Best betting sites in the UK

We have been busy collating all the information ready to guide you through the landscape of the online betting industry to bring you a carefully selected list of the best betting sites in the UK.
We’ll examine some of the best promotions and tools that the best online bookmakers provide, while also looking at a few lesser-known UK betting sites that offer strong welcome deals to players in an attempt to become part of their go-to selection of bookies.
We have delved into which betting sites are the best in class for particular sports – namely football, racing, golf, boxing and cricket.
Below, you’ll find our reasoning for every bookmaker we’ve chosen in each case.
To find out more about how we rate the best online bookmakers and about gambling responsibly please scroll a little further down the page.
Football is the most bet on sport in the UK and betting sites are constantly vying to rank number one among football betting sites. In our opinion, bettors will struggle to find a better betting site for football than Betfred.
Betfred get the basics right, offering competitive odds and unique football offers, including accumulator insurance, acca profit boosts and their popular Double Delight & Hat-trick Heaven offer.
Betfred also provides one of the best welcome offers to greet new users. You just need to enter the Betfred promo code ‘Betfred50’ when you register and deposit a minimum of £10 using a debit card to be eligible for the free bets.
Once you’ve done that and placed a bet of at least £10 on any sports market at odds of evens or greater, you’ll be rewarded with £50 in free bets. That bonus is split into three £10 free bets for any sports market and two £10 accumulator free bets, all of which have to be used within seven days.
The betting site also covers a wide range of leagues and competitions, year-round, offering players plenty of choice and opportunities to get involved.
When it comes to horse racing betting sites, Unibet is our recommended online bookmaker. Unibet provides a variety of daily racing betting offers, including money-back specials and extra races.
Not only that, Unibet give you three daily odds boosts to spend on racing and is guaranteed to have the best price in the industry on selected races each day. There’s even a Unibet sign up offer specifically for racing, giving new customers two £10 free bets, although it’s not as big as their general sports bet £10, get £40 welcome bonus.
Furthermore, Unibet highlights handy tips and naps ahead of races, collecting racing experts’ picks to help bettors make informed decisions.
Unibet is a betting site worth making use of throughout the racing calendar but especially when the big events roll around, such as Cheltenham Festival, the Grand National and Royal Ascot, when they ramp up their offers. Incidentally, Unibet is also one of the best online poker sites in our opinion.
In third place for the most popular sport to bet on in the UK after football and horse racing is golf and BoyleSports does a stellar job of meeting a golf bettors’ needs.
They will regularly offer 12 places on PGA Tour and DP World Tour events, as well as all four majors, while they have introduced a unique offer among golf betting sites – an early payout scheme for selected tournaments.
If your selection is the sole leader after three rounds, BoyleSports will settle your bet as a winner, no matter the final result outcome.
BoyleSports will also produce a range of golf price boosts for selected tournaments each week and those keen on accumulators can take advantage of the bookies’ various acca offers.
The BoyleSports sign up offer can also be used to bet on golf, meaning new customers can bag a £20 free bet upon joining to wager on their favourite sport.
A lot of casual bettors like to have a wager on boxing betting sites when a big bout rolls around and they might be best served going to William Hill to place their wagers.
William Hill offers great value odds and a vast range of boxing markets. They have a track record of pricing up fights well in advance, so those who back their knowledge of the sport can make their picks before the pre-fight narratives sway general predictions of the outcome.
William Hill is reliable for alternative markets and also stands out in the boxing space for its fight-night specials. Make sure to check out this UK bookmaker in the lead up to any huge bouts as they’ll regularly enhance the odds on several bets.
Bettors can also use their £30 free bets from the William Hill sign up offer to wager on boxing, should they choose.
Betway is our favourite bookmaker to head to when it comes to cricket betting sites.
Not only does the bookmaker offer an extensive range of markets on cricket in all of its formats – men’s, women’s, T20, Test, ODI and The Hundred – but Betway’s cricket stats are especially helpful and are available for pre-match and in-play betting.
Betway makes the vast majority of cricket matches available to bet on in-play with live streaming available on select competitions.
Furthermore, Betway’s Free Bet Club offers a £10 free bet if you bet £25 or more on cricket trebles and accumulators, and the firm also features on our list of the safest betting sites.
Given the relentless nature of the professional tennis schedule, it’s no wonder the sport has become one of the most popular to bet on as there’s so many options for punters.
Many tennis betting sites have latched on to this by improving their product over the last few years, but in our opinion 10Bet are ahead of their peers for tennis betting.
Tennis lends itself well to in-play betting, and on 10Bet you’ll find live statistics on the likes of break point conversions, double faults, aces and serve points won, all of which can be used to make a judgement before placing a bet.
There’s also head-to-head records and recent form for pre-match research, then point-by-point tracking to keep punters informed from the off.
Furthermore, 10Bet are unique in having ongoing tennis promotions, including free bets, for betting regularly on the sport and winnings boosts on successful accumulators.
Unlike many gambling sites, Mr Play cater for rugby with the majority of their promotions, features and welcome offers.
For example, winnings boosts on successful accumulators are commonplace on betting sites but even some of the best betting sites restrict this benefit to the most popular sports such as football and horse racing.
That is not the case on Mr Play, where rugby union and rugby league fans will find their sports qualify for the likes of acca boosts, bet builders and cash out services. They even extend their sign up offer to both codes too.
Beyond the rugby promotions and features, Mr Play stands out from other rugby betting sites thanks to its price boosts, a highlighted fixtures section for the biggest upcoming league and union matches and competitive odds on a wide range of international leagues and tournaments.
Best betting sites for F1: Kwiff
There aren’t many F1 betting sites that will run an exclusive Formula 1 offer, but Kwiff have never been among those betting sites that do things by the book.
They run a money-back special on each race, offering to refund your stake in surprise bets, up to the value of £25, if the driver you bet on fails to finish the grand prix.
Kwiff also have an excellent in-play betting service for F1 races. With betting sites unable to offer live streaming of races in the UK due to TV rights, the next best thing to watching the race is to follow it on Kwiff, who provide track graphics and customisable leaderboards during the grand prix.
Using Kwiff there’s always the chance your bet will be ‘supercharged’, which is when the online bookmaker boosts the odds of your wager at random.
The optimal way to make decisions on in-game bets is while watching the action, and Bet365 offer more opportunities to watch and bet than other live betting sites by streaming over 600,000 events each year.
Bet365 is the standout choice due to the bookmaker’s sheer volume of streams and its Video Wall. The new Bet365 live streaming feature allows you to watch a range of matches at the same time. It’s customisable and is available on mobile, desktop and app, meaning you can watch without missing a moment’s action.
Once you’ve completed the bet365 sign up offer, you’ll have the option to put certain events in full screen mode, giving you an even better view of the action on either the desktop site or online betting app.
In order to make use of these streams, you’ll need to either have a funded account or have placed a bet in the last 24 hours.
Incidentally, Bet365 happens to rank top on our list of the best £5 deposit betting sites, so you don’t have to break the bank in order to have a funded account.
It’s important to be informed before placing your bets, to ensure you understand what you’re gambling on and whether you’ve picked the most sensible options suited to you. For example, make sure not to confuse accumulators and bet builders; they are similar but not the same.
A bet builder is generally focused on one particular match, while an accumulator spreads across numerous events.
For example, a bet builder might see you pick Manchester City to beat Chelsea in a Premier League game, as well as City picking up two yellow cards, Chelsea getting three yellow cards, and City scoring two goals.
Meanwhile, an accumulator might see you back Man City, Newcastle, Arsenal and Brighton all to win separate games on one Premier League weekend.
Another handy alternative feature with Premier League betting sites is ‘cash out’, but this should not be confused with a withdrawal.
The latter sees bettors withdrawing funds from their account balance, while cashing out allows users to settle their bet before the end of an event, locking in a profit or minimising losses should the wager be in doubt.
For example, say you’ve bet on Chelsea to beat Man City 1-0 and Chelsea are leading 1-0 with 10 minutes to go, but City look like scoring. Cashing out in this situation is a handy option as you can settle the bet early.
However, keep in mind you won’t leave with the full amount that you’d have won if Chelsea went on to win 1-0.
For those bettors who enjoy a bet builder, look no further than BetUK, who provide a useful guide to bet building for beginners.
BetUK will reward bettors who wager £10 on a bet builder with a £5 free bet each week and highlight trending bet builders every day, making it a strong choice out of all the betting sites.
When using a bet builder like BetUK’s, it’s important to consider how many selections you are permitted within your bet, and which sports the bookmaker features under its bet builders.
BetUK will let you combine up to 12 legs on most bet builders and offers the tool for use on mutiple sports, including tennis, rugby, American football and baseball. Meanwhile, the BetUK sign up offer allows new customers to claim £30 in free bets.
When it comes to accumulators – often referred to as ‘accas’ – we think BoyleSports are the best choice among UK betting sites due to their extensive options in terms of acca promos.
Their Acca Rewards and Acca Loyalty programmes help make them an excellent choice. With Acca Loyalty, customers are awarded a £5 free acca once they’ve placed five £5 accumulators (with at least five selections and total odds of greater than 3/1). Meanwhile, Acca Rewards gives you the choice to either boost your winnings or insure your accumulator.
Profit boosts on acca bets give customers the chance to increase their winnings by three per cent for trebles on BoyleSports, all the way up to 100 per cent for multiples with 14 selections or more
With acca insurance, BoyleSports will refund your stake in free bets, up to the value of £20, if only one leg of your accumulator doesn’t win.
Meanwhile, as well as standard debit card and bank transfers, Boyles also facilitates many alternative deposit and withdrawal options for accumulator bettors, including PayPal betting, Boku, Neteller, Skrill, Paysafecard, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
As mentioned above, cashing out is also a great tool to consider when using betting sites. In this area, Kwiff represents a strong choice, ranking among our top cash out betting sites, largely due to the bookmaker’s ‘supercharge cash-out’ feature.
Kwiff is a bit niche thanks to its surprise bets and supercharged features. In this instance, the online bookmaker may decide to boost, or supercharge, the winnings on any bet you decide to cash out.
As Kwiff explains: “It essentially means that if you decide to cash out your bet, you will be eligible to have that payout supercharged. If your cash-out bet has been supercharged, then your normal return will be greater than the normal odds originally taken.”
It’s an interesting take on a popular feature, and Kwiff doesn’t only supercharge cash-outs, but also standard bets. Keep an eye out for ‘Supercharge Weekend’ offers, too. Always consider the ease of use, of course, and the value of the original cash-out offers.
While Kwiff do like to do things their own way, the Kwiff sign-up offer did recently change from rewarding new customers with £30 in surprise bets to a more traditional, bet £10, get £30in free bets scheme.
Although we have named Unibet as the best horse racing betting site, that accolade does not extend to the subject of Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG), with BoyleSports pipping Unibet for a number of reasons.
BOG means that if you take an early or fixed odds price on a horse or greyhound and the starting price (SP) is higher, the bookie will pay out at the higher odds. This ensures you always get the best possible return on your bet.
What makes BoyleSports stand out in this regard is that they extend their BOG offering to greyhound betting, whereas the likes of Unibet and other top betting sites reserve it just for horse racing.
For both horse racing and greyhound racing, BoyleSports make their BOG promotion available from 8am every morning, an industry-best time with some rivals waiting until 9am for BOG to trigger.
LiveScore Bet is another newcomer to the UK betting industry but it benefits from a strong reputation having become globally popular as a real-time sports digital scoreboard across football, cricket, tennis, basketball and hockey.
Their technology has served them well so far in their venture into sports betting and, somewhat unsurprisingly, they have centred their focus on in-play betting across several sports, not just the five mentioned above.
Punters can expect over 40 in-play markets when live betting on football, over 50 when betting in-play on tennis and even more on basketball. All of which is backed up with stats and in many cases high-definition live streams.
The LiveScore Bet sign up offer is not the strongest, but beyond the welcome period, there are plenty of promotions, including their free-to-play football game SQUADS, which gives players a chance to earn withdrawable cash.
The October international break in the men’s game means there’s a drop in the quantity of football offered this week, but not in quality levels.
The Women’s Champions League group stages got underway on Tuesday with Chelsea coming out on top 3-2 against Real Madrid at Stamford Bridge.
On Wednesday, Arsenal head to Germany to face Bayern Munich, while Manchester City host reigning European champions Barcelona.
The next round of Nations League matches get underway on Thursday with England taking on Greece at Wembley, while there are vital World Cup qualifiers taking place in Asia and South America.
We are into the second week of the Shanghai Masters in China with most of the big names having successfully navigated the early stages of the ATP Tour 1000 event, while the majority of top players on the WTA Tour are playing in Wuhan this week.
In golf, the Black Desert Championship is the featured event on the PGA Tour with the stars of the DP World Tour heading to France for the Open de France with both tournaments getting underway on Thursday.
England’s first Test with Pakistan began on Monday and provides one source of entertainment for cricket fans during the week, alongside the Women’s T20 World Cup.
In darts, the World Grand Prix returns to Leicester with all the big names toeing the oche at the Mattioli Arena and BoyleSports are running an early payout offer for the tournament.
Back a player in the early payout match market and if they go one set ahead, Boylesports will settle the bet as a winner, no matter the final outcome.
Betting tips
We take the rating and recommendation of betting sites very seriously and have stringent criteria we expect the best bookmakers to meet even to be considered for our list. Here are some of the factors that went into our thinking:
This is a non-negotiable before we recommend any UK bookmaker. They have to be regulated by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) for us to contemplate rating them, so you can be confident that every bookmaker above is safe to engage with. Every site mentioned on this page is UKGC-regulated and secure to use.
Our recommended online bookmakers are a mixture of household names and new betting sites. The reputation of a bookmaker is very important to us and while the well-known betting sites such as Betfred, BoyleSports and Bet365 have reputations that precede them, we also considered the burgeoning renown of the newer companies entering the UK industry and how well-regarded they are overseas.
Similarly to regulation, how committed a bookmaker is to responsible gambling is extremely important. Have they taken genuine steps to ensure their actions towards their customers are morally sound? We considered their approaches to vital responsible gambling tools such as deposit limits, loss limits, reality checks and self-exclusion.
How good an experience online bookies provide to their customers was also taken into account when choosing the best online betting sites – across desktop, mobile and app. If the site design is smart and well laid out, the useability is logical and straightforward, then that all makes for a better customer experience. Similarly, how easy it is to interact with support staff and solve any potential issues is also a factor.
Of course, betting sites can also be judged on promotions and offers. We considered if these betting sites were offering unique deals we hadn’t seen anywhere else. If punters feel like they’re getting more bang for your buck – be that in terms of free bets, odds boosts or one-off promotions – they’re more likely to have a good experience on the site.
Now that we’ve established our thoughts on which betting sites excel in the most popular fields, it may be beneficial to pull together our most notable findings in order to help you decide which betting site suits your own tastes.
Below, we’ve rounded up all of the best betting sites on this page in order to compare each operator’s overall sportsbook package, which may help those of you who are still undecided about which bookie to choose.
It is worth noting that BoyleSports is the only bookmaker that ticks all the boxes on the above features, which are some of the most popular attractions for sports bettors.
Kwiff only offer two of the five most popular features, but in their defence they focus most of their energy on their unique cash out offerings and they stand out for this as a result.
Should you choose to use any of the gambling sites we recommend, the most important thing to remember is to gamble responsibly.
Betting should only ever be considered a form of entertainment – it has not, and will never be, a surefire way to make money, no matter how much you think you know about sports.
When gambling on betting sites, always factor in the probability of a loss and therefore, only bet what you can afford to lose. Sports betting can also be addictive, so please take steps to remain in control of your time and budget.
Make sure you use the responsible gambling tools offered by betting sites such as deposit limits, reality checks, loss limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. These can stop your gambling from getting out of hand.
If you have gambling-related concerns, then seek independent help. There are several UK charities and institutions that offer support, advice and information, with a few listed below:
There you have our picks for the best betting sites in the UK, but always remember that the topic of the best online bookmakers is subjective.
We’ve given you our recommended picks based on our research, but you should only choose the betting sites that work for you and meet your personal requirements.
As highlighted above, all the betting sites recommended on this page are legitimate and licensed by the UKGC.
Which is the best betting site?
We’ve given our recommendations for the best betting sites in certain categories, but ultimately the choice of the best betting site comes down to personal preference. Punters are best off picking an online bookmaker that suits their particular betting needs. The information in this article can steer bettors in the right direction when it comes to finding their best betting site.
Are online betting sites safe?
All UK betting sites that are regulated and licensed by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) are safe to use. To receive a license from the UKGC, betting sites must prove they are secure, employing the highest levels of cyber security to keep a bettor’s personal information safe, and fair. Never use an unregulated bookmaker. You can check the UKGC’s register here if you’re not sure.
What betting sites take credit card?
UK betting sites and betting shops are no longer legally able to accept any financial transactions made by credit card. The law was changed in April 2020 to prohibit credit card use for gambling in an effort to protect vulnerable people from practising unsafe gambling habits.
What should I look for when choosing the best betting site for me?
When choosing a UK betting site, look for competitive odds, a variety of sports that you’re intereted in, user-friendly design, fast payouts and reasonable promotions. Always check for responsible gambling tools and customer support options too.
We may earn commission from some of the links in this article, but we never allow this to influence our content. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.