House edge explained
The house edge is the share of every bet a casino expects to keep over time. It is the single most important number in gambling, and most players never look at it.
House edge and RTP
RTP (return to player) and house edge are two sides of the same number. A game with 97% RTP has a 3% house edge: over a very large number of bets, it pays back $97 for every $100 wagered. Over a short session anything can happen, but the edge always wins over volume.
What it costs you
Multiply your total wagered amount by the house edge to get your expected loss. Wagering $1,000 on a 3% slot costs $30 on average; on a 1% dice game it costs $10; at 0.1% it costs $1. Because you re-bet your winnings, your total wagered amount is usually many times your deposit. That is why a small difference in edge turns into a big difference over a month.
Typical edges by game type
Edges vary by casino and by game, so always check the figure the casino publishes. As a rough guide: European roulette has one zero out of 37 pockets, a 2.7% edge by its rules. Online slots usually sit between about 2% and 6%. Crypto casino originals such as dice and crash are often set around 1%, and a few casinos advertise far less. Blackjack can go below 1% with perfect basic strategy, but side bets and rule changes push it up.
How rakeback changes the maths
Rakeback returns part of the house edge to you. At 10% rakeback, a 3% edge effectively becomes 2.7%. That sounds small, but it applies to every bet, with no wagering rules. Read how rakeback works for the full calculation.
Why bonuses do not fix a high edge
A deposit bonus is paid once and usually has to be wagered many times. If the game you wager it on has a high edge, the wagering can cost more than the bonus is worth. A low edge plus steady rakeback beats a big bonus on a high-edge game over almost any realistic number of bets.
A month of play, worked through
Say you deposit $200 and play $1 spins. Because you keep re-betting what you win, a few hours of play easily adds up to $3,000 in total bets. At a 4% edge your expected loss is $120; at 1% it is $30; at 0.1% it is $3. The deposit is the same in all three cases; only the edge differs.
That is why we give fair odds the largest single weight in our score.
What the casinos on our list publish
Few casinos publish a house edge for their own games. These figures come from the casinos' own pages, with the date we read them:
BC.Game, Stake, Rainbet, Shuffle and Thrill run provably fair in-house games but do not publish the edge on a page we could check, so you should look at the game's info panel before you play.
See which casinos do best on these numbers in our ranking, or read how we score them.