts carried on the app and the cashier. Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited holds remote general betting licence 039544-R-319290-010 for Betfred. Worth it for the bettor who treats the brand as their main book and values the full British catalogue over a glitzy welcome.

LiveScore Bet

LiveScore Bet operates on the rails of the LiveScore live-results app: in-play markets that pop the moment a fixture moves, plus a sportsbook that leans into football, tennis, basketball and US sports. Cashier accepts Visa and Mastercard, Apple Pay, PayPal, Open Banking and Revolut Pay — five rails, none surcharged, none disqualified from promotions by default. The welcome offer is structured around a small stake to release a larger free-bet bundle, with the usual minimum-odds, expiry and stake-not-returned baggage. LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited holds remote general betting licence 056859-R-332720-005 (Commission account 56859). A strong choice for the in-play specialist who already uses the live-results data and wants a sportsbook that keeps pace.

10bet

10bet runs a £50 headline on its sports welcome offer — 100% up to £50 for UK sign-ups, plus a rotating ticker of daily free bets and free spins on the casino side. Blue Star Planet Limited, the licence holder, runs the sportsbook under remote general betting licence 043173-R-322899-023. The free-bet bundle is at home on accas and singles alike, with minimum-odds and 7-day expiry conditions carried in the small print. Daily price boosts and free-bet drops are the cadence. The mix of an aggressive welcome and a strong in-play product makes 10bet a useful book for the bettor who likes to dip in and out on big fixtures rather than live in one app.

BetUK

BetUK runs four £10 free bets — two football accumulators of four or more selections, two multiples of two or more — unlocked by a £10 deposit and a single sports bet within seven days of registering. The structure favours the bettor who already bets multiples: each credit is shaped to a specific acca, and the four-credit split matches four bets, not one. LeoVegas Gaming PLC holds remote general betting licence 039198-R-319450-029 (Commission account 39198) for BetUK. The pre-match football coupon is detailed, with player markets and a Bet Builder on most English and continental leagues. Worth it for a multiples-only bettor who wants four small credits rather than one £40 one.

Fitzwilliam Sports

Fitzwilliam Sports is the outlier. A Dublin bookmaker with capped membership, the welcome offer is presented as a “High Stakes Welcome” subject to compliance criteria — meaning the size of the credit scales with the size of the opening deposit, and the credit is not a flat £10. SBKI Limited holds remote general betting licence 048760-R-335434-009 (Commission account 48760) for Fitzwilliam Sports. The sportsbook is thinner than the High Street names, with the depth on horse racing and Irish football that a Dublin shop would carry. The high-end profile means this brand is aimed squarely at the serious punter, rather than the small-stakes player chasing a standard tenner.

BetTom

BetTom’s welcome splits a single offer into two 50%-back credits, one for the sportsbook and one for the casino. A 50% back as a free bet of up to £50 sits next to a matching 50% back up to £50 as free slot funds. The careful drafting keeps each credit inside its own product — exactly the kind of structure the new ban on mixed-product promotions forces. Bet Tom Limited holds remote general betting licence 064959-R-339314-003 (Commission account 64959). The sportsbook is conventional — football, horse racing, tennis, golf — with the usual welcome-credit conditions on the way. Worth it for a bettor who plays both products and wants the credit spread fairly across them, less so for a sports-only customer.

Star Sports

Star Sports runs the most British of the welcome offers: Bet Boosts, Daily Specials and Weekend Enhanced Boosts, plus in-play betting on football, horse racing, golf and US sports. Star Racing Limited holds remote general betting licence 009177-R-104555-019 (Commission account 9177). The welcome bonus is not a £10 credit; it is a daily cadence of price boosts on selected markets, with the longer-term brand identity tied to the on-course operation. Worth it for a bettor whose betting life is horse racing and the Saturday coupon — and who will use a price-boost daily rather than waiting on a single welcome credit.

Hollywoodbets

Hollywoodbets’ sports welcome offer is a stake-back free bet: deposit £10 by card, place an accumulator of three or more legs at combined odds of 4/1 or greater, and if the first qualifying bet loses, get the stake back as a free bet up to £30. The cap is one free bet per customer, and the bettor has seven days from the first settled bet to land it. Hollywoodbets International UK Limited holds remote general betting licence 053028-R-330019-013 (Commission account 53028). The South African parent is reflected in a deeper US-sports and horse-racing offering than the British-only names; the welcome offer suits a bettor who already plans an acca on day one. Worth it for the bettor whose first bet would have been a treble anyway.

Fafabet

Fafabet is the only name on this list that pays Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing win and each-way bets from 9am on race days — the bigger of the original price and the starting price is settled. Taichi Tech Limited, the licence holder, runs the rest of the sportsbook at standard British depth. Remote general betting licence 057385-R-333191-006 (Commission account 57385) is on the Commission’s register. The welcome offer is a small matched free bet with the standard minimum-odds and expiry conditions. Worth it for a horse-racing bettor who settles win and each-way bets at SP and is leaving money on the table without BOG elsewhere.

London Bet

London Bet is a sportsbook and casino in one, branded around the capital, with a 17+ App Store age rating. Thistle Bet Limited holds remote general betting licence 066162-R-340278-004 (Commission account 66162). The sportsbook covers football, horse racing, tennis and greyhounds with standard promotions, and the cashier accepts the usual debit-card and e-wallet rails. The welcome offer is a sportsbook credit with the standard minimum-odds and expiry conditions. Worth it for a London-area bettor who wants a familiar-sounding brand on their home screen, less so for a brand-loyal bettor shopping for the largest headline figure.

How the ten brands stack up

The licence column carries the four-digit Commission account number; the full eight-digit remote licence reference is recorded on the Commission’s public register. The “what the operator states” column is a paraphrase of the operator’s own terms, not a recommendation: minimum-odds, expiry and stake-not-returned conditions apply to every welcome credit on the table unless the terms say otherwise.

What the licence does and does not guarantee

A Gambling Commission remote licence is the entry ticket. Without it, an operator offering online betting to a customer in Great Britain is committing an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005. With it, the operator signs up to a code of practice that no offshore brand has to follow.

The Commission’s checks fall into three groups. Identity — name, address and date of birth are verified before the first deposit or bet, including on free-bet credit, so anonymous play is gone from the licensed market. Affordability — operators run a financial vulnerability check at a £150 rolling-30-day deposit-minus-withdrawals threshold (in force since 28 February 2025), look at public-record indicators rather than payslips, and have announced a broader financial-risk-assessment regime in a staged plan with no public start date. Self-exclusion — GAMSTOP has been a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020, with exclusion periods from six months to five years plus auto-renewal, and a seven-year tail after the minimum period that lifts only on the customer’s written request.

The bonus cap sits beside those obligations. Wagering requirements above 10x are not licensable; mixed-product promotions are out. A 50x turnover on a £10 casino bonus is no longer a thing; a sports-casino cross-sell has not been licensable since 19 January 2026.

What the licence does not do is act as a quality mark. Two licensed operators can run very different welcome offers, very different sportsbooks and very different customer-service operations. The register is the floor, not the ceiling.

Where UK-licensed brands differ from offshore alternatives

An offshore brand with a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence can accept a UK customer and pay out in pounds. The point of a GB licence is the package attached to it: GAMSTOP coverage, the bonus cap, the affordability checks, the operator’s duty under the LCCP, the Commission’s complaints route and ADR if funds are withheld. A bettor whose account has been closed by an offshore brand without explanation has fewer routes back than the same bettor at a licensed bookmaker.

The other side of that coin is the rigour of the licensed cashier. The same identity verification that makes GAMSTOP effective also means a £5 deposit runs through a name-and-address check. A £150 monthly deposit triggers a vulnerability check that an offshore brand would never run. The licensed experience is slower; the unlicensed experience is wider; neither is “the safe choice” by default and a bettor choosing between them is choosing which trade-off they prefer.

Enforcement against unlicensed operators is disruption, not blocking: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with payment providers and registrars. Court-order DNS blocking powers have been given to or are about to be given to the Commission, but no ISP-wide block has been put in operation. The honest framing is that licensed operators sit inside the Commission’s regulatory perimeter and unlicensed ones do not, with all that implies for protection.

The advertising rule that lives in the small print

Since 19 January 2026 the bonus and wagering rules sit beside advertising rules the Commission has not rewritten. The CAP Code section 16 sets the tone: marketing must be socially responsible, must not be of strong appeal to under-18s, and no one who is or seems to be under 25 may feature in a gambling advertisement (with an exception for ads placed inside the wagering medium itself).

A second rule lives outside the Commission’s licence conditions: since 1 August 2019, no betting ad is broadcast on UK television from five minutes before a live sporting event to five minutes after it, and not before the 9pm watershed, with horse and greyhound racing excluded. The Premier League’s voluntary withdrawal of front-of-shirt gambling sponsorship from the 2026/27 season is a club-level decision, not law.

For an offer-comparison reader the practical upshot is that the marketing on any licensed operator has been cut to suit an audience not below 25 and a promotion suite that respects the bonus cap. The “risk-free”, “free”, “guaranteed” and “best odds” slogans are still legal where the underlying offer supports them; the wagering cap is the line that says what an offer’s small print has to look like.

Tax: a quick note for the bettor

The bettor in Great Britain pays no tax on betting winnings. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax and is currently 15% on gross profits for most bets; from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within General Betting Duty, while in-person bets and pool bets stay at 15%. Spread betting has its own rates — 3% for financial spread bets, 10% for others — and a financial spread betting account is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission. No part of this is a charge to the customer.

The Commission’s statutory levy sits separately and is an operator charge, not a tax. None of this changes the calculation on a free bet at the betting slip; it changes the operator’s margin and may show up in slightly shorter prices on remote channels from April 2027.

Safer gambling: what each licence obliges the operator to do

Every UK-licensed remote betting brand has signed up to the same LCCP conditions. Three of them do the work the bettor notices.

Deposit limits. Operators must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame — daily, weekly or monthly — chosen by the customer and editable only after a 24-hour cooling-off period. The deposit limit is the only limit the operator can put on a customer before affordability or vulnerability checks escalate; the Commission’s own phased changes to that mechanism are on a published timeline (the first changes since 31 October 2025, a postponed second phase to 30 September 2026), and whether the second phase is live is unsettled in the public record.

Affordability checks. The £150 rolling-30-day threshold for a financial vulnerability check is a single trigger: a public-record check, not a payslip request. Above that level, the operator’s safer-gambling team takes a closer look at the account. The announced financial-risk-assessment regime (a Commission article of 7 July 2026) will widen the trigger and the depth of the check, but with no published start date.

Self-exclusion. GAMSTOP is mandatory at every online operator listed here, with periods of six months, one year, five years and five years plus auto-renewal. After the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for seven more years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it.

Betting shops use a separate in-shop self-exclusion service and a separate multi-operator scheme. A bettor using a self-excluded online account is not using a self-excluded shop, and vice versa.

Where to get help

GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, open every day, free from any UK landline or mobile. GambleAware publishes information and funds treatment; the NHS runs regional clinics for problem gambling; Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings in person and online. None of these is a betting product, none is operated by a bookmaker, and none charges for the conversation.

The Commission’s safer-gambling pages carry the same support links and a register of approved alternative-dispute-resolution providers for unresolved complaints. A bettor at a licensed brand has the Commission as a backstop; a bettor at an unlicensed brand does not.

What a £10 free bet is really worth at even money

A worked example ties the calculation to the offer.

Take a £10 free bet — the size of a Sky Bet single, a Dabb­le single or one of the four BetUK credits — at decimal odds of 1.90 on either side of a two-way market with a 5% margin on each side. The market’s payout share is approximately 95% after the two prices of 1.90/1.90 are combined. The expected value of the credit, with the stake not returned, is:

£10 × (1.90 − 1) ÷ 1.90 × 0.95 = £4.50

That is the average worth of the credit at the slip, before any condition is applied. A minimum-odds condition of 1.75 — the Betway floor — does not affect a 1.90 selection; a condition of 1.50 would force the bettor to a shorter price and lower the figure. A seven-day expiry forces the bettor to use the credit in a smaller window and may push the average downward through rushed short-odds selections near the deadline. A payout-cap on the credit (Hollywoodbets caps the stake-back at £30 of the original stake) lowers the bettor’s ceiling but does not change the expected value conditional on the slip.

Realistically, a £10 free bet at even-money decimal odds on a normal two-way market is worth somewhere in the region of £4 to £5 of expected value after the stake-not-returned haircut, with conditions on the slip sliding that figure in either direction. A reader who treats a £10 headline as £10 of cash is the reader the offer is written for.

Why the headline number almost always overstates the offer

Three reasons the £10 headline overstates the offer.

The stake disappears. A free bet at 2.00 pays £10 profit on the £10 credit, not £20. The £10 stays on the operator’s side.

The minimum-odds and expiry conditions move the calculation. A 1.75 floor and a seven-day window together push the bettor toward a smaller selection set than the headline figure assumed.

The market margin eats into the win. A 5% margin at 1.90/1.90 means the bettor’s fair expected value is £0.95 on the pound. The arithmetic above applies that haircut.

The £10 headline is a marketing number. The £4.50 expected value is the betting number.

The cost of “free” when the bonus has terms

A bonus with 10x wagering requires £100 of qualifying bets to clear a £10 bonus. At a market margin of 5%, the expected cost of clearing the bonus is £5, half the bonus face value. That is the cost the cap introduces: it bounds the cost at a multiple where the bonus remains worth chasing at a low margin and ceases to be worth chasing at a high one. A 50x wagering requirement, which is no longer licensable in Great Britain, would have set the expected cost of clearing £50 of qualifying bets at £25 — twice the bonus. The cap pulls the worst offers off the menu.

A real bettor’s cleared bonus at 10x wagering, on a market at a normal margin, returns roughly the bonus face value minus the clearing cost. The headline “100% up to £50” at 10x and 5% margin is worth about £25 to the bettor on average. The headline is correct; the comparison is what the headline does not show.

What the audit trail of an offer looks like

Reading the bonus the way the operator’s compliance team reads it surfaces three more figures the page reader skips over.

Qualifying bet definition. The minimum stake (often £10), the minimum odds, the eligible markets, the eligible payment methods. An excluded payment method at the cashier throws the offer out before the bonus credits.

Withdrawal rules during a bonus. Most operators lock withdrawals while a bonus is being cleared. A bettor who tries to withdraw the qualifying deposit mid-often voids the bonus.

Time limits. The deadline on using the credit, on placing the qualifying bet, on clearing the wagering, and on the bonus being credited at all.

Each of these is in the small print. Each costs real money to skip.

The licensee’s wider group

Several of the brands on this list belong to the same parent group, and the offering is shaped by the group rather than by the brand.

Ladbrokes and Coral run under the same licence holder (LC International Limited); Paddy Power and Betfair run under another (PPB Counterparty Services Limited). The groups are named here for the reader who is comparing the brand, not the licence: an offer change at one brand may travel to its sister brand on a different timetable, and the group’s safer-gambling controls cover all the brands it runs.

Star Sports sits inside a smaller racing-led group. Hollywoodbets is the British arm of a South African bookmaker. Fitzwilliam Sports is an Irish operation with a Dublin shop floor. BetUK sits inside the LeoVegas Gaming group, with the casino product carried by a LeoVegas sister site. Betfred is the Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited operation. Each of these is on its own Commission account and under its own licence conditions.

What changes when the wagering cap bites

The cap has reshaped three corners of the UK welcome offer.

No deposit credit has shrunk. A £50 free-bet bundle on registration without a deposit is rare. The new normal is a small credit (typically £10) following a small qualifying bet (typically £10). The verification path to that credit is unchanged.

Mixed-product offers are gone. A sportsbook bonus that used to drag the customer through a casino rollover is no longer licensable. BetTom’s two paired credits, each inside its own product, show what the drafting now looks like.

High-rollover terms have been pulled. A 50x wagering requirement on a £10 bonus used to be a sales weapon; it is no longer licensable. Bonus terms that survive at all survive at 10x or below.

The bettor reading the offer slate today is reading the post-cap version. Some of the older comparison numbers in the trade press were written before 19 January 2026 and describe mechanics that are no longer on the menu.

Reading the Commission’s terms page before claiming

The Commission’s safer-gambling pages carry the LCCP social responsibility code, the marketing code, the licence conditions and codes of practice and the customer-complaints route. Reading them is the cheapest work a bettor can do: the licence on a brand is one click away, the conditions on a bonus are one click deeper, the support routes are one more.

The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain and licence account number. The eight-digit remote licence references in the table above resolve to entries on that register; the licence holder name and the licence categories on the entry should match what the operator’s own terms state. A mismatch is the kind of thing that should fail a deposit, not a bet.

How this page was cross-checked

Cross-checks across three sources.

The Commission’s public register confirms each brand’s licence. The operator’s own terms confirm the welcome offer and the bonus conditions. The GB App Store listing confirms the app’s age rating, the cashier list of deposit methods and the headline welcome figure.

The check is the comparison’s spine, not its ceiling: the operator’s own terms carry the qualification on every offer, and the register’s entry is the proof that an offer is being made by a licensed brand at all. The page above lists what those sources carried on the date of access.

What the working bettor does with all this

A punt has three uses for an offer comparison like this one.

Pick the brand whose cashier matches the bankroll. A £5 floor on Sky Bet, a £10 minimum on Betway, Hollywoodbets and BetUK, a wider “no minimum” on Pay by Bank at Sky Bet. Match the floor to the wallet, not the headline.

Pick the offer whose credit matches the betting pattern. A multiples bettor picks BetUK’s four acca-shaped credits. A trebles-and-above bettor picks Hollywoodbets’ stake-back free bet. A horse-racing bettor picks Fafabet for BOG on top of a standard welcome.

Skip the offer where the credit is not the point. Fitzwilliam Sports’ High Stakes Welcome is not for the £10 bettor; Star Sports’ daily price boosts are not for the one-off welcome claimer; the High Street names are not for the bettor whose booking is in-play only.

The point of the comparison is not a recommendation. It is a map.

Frequently asked questions

How does a UK bettor get free bets with no deposit?

The cleanest path is to wait for an offer that credits a free bet without a deposit condition, opt in to its terms, complete the identity check that the Gambling Commission requires before any funds — bonus or otherwise — can be used to bet, and use the credit before its expiry. Several welcome offers on this page ask for a £10 qualifying bet first, and there is no widely-advertised no-deposit route at the major UK-licensed brands at the moment.

How does a bettor bet on sport without making a deposit?

Practically, only by using a free bet credit before it expires. The Commission’s verification rules mean a fresh account cannot bet, free bet or paid, until name, address and date of birth have been checked. A bookmaker’s app has to be installed, the account has to be created and verified, and the credit has to be used at the slip — at which point a deposit has not strictly been required.

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

Since 19 January 2026 the Gambling Commission’s promotion rules cap wagering requirements on a bonus at 10x. A £10 bonus may require no more than £100 of qualifying bets to clear. The cap applies to bonuses; whether the same cap catches free bets that carry no wagering is not settled in the public guidance.

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

Minimum odds are the shortest price a qualifying bet or a free bet can be placed at — for example, Coral’s free bets follow a settled first bet at minimum odds of 2.0. The wagering requirement is the number of times the bonus value must be turned over before it can be withdrawn — for example, 10x on a £10 bonus means £100 of qualifying bets. Both appear in the offer’s small print.

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

Because the credit is the stake. The bookmaker pays the winnings on top of the credit rather than returning the credit itself, and the credit is consumed at settlement. A £10 free bet at 3.00 pays £30: £20 profit and the £10 stake that disappears. This is the rule across every major UK-licensed sportsbook’s terms and is the haircut behind every “free bet” headline figure.

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

No — mixed-product promotions are banned under the Commission’s promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026. An offer that requires a customer to bet on a sport to qualify for a casino bonus, or to play a casino game to unlock a sports free bet, is not licensable. A welcome package can offer separate sportsbook and casino credits that run independently without falling foul of the rule.

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