How the best UK betting apps compare in 2026

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

A betting app is a small piece of software that decides where a stake goes, what price it lands at and how fast winnings return to a bank account. In Great Britain the question of which app to install is also a question of who is licensed to take the bet at all. The Gambling Commission regulates the whole commercial market under the Gambling Act 2005; every online bookmaker whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain must hold a Commission licence, no matter where it is incorporated. The apps in this comparison are the ones that do.

Current as of October 30, 2026, checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register. Odds and margins age faster than any licence number; specific prices are stated only with the date the snapshot was taken.

What a Sign-Up Bonus Actually Pays Back

The marketing word most often stretched thin is “free”. A bonus credited at sign-up is rarely free money — it is a credit that must be turned over a fixed number of times at minimum prices before any winnings can be withdrawn. QuinnBet’s free bets, for example, are valid for seven days from credit, can be placed on any market at odds of 1/2 (1.50) or greater with maximum odds of 50/1, and straight accumulators are permitted where Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not. That is a familiar shape: a small stake, a short window, a minimum price that rules out the heaviest favourites, and a list of bet types excluded from clearing.

BetGoodwin’s sports welcome package breaks £15 of free bets into three £5 tokens — one sports single, one acca and one Sub-Cover bet — on a £10 qualifying stake. Bet600 requires five qualifying single bets of £10 or greater at Evens (2.00) or above within seven days before crediting a single £10 free bet. Lottoland UK’s current app welcome offer is a casino-side deal: a £20 stake on selected slots earns 100 free spins on a named game with no wagering, expiring 30 days after credit. Welcome offers change often; the current terms are always the terms that apply.

The hard part of any bonus is the wagering requirement. Since 19 January 2026 the Gambling Commission has capped wagering at 10x the bonus amount in Great Britain, and mixed-product promotions — offers that demand play across betting, casino, bingo and lottery in one — are banned. A £10 bonus with a 5x turnover asks for £50 of qualifying bets at the minimum price; the same bonus at the 10x ceiling asks for £100. Free bets with no wagering condition are common and need no turnover, but their stake is usually not returned with a win: a £10 free bet at 4.00 returns £30, not £40. A price boost raises the odds on a named selection but caps the stake; an accumulator insurance refunds a losing stake if one leg lets the rest down; a cashback returns a share of net losses over a window. Each does a different job, and “best odds” is the wrong way to read any of them.

What matters more than the headline number is the gap between what is granted and what is taken back. A £30 bonus at 10x turnover with a £5 stake per qualifying bet means twenty bets at minimum odds, and the margin on those bets sits inside every price. A margin of 5% on the football 1X2 market takes £2.50 from every £50 of turnover before a withdrawal is possible. The bookmaker keeps its cut whether the bonus clears or not. That is the contract, in plain arithmetic.

Deposits, Withdrawals and the Speed the App Pays Back

The fastest payout is the one that does not wait on a bank holiday. Most licensed bookmakers in Great Britain clear debit card withdrawals back to the same card within a working day; bank transfers take longer; e-wallets fall somewhere in between, depending on the operator. The licensed brands compared here state PayPal, Apple Pay, debit cards and Instant Payments to bank among their funding methods; the exact menu is on each app’s cashier.

The rule that sits over all of them is identity verification. Since 7 May 2019 the Gambling Commission requires every licensed operator to confirm a customer’s name, address and date of birth before a deposit or a bet can be placed, including with a free bet. Anonymous play at a licensed site is no longer possible, and source-of-funds questions at higher spend are normal under anti-money-laundering rules. That is the price of betting inside a regulated market.

NetBet’s app supports Instant Payments to bank, Apple Pay, PayPal and debit cards, and Face ID or Touch ID login. bet365 accounts can be funded by debit card, PayPal and Apple Pay, with Face ID login on supported handsets. Fafabet supports Face ID or Touch ID for re-entry. None of that is unique — every app in this comparison has some biometric login — but the payment menu varies: some offer PayPal, some do not, and the e-wallet list changes. A punter with a single preferred method should check the cashier before installing.

There is no state-set deposit ceiling for sports betting in Great Britain. Operators must offer a deposit limit on a fixed time frame (Remote Technical Standards 12) and the customer can set their own ceiling; the regulator does not impose one. The financial vulnerability check that applies once a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 over thirty days is a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments), not an income check. Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded e-wallet deposits; debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered by that ban.

The App Itself: What Handsets See

A betting app is judged on three things: how fast the home screen loads, how cleanly the bet slip works, and whether live markets update before the price has moved. The Betfair Sportsbook app offers in-play betting, Bet Builder, free live streaming of UK and Irish horse racing and football, and a 90 Minute Payout market that settles football bets at full time without waiting for the official result. Spreadex combines fixed-odds and spread betting in one app, with one-click, auto and partial cash out, Bet Builder across either product, and live streaming of UK and Irish racing, greyhounds, tennis, NFL and selected football. bet365’s app is described in its App Store listing as the most downloaded sports betting app in the UK; it is the official global betting partner of the UEFA Champions League, and that sponsorship is the brand’s main claim.

Two of the apps in this comparison trade live markets for a different feature. Smarkets’ app is built around an order book view: prices are quoted as on a financial exchange, with two-factor authentication, live charts and a quick trade-out option, and 24/7 live chat. Sporting Index is a spread-betting app where winnings and losses are calculated on the margin of victory rather than a fixed price; a full spread account carries up to £300 cashback on selected sports spread markets. The Tote app is built around pool betting: Placepot, Jackpot, Scoop6 and Quadpot, plus World Pool and international pools from the French PMU, the US and Hong Kong. None of those models fits a punter who wants a plain price on a football match, and that is the point.

Dabble is a social betting app. The home screen is a real-time feed of bets placed by other users; Copy Bets lets one punter copy another’s stake at the press of a button; group chats and Banter Channels sit alongside the sportsbook. Dabble pays 10p when another user copies a bet. That is a different proposition from the standard sportsbook: the app is closer to a trading floor with chat than a quiet betting screen.

For punters who bet on a phone on a train or a stadium concourse, biometric login and a working bet slip matter more than any single market. Most apps in this set now offer Face ID or Touch ID re-entry; a few still require a password and a username on every visit. The smaller, independent bookmakers — BetGoodwin, Betmaster, Bar One Racing (rebranded as BAR 1 Betting) — tend to carry a lighter app and fewer live streams, while the larger operators carry a heavier app and a longer feature list. The trade-off is well known.

How the Ten Stack Up

The table below shows each operator’s Gambling Commission licence account and the licence holder, alongside what the operator’s own terms state on the subject of the app. The brand column lists each operator as it appears on the public register.

The licence numbers are the test, not the marketing. A punter who wants to confirm a brand is licensed can search the Commission’s public register by business name, trading name, domain or account number; the register is the only proof that matters, and a brand that appears on it is bound by the Gambling Act 2005, the LCCP, GAMSTOP and the safer-gambling duties that go with them.

What a Licensed Betting App Has to Do

The Gambling Commission’s Licensing Conditions and Codes of Practice is the rule book every app in this comparison works to. Minimum age is eighteen across the board; the Commission’s age-verification rules require that name, address and date of birth be confirmed before a deposit or a stake, including with a free bet. No licensed app in Great Britain allows anonymous play. That is a feature, not a defect: it is what makes every other protection work.

Identity is one half of the contract; the other is self-exclusion. GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme, mandatory for every licensed online operator since 31 March 2020, and every app in this comparison is a member. Self-exclusion periods run six months, one year, five years or five years with auto-renewal; after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. A punter who has self-excluded through GAMSTOP cannot bet online with any licensed operator until the period ends, even with a brand that has never heard of them.

The other operator-side duties are equally real. Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet; an app that takes a credit-card deposit is not licensed. Wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x the bonus amount since 19 January 2026, and mixed-product promotions are banned. The financial vulnerability check that applies once deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 over a rolling thirty-day period is a public-record check, not an income check, and runs against public registers of insolvency and county-court judgments. Financial risk assessments have been announced in a staged plan with no start date as of mid-2026; the Commission has not put a date on them, and the page makes no promise about when they will begin.

A punter comparing apps should read the safer-gambling section before the welcome offer. Unibet’s app exposes deposit limits, a Player Profile test, product restrictions and self-exclusion alongside live chat support and links to BeGambleAware, GamCare, GAMSTOP, Gambling Therapy and the Betting and Gaming Council. William Hill offers time reminders, time-outs and deposit limits, with 24/7 customer service through in-site messaging. Star Sports provides deposit limits, a Play Break facility and self-exclusion from My Account. Dabble offers deposit limits and cooling-off periods alongside its social feed. The tools are similar across the set; what differs is how prominently each app surfaces them.

Reading the Odds: Margin, Return and What the Bookmaker Keeps

A betting price has two sides. From the punter’s side, the decimal odds say what a winning stake returns: a £10 stake at 3.75 returns £37.50, of which £27.50 is profit. From the bookmaker’s side, the same market carries a margin — the share of every pound staked that the book expects to keep, whatever the result. A market priced at 1.91 / 1.91 on a two-outcome event has a margin close to 5%; a market priced at 1.80 / 1.91 / 4.50 on a 1X2 football match has a margin closer to 7%, depending on the match. The punter sees only the prices; the margin is what sits inside them.

Margin is the cost of a bet that cannot be removed by picking better odds. A £10 single at 3.75 returns £37.50 on a win and zero on a loss; over thousands of bets the bookmaker keeps its margin regardless of who wins each race. That is why a 5% margin on a market is roughly equivalent to paying a 5% commission on every stake, and why a small difference in price — 1.91 versus 1.95 — matters more than a headline “best odds” badge suggests.

The return on a combination bet is the multiplication of its legs. A four-fold accumulator with legs priced at 1.50, 2.00, 3.00 and 4.00 has combined odds of 1.50 × 2.00 × 3.00 × 4.00 = 36.00; a £5 stake returns £180 on a win. The margin compounds too: each leg’s margin is multiplied into the next, and the bookmaker’s edge on an eight-fold accumulator is closer to 30% than the 5% of a single market. That is why a long acca is rarely the cheapest way to bet, even when each leg looks short. The 10x bonus cap, the maximum-odds rule on free bets, the minimum-odds rule on qualifying bets and the bookmaker’s own margin are all expressions of the same idea: a price is a price, and the bookmaker always sits inside it.

Where Crypto and Anonymity Sit

No licensed app in this comparison runs on cryptocurrency. The Commission has not prohibited crypto deposits outright, and no state list of permitted payment methods exists for licensed operators, but every app in this set requires debit-card, bank or e-wallet funding tied to a verified identity. Crypto betting apps exist; none of them are licensed in Great Britain. A punter who wants to bet with bitcoin is leaving the regulated market.

The honest framing is straightforward. A licensed app offers identity checks, deposit limits, GAMSTOP coverage, the 10x bonus cap and a route to the Commission and ADR bodies if funds are withheld. An unlicensed app offers none of those protections, and the punter has no British recourse if the brand decides not to pay out. Neither is automatically “the safe choice”; both carry their own cost. The licensed side costs privacy at sign-up; the unlicensed side costs protection when something goes wrong.

Spread betting on financial instruments sits in a different regime. Spreadex is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting, and its own materials state that spread betting losses can exceed deposits. Financial spread betting is not betting on sports; it is a leveraged product with its own risk profile. Sporting Index is a sports spread bookmaker and runs under the Commission’s general betting licence, not the FCA’s.

The Operators Reviewed

Dabble — the social betting app

Dabble’s app is a real-time feed of bets placed by other customers, with Copy Bets, group chats and Banter Channels stitched into the sportsbook. Dabble pays 10p when another user copies a bet, and the social layer is the product as much as the odds are. Safer-gambling tools are present — deposit limits and cooling-off periods — but the design leads with the feed.

For a punter who wants to follow a tipster’s selections in real time or copy a bet without typing the details, Dabble does something no other app in this set does. For a punter who wants a quiet screen with a bet slip and a cash-out button, it is the wrong shape. The licence account is 65677; Dabble Sports UK Ltd is the licence holder; GAMSTOP coverage is in place.

Paddy Power — the established full-range bookmaker

The Paddy Power Sports Betting app covers football, horse racing, boxing, rugby, tennis, golf, darts, snooker and Formula 1 from the same account. The licence account is 39439; PPB Counterparty Services Limited is the licence holder. Paddy Power sits in the Flutter group alongside Betfair; the two share payment rails and safer-gambling infrastructure under common ownership, though each runs as a separate brand on the Commission’s register.

The app is built for a punter who wants a familiar menu and price boosts on big football matches, and who does not need the social layer of Dabble or the order-book view of Smarkets. The judgement is not that Paddy Power is the best at any single thing; it is that it is consistently good at the things most punters do.

Betmaster — the esports and cricket list

The Betmaster app covers football, cricket, horse racing, NFL and esports (League of Legends, Dota 2). For a punter who bets on the esport slate the depth here is the reason to install; for a punter who bets only on Premier League football it is a thinner proposition than the larger brands. The licence account is 65699; BM Solutions GB Ltd is the licence holder.

Bar One Racing — the Irish independent

Bar One Racing has rebranded as BAR 1 Betting, with shops across Ireland and horse racing sponsorships at Dundalk, Fairyhouse, Navan, The Curragh, Curraheen Park and Cork. For a punter who follows Irish racing the brand is the proposition; for everyone else it is a smaller bookmaker with a narrower menu. The licence account is 56516; Bar-One Racing Limited is the licence holder.

BetGoodwin — the racing-led welcome package

BetGoodwin’s sports welcome package is “Bet £10 & Get £15 in Free Bets”, made up of a £5 sports bet, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet. The welcome offer is the headline, and the terms should be read carefully — free bets are not free money, and the qualifying-bet rule sits behind the headline. The licence account is 2927; Goodwin Racing Limited is the licence holder. BetGoodwin is a useful choice for a punter who wants a small, focused welcome package and bets on racing.

London Bet — the slots-and-sports combination

The London Bet app combines sports betting (football, tennis, horse racing, greyhounds, darts, golf, cricket, NFL, MLB, NBA, snooker) with Pragmatic Play casino slots and live in-play betting. The licence account is 66162; Thistle Bet Limited is the licence holder, and the app carries a 17+ App Store age rating. For a punter who wants casino and sports in the same wallet, London Bet is a smaller alternative to the larger combination brands; for a sports-only punter the casino side is dead weight.

Unibet — the safer-gambling toolkit

Unibet’s app exposes deposit limits, a Player Profile test, product restrictions, self-exclusion and live chat support, with links to BeGambleAware, GamCare, GAMSTOP, Gambling Therapy and the BGC. The brand states it has operated since 1999; the UK site is run by Platinum Gaming Limited, Gibraltar, under licence account 45322. The international pedigree is real, and the safer-gambling toolkit is the most fully wired of the set.

For a punter who wants every safer-gambling tool available on day one, Unibet is a strong choice. For a punter who wants a smaller app and a quieter menu, Unibet is heavier than it needs to be. The judgement is that Unibet does the safer-gambling work first and the marketing second, and that is the right order.

Tote — the pool betting app

The Tote app is built around pool betting: Placepot, Jackpot, Scoop6 and Quadpot, plus World Pool and international pools from the French PMU, the US and Hong Kong. Pool betting pays a share of the pool after deductions, not a fixed price; the maths is different and the experience is different. The licence account is 54779; TDCO Limited is the licence holder. For a punter who already plays the pools, Tote is the only app in this comparison built for it; for everyone else the pool format is unfamiliar territory.

QuinnBet — the free-bet terms on display

QuinnBet states its free-bet terms plainly: seven days from credit, any market at 1/2 (1.50) or greater, maximum odds of 50/1, singles and straights only — Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not permitted. The licence account is 61011; QuinnBet (Gibraltar) Limited is the licence holder. For a punter who reads the small print the terms are a clear contract; for a punter who reads only the headline the £30 of free bets sounds like £30 of cash. It is not.

Sporting Index — the spread betting model

The Sporting Index app is published by Sporting Index Holdings Limited, and a full spread betting account carries up to £300 cashback on selected sports spread markets. Spread betting pays on the size of the margin of victory rather than a fixed price, and winnings and losses can exceed the deposit. The licence account is 27343; Sporting Index Limited is the licence holder. For a punter who already understands spread betting, Sporting Index is one of a small number of licensed sports-spread books; for a punter who does not, the product is the wrong shape. The product should not be learned on real money.

What the Regulators Actually Allow

The Commission’s register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and is the only test of whether a brand holds a GB licence. The register is the whole of the licence — there is no state seal, no paper certificate, and a brand that says it is licensed without appearing on the register is not. The register is also the place where the licence holder’s name sits in public; a brand that hides its ownership is hiding it from the register as well.

In-play betting is offered by GB bookmakers under the operator’s licence conditions and customer-protection duties; no statutory cap on in-play markets exists, and the controls are the operator’s. Esports are treated like any other event; virtual events are a separate licence category; politics, TV shows and novelty markets are offered by some GB bookmakers and no statutory prohibition was found. The Premier League clubs’ withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts from 2026/27 is voluntary, not law. None of this is a license to bet on anything; it is a description of what licensed operators may offer under their licence conditions.

Advertising is regulated separately, through the CAP Code (non-broadcast) and BCAP Code (broadcast), enforced by the ASA. 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 appear gambling or play a significant role in an ad (with an exception for ads placed where a bet can be made directly). That rule concerns who may appear in the advertisement, not who may bet. A punter aged eighteen or over is not excluded from betting by the ad rules; an actor under twenty-five is excluded from appearing in the ad. The “whistle-to-whistle” rule — no betting ads on TV from five minutes before a live sporting event to five minutes after, before the 9pm watershed — is an industry code, not law.

Tax is the operator’s, not the punter’s. General Betting Duty sits on the operator’s gross profits at 15% under the current rate; from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within it, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. Spread betting carries 3% on financial products and 10% on others. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate stays at 15%. A punter pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain; a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser, and this page is general information, not tax advice.

The Offshore Question

A GB licence is compulsory at the point of consumption. Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 — aimed at the operator, not the customer. A punter who bets on an unlicensed site commits no offence under the Act as written; what they lose is GAMSTOP coverage, the Commission complaints route, an approved dispute-resolution body and any British recourse if funds are withheld. An unlicensed brand is not bound by the 10x bonus cap, the £150 vulnerability check or any of the safer-gambling duties. The bookmaker keeps its margin, the customer keeps their data, and neither is covered if something goes wrong.

Enforcement is disruption rather than blocking. The Commission issues cease-and-desist notices, refers unlicensed brands to search engines, and works with registrars, hosts and payment providers to take sites off the open internet. Court-order DNS blocking powers have been given or are about to be given to the Commission; ISP blocking is not in operation as of mid-2026. A punter who wants to bet on an unlicensed brand will generally find one that takes their stake; what they will not find is a British route to complain when the brand decides not to pay out.

What a Punter Should Read First

The first thing a punter should read on a licensed app is not the welcome offer. It is the safer-gambling page: where the deposit limit sits, how GAMSTOP is wired in, what the cooling-off period is, and how self-exclusion works. Every licensed app in this comparison offers those tools; not every app surfaces them in the same place. The safer-gambling page is also where the help-line numbers sit: GamCare’s National Gambling Helpline, the NHS gambling clinics, Gamblers Anonymous, BeGambleAware. A punter who keeps those numbers close does not need them today and is glad of them later.

The second thing is the welcome offer’s small print. A £10 free bet at minimum odds 1/2 with seven days to clear and a maximum-odds cap is a different contract from a £30 free bet at minimum odds Evens with fourteen days and no cap. The headline number is the same in both cases; the cost to the punter is not. The 10x bonus cap means a £10 bonus has at most £100 of qualifying turnover; a £50 bonus has at most £500. A mixed-product promotion — bet on football to get free spins — is banned in Great Britain since 19 January 2026 and any offer that requires it is non-compliant.

The third thing is the cashier. The funding menu decides how fast a withdrawal returns. PayPal and Apple Pay settle fastest for most operators; debit cards settle within a working day; bank transfers take longer. Identity verification happens before any of this is possible, and a punter who has not yet uploaded documents will wait on the verification queue before any withdrawal is processed.

The fourth thing is the licence account number on the Commission’s register. A brand that names its account number on the app or on its website has nothing to hide; a brand that does not is not telling the punter where to check. The register is the test; the app’s own marketing copy is not.

Reading the Margins in Practice

A 1X2 football market priced at 1.80 / 3.40 / 4.50 has a margin close to 6% — the bookmaker keeps about £6 of every £100 staked on the market, whatever the result. The same market priced at 1.91 / 3.50 / 4.33 has an overround closer to 4% (a margin of about 3.9%), which sounds small and is: a 2% difference in margin on a £100 weekly volume is £104 a year before any bets win. The punter sees only the prices; the margin is what sits inside them.

A bet builder or same-game multi on a single football match typically carries a margin of 8% to 12% per leg, compounding into a heavier margin on the multi than on the singles. A four-fold acca at the per-leg margins a typical Premier League match carries lands in the 25% to 35% margin range. That is why an accumulator is rarely the cheapest way to bet, and why a price boost on an acca leg is rarely as generous as the headline suggests. The margin is the silent partner in every price.

A betting exchange carries a different margin shape. Smarkets charges commission on net winnings, not a margin built into the price, and the punter sees prices closer to the true probability of the outcome. The trade-off is that the exchange requires the punter to back and lay their own positions, and to read an order book rather than a fixed-odds menu. The exchange is the right tool for some punters and the wrong tool for others; the choice is the punters, and the margin numbers should be read with the model in mind.

The Verdict Itself

No single app in this comparison is “the best” for every punter. The verdict is that the choice is between three shapes of product, and the punter who knows which shape they want will install the right app faster.

For a punter who wants a familiar full-range sportsbook with price boosts and a long feature list, the larger brands — Paddy Power, Unibet, bet365, William Hill, BetVictor — are the standard answer, and each will be familiar to a punter who has used any of them. For a punter who wants a smaller welcome package with racing-friendly terms, BetGoodwin and QuinnBet are the right shops, and the welcome offer is the most prominent feature of each. For a punter who wants a specific product shape — pool betting at the Tote, spread betting at Sporting Index and Spreadex, an order book at Smarkets, a social feed at Dabble, esports and cricket depth at Betmaster, Irish racing sponsorships at Bar One Racing, sports and casino in one wallet at London Bet — the choice is the operator that runs that product, and the rest of the comparison is secondary.

For a punter who wants the safer-gambling toolkit fully wired on day one, Unibet is the clearest answer of the set. For a punter who wants the fastest payout, the cashier menu matters more than the brand name: PayPal and Apple Pay are the methods that settle fastest, and the brand that takes both is the brand to install. For a punter who bets on a phone with Face ID, the app that supports biometric login on the handset they own is the app that will be opened most often. None of these judgements turn on the brand name; each turns on a single feature, and the feature is what the punter should install the app to test.

The licence number is the constant. Every app in this comparison is licensed by the Gambling Commission, every app is a GAMSTOP member, and every app carries the same age verification, the same bonus cap and the same safer-gambling duties. The brand is the variable. The choice is the punter’s, and the page has done what it can by laying out what each app does and what each costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which apps are best for esports betting?

Betmaster covers League of Legends and Dota 2 alongside football, cricket, horse racing and NFL. Several of the larger brands — bet365, Unibet, Paddy Power — also run esports menus on the same account. The depth of coverage on a named esport is what separates a bookmaker that lists esports from one that prices it properly, and a punter who bets on esports regularly should check the menu before installing.

Is it best mobile apps for online betting?

“Best” is a question of what the punter wants from the app. A punter who wants a familiar full-range sportsbook will install one of the larger brands. A punter who wants a social feed will install Dabble. A punter who wants an order book will install Smarkets. The honest answer is that the best app is the one whose product shape fits the punter’s habits, and the licence number on the Gambling Commission’s register is the test of whether any of them is licensed at all.

What are the apps for mobile sports betting?

Every app in this comparison is licensed for mobile sports betting in Great Britain: Dabble, Paddy Power, Betmaster, Bar One Racing (BAR 1 Betting), BetGoodwin, London Bet, Unibet, Tote, QuinnBet and Sporting Index, plus the larger brands outside this set. The Commission’s public register is the only proof of licence, and every brand named here appears on it.

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

The Commission’s public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. A brand that names its account number on the app or on its website can be checked directly; a brand that does not can be searched by name. The register is the only test, and a brand that says it is licensed without appearing on it is not.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

For a single bet in decimal odds, the return is stake × odds. A £10 stake at 3.75 returns £37.50, of which £27.50 is profit. For a combination bet, the odds of each leg multiply into one price, and a four-fold acca with legs at 1.50, 2.00, 3.00 and 4.00 has combined odds of 36.00; a £5 stake returns £180 on a win.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?

The margin is the share of every pound staked that the bookmaker keeps, whatever the result. For a 1X2 market priced at 1.80 / 3.40 / 4.50, the margin is about 6%; for the same market priced at 1.91 / 3.50 / 4.33 it is closer to 4%. The margin sits inside every price and is the cost of a bet that cannot be removed by picking better odds; a small difference in price is a meaningful difference in cost over many bets.

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