What is Penny Bingo?
In penny bingo, cards cost just 1p or 2p each. Penny bingo is a great way to play for those on a budget who still want to experience the thrill of online bingo.
If you are looking for low cost online bingo, the ticket price should actually be more important than the bonuses a site offers. A £30 bonus does not last very long if all the tickets cost 25p or more. Consider this, however: suppose you were to deposit £10, get a £20 deposit bonus (as is common) and then only play 1p bingo games, one card per game. That’s a staggering 3000 games of bingo you can play before you run out of funds even if you don’t win anything (and you would have to be pretty unlucky not to win anything in 3000 games even with just one card per game). How much entertainment is that!!!
Some sites, including big names such as Gala Bingo and Sky Bingo have penny games running all day, every day. There was even one – Fancy Bingo – that specialised in penny bingo (it’s now closed).
At other sites penny bingo only runs at certain times of the day – such as at William Hill where one of the rooms has 1p tickets all day Sunday – or as part of special promotions such as the one at Robin Hood Bingo with 1p tickets for a sliding jackpot game. Do check the bingo schedule and promotions page before signing up if you are hoping to play a lot of penny bingo. It is important to make sure that the cheap bingo games run at the times most convenient for you.
On the minus side, 1p games tend to attract a large number of players but many of them react to the low ticket price by simply buying more tickets; the result can be an excessively large number of tickets in play (tens of thousands, perhaps) resulting in a game which is over quite quickly and where each individual card has an extremely low chance of winning anything. This effect is particularly noticeable where it is easy to pre-buy and/or the game is running across a large network or on a very popular site.
Multi stake single ticket bingo games are another form of low cost bingo. In these games, players can only buy one ticket but can choose from several price points. The prize is worked out as a multiple of stake, so if you buy into a multi stake single ticket game for £1 and win, you’ll win ten times as much as if you bought in for 10p. Most of these games have a minimum stake of 10p but this can still be better value than buying regular bingo tickets at 1p as it gives you the same chance of winning as every other player (rather than a much smaller chance if you buy 1 ticket and other players max out at 120 tickets). A few multi stake single ticket games can be played for 2p or 5p and these represent excellent value.
Penny Bingo – Network/Software Overview
Virtue Fusion
Browse through the bingo schedule at any Virtue Fusion bingo site and you’ll find plenty of 1p and 2p bingo games; some sites also have a dedicated bargain bingo room.
Virtue Fusion single ticket games include the networked Cash Cubes and Clover Rollover Bingo and various operator specials like Mystic Meg Bingo at Sun Bingo. These normally have a minimum stake of 10p.
Virtue Fusion also sell 1p tickets to Spirit Twister but as you have to buy 100 tickets per game this is not really penny bingo.
Dragonfish
Dragonfish is not great for penny bingo. Dragonfish network bingo sites used to have one 1p game a day (Late Night Show), but it was a game where players had to buy the maximum 96 tickets. A few Dragonfish sites still have a 90 ball room called Pennies Make Pounds but it is only open around lunchtime. Dragonfish don’t have any single ticket games.
Pragmatic Play
The Pragmatic Play network has an 80 ball room with tickets priced at 1p and also runs 1p (and 2p) games in the 30 ball speed bingo room. Some 2p games also run in their 90 ball rooms. Pragmatic don’t offer any single ticket games.
Some Pragmatic sites including Heart Bingo and PlayOJO run penny bingo games in their non network bingo rooms.
Entain
The lowest cost bingo game at Entain bingo sites is Bingo Beats (Chakra). It’s a single ticket game with a minimum stake of 2p. Entain also run 1p and 2p games in their 30 ball, 75 ball and 90 ball bingo rooms. All in all, this is one of the best ranges of cheap and penny bingo games you’ll find anywhere.
Gamesys
Gamesys sites don’t all have the same bingo rooms. The best for penny bingo are Jackpotjoy and Double Bubble Bingo, both of which have a 90 ball penny bingo room (1p tickets). Gamesys don’t offer any single ticket games.
Others
tombola do low cost bingo very well indeed. Their Bingo Lite 90 ball rooms have a ticket price of 2p (10p for a strip of 6) and their Paper game has tickets priced at 1p each with a maximum purchase of 5 per game. They also have a bigger selection of single ticket games than everyone else put together; most of them have a minimum stake of 10p but two – Potion and Morph – have a minimum stake of just 5p.
Unibet Bingo and bingo.com have a 75 ball room with tickets priced at 1p.
