Best Payout Casinos & Slot Sites

Best Payout Casinos & Slot Sites

The listings above are for the casinos who tend to set the Return to Player of variable RTP slot games near the upper end of the range which means bigger payouts on average.  Read on for an in-depth exploration of that and of other factors that affect casino payouts.

• Return To Player
• Jackpot Size
• Promotions
• Other Factors

Return To Player

Return To Player is the amount of player stakes, averaged over hundreds of thousands of spins or more by large numbers of players, that a given slot machine pays back out in winnings.  The higher the Return To Player of the game you’re playing, the longer it will take on average to burn through your bankroll.  In other words – the lower the Return To Player the bigger the house edge and the more the odds are stacked against you.

And now we must lead off – as we do any discussion of the Return To Player of slot games – with our standard disclaimer:

But WHY do we need this disclaimer?  Well, once upon a time all slot games were exactly the same wherever you played them, but this is no longer true.  These days the Return To Player of many of the most popular slot games falls within a range and the operator chooses where in that range to set it.  And having set it, they can always change their mind and reset it somewhere else within the range (and many have), which is why you should always check before playing in case it’s not what you thought.

But wait, don’t operators have to tell players what the RTP of their games is? Yes….and no.

• YES – because they have to make the RTP available somewhere.
• NO – because it does not have to be anywhere prominent and they don’t have to signpost where.

Let’s take that very popular game, Book of Dead.  How can you find out what the Return to Player of that game is?

Here’s a clue – if you think you already know what it is, you’re probably wrong… and definitely DON’T Google it – because you’ll get the wrong answer!

I tried Googling it so you don’t have to, and as you can see the top result (like most other search results on the first page) gives the Return To Player of Book of Dead as 96.21%.  Now this is partially right, but wrong where it actually matters – because the RTP of Book of Dead WAS 96.21% until PlayNGo reconfigured it a couple of years back to have variable RTP!

You’re unlikely to find RTP information on the game tiles or in the lobby though – you have to load the game up, click the tiny question mark and scroll through the game rules to find out what the RTP is for the instance of the game you are playing.

Check the RTP of Book of Dead at a load of different casinos, as I did when researching this article, and you’ll find that very few casinos have kept it at the original 96.21%.  Out of more than 20 casinos I checked, the only ones to have Book of Dead at this level of RTP were bet365,  White Hat Gaming casinos and MrQ (where the 96.21% is helpfully displayed on the game loading screen and can be verified in the game help files).

At most of the online casinos I checked, the RTP had been set to 94.25% – almost two percentage points lower than what players who don’t know about variable RTP might expect.

It gets worse than that, though, far worse. How about a 91.25% RTP on the same game? That’s what I found it to be on three popular casino platforms (and why you won’t find any of those casinos in the listings on this page).

And there’s even one group of skins which has it set at an extremely unappetising 87.25%.  Because of the way that house edge compounds with every playthrough of your remaining funds, you’ll tend to burn through your bankroll much faster if you play there; pick one of the 96.21% RTP casinos instead and on average your money will last around three and half times as long.

Starburst is another serial offender.  Yes, that most innocuous of “beginner” slot games now has RTP that frequently varies from its original 96.09%, although not quite as drastically as that of Book Of Dead.  At quite a few white label sites it’s just 92.05% and I came across several values in between these two extremes.  Again, at most sites you need to check the game help files AFTER you’ve loaded the game up to find out what the RTP is, but at least with Starburst it’s not in teeny tiny print as it is with Book of Dead.

And then there’s 9 Masks of Fire by Gameburger.  According to Google, the RTP of this game and of its St Patrick’s Day reskin 9 Pots of Gold is 96.24% – but at many online casinos (and again, white label sites are the main culprit) it’s as low as 92.01%.  Betfred is one where it’s been kept at 96.24% (as of September 2023) and they also have a helpful and prominently displayed link in each of their lobby areas to a document which is kept up to date with the RTPs of all the games they offer so you can check before opening the game.

These are by no means the only games which have variable RTPs, just some of the most popular ones.  And as we’ve seen, the differences are significant and usually not easy to spot.

Jackpot Size

When you play a wide area progressive jackpot slot like Mega Moolah the size of the jackpot is the same wherever you play it, but there are a number of progressive jackpots that don’t work like that; the two that are best known to UK players are Jackpot King by Blueprint and Red Tiger’s daily jackpots.  In both these cases the operator or (in the case of white label networks) the platform provider has their own progressive jackpot.  For example, the Flutter Jackpot King is available at Paddy Power and other sites owned by Flutter, and the Skill on Net Jackpot King is available at all sites on the Skill on Net casino software.

In theory, it should be best to play a Jackpot King or Red Tiger slot at the site with the biggest jackpot, as the chances of your winning don’t change but the amount you would win if you did would be bigger.  But guess what – it’s not that simple!

This is a snapshot of what I found when I visited and compared a few sites in September 2023.  The Jackpot amounts were mid morning, midweek, and there’s a reason why the Gamesys and Aspire Jackpot Kings are so very much smaller than the others – it’s only recently been introduced at those sites so their pot has not yet had much time to grow.  As for the difference in the sizes of the daily drop, that’s down to volume of players and seed value.  Later in the day they would be more pronounced (or already have dropped!)

What we can immediately see is it’s not just the sizes of the jackpots that are different, there’s quite a bit of variation in the RTPs as well!  And what’s going on with the Red Tiger game having a worse RTP than the jackpot version of the same game?

Let’s bring that disclaimer up again, shall we, so as not to get distracted by jackpot size?

Promotions

Anything you receive as a result of taking part in a promotion – the welcome offer, free spins, a bonus, cashback or anything you win from a leaderboard or a prize draw – is over and above the RTP of any games you play in the course of qualifying for the promotion.  If a casino runs lots of promotions you might reasonably expect to get more of a return on your deposits than if they didn’t (if you participate in the promotions, that is). Promotions can also add to the entertainment value.

BUT – and it is a big but – it is entirely possible that the operator has set their slot RTPs at the lower end of the scale and that’s how come they are able to afford to run so many promotions!  In that scenario, the biggest losers are the players who DON’T participate in the promotions as they are essentally losing out twice – once by not collecting the rewards and once by getting stung on RTP.

A casino that runs lots of offers and promotions, then, does not necessarily give the best payouts.

Other factors that can affect payouts

Player funds segregation & protection

What do you think would happen if you had thousands of pounds on deposit in an online casino account and the operator went into administration (as happened in the case of Football Index)?  You may well be horrified to hear that even at a UK regulated site you would not necessarily have precedence over any other creditor, but that is the case at the majority of online casinos.  UK regulated online casinos are required to put a statement in their terms and conditions about the level of player funds protection they have and for many of them, it’s “Not Protected”.

It won’t have occurred to many players that this could even be an issue and many don’t read the terms and conditions thoroughly enough to discover that it is, and that’s why we include this information in all our reviews.  At an online casino with “Medium” funds protection you would most likely be paid in full if the worst were to happen and with “High” protection there’s a cast-iron guarantee that you would.

And while we’re on the subject of player funds protection – don’t be tempted to play at an unregulated casino, where you might not get paid at all!

Payment method issues

Depositing using a method other than debit card can make it difficult to withdraw winnings and can actually reduce payouts:

• Your chosen payment method may have a low transaction limit
• Your chosen payment method may charge a fee and/or the casino may charge you a fee for using it.  For example, most pay by phone casinos charge a fee for deposits via mobile phone billing, and Neosurf charges a fee for adding voucher codes to MyNeosurf.
• If your chosen payment method does not support withdrawals the casino may charge a fee to pay you via bank transfer as well as asking you to supply extra ID to verify that the bank account is yours.

Account verification

Account verification (especially when combined with affordability checks) doesn’t affect the amount a casino pays out in theory, but in practice it can make it a difficult and time- consuming process to extract your winnings.  At big name online casinos checks are normally carried out seamlessly and unless you don’t have much of a credit history and/or have recently changed address, you may not even be aware of them going on. Smaller operators often don’t have access to as much technology and here, you may find you have to send them copies of your bank statements or utility bills and/or a selfie of you holding your passport. Jumpman in particular are well known for repeatedly rejecting documents without an explanation.

All of these factors can affect how much a casino pays out, but the crux of it really is Return To Player.  If you want the best casino payouts, this is something that you definitely ought to be paying attention to.  Our listings are a starting point (and we’ve also highlighted the casinos that show you RTP before you open the game) but please check the RTP before you start to play.

Last updated: October 17, 2023

Sue Dawson

Head of Content

Sue Dawson has been writing about (and playing) online bingo and slots since 2013, putting her unique spin on everything.  She has written pieces for iGaming industry news sites, appeared on panels at industry events and on podcasts, helped to judge industry awards and is a member of industry think tank Ampersand Plus.

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