Best Online Gambling Sites UK - Top Gambling Sites

There are so many gambling sites to choose from that it can be hard deciding which one is best for you. 

Gambling sites need to offer great games, good bonuses, and a real chance of you winning money – and that’s exactly how we judged the ones we’ve reviewed in this guide. 

We’ve focused on the five key things that every great gambling site needs to have to deliver the essentials that gamblers demand: 

1. Welcome bonus

2. Free spins 

3. Good RTP 

4. Great games 

5. Licensing and legislation

The important thing is that gambling sites allow you to have fun and give you a chance of winning some money. 

All of the ones we’ve covered do just that, and we’ve given you the information you need to decide which sites are best for you. 

Best UK gambling sites 

Our number 1 gambling site: Roxy Palace 

Credit: Roxy Palace

It’s a tough call, but Roxy Palace is our number one gambling site because it’s games give you the best chance to win some money. 

Picking our favourite casino is difficult – every gambler is different and that means no one person will want exactly the same things from a particular site as the next. 

But there are some important things that everyone expects from a great gambling site – games, bonuses, and the opportunity to win some cash. 

It’s this last one where Roxy Palace excels. How do we know this? Because it has the best in-game RTP (return to player) of all the sites we looked at. 

Why is this important? Because RTP is the industry measurement for gambling site payouts – in other words, it shows how likely you are to win some money from a game or casino. 

Credit: Flickr

We rank Roxy Palace number one for slots, blackjack, and roulette – it also performs extremely well for poker. 

While the payout you get isn’t the only measure of success, it’s important to remember that there are two main reasons for betting at a gambling site – to have fun and to make some money. 

And does Roxy Palace offer fun to go with its excellent payouts? Absolutely. 

So, while there are many great gambling sites out there, right now we’re giving our number one spot to Roxy Palace – read our full thoughts on this gambling site by checking out our full review. 

Top 5 gambling sites for welcome bonus 

Giving you the chance to get up to £1,000, Betway’s welcome bonus smashes the introductory offers you get from gambling sites. 

While welcome bonuses are meaningless if you’ve already got an account, they’re extremely important to new gamblers – ones yet to create an account. 

This is because welcome bonuses offer you the chance to get cash rewards from gambling sites – often for just depositing your own money and (on rare occasions) simply for signing up to the gambling site. 

All of this can sound very enticing to gamblers. 

Credit: PXHere

However, there is one very important detail you need to remember – welcome bonuses aren’t exactly free money, there are some conditions. 

The conditions that come with welcome bonuses mean that you often need to spend a certain amount of your own money at the gambling site before you can collect your money – this is in addition to the money you deposited to create your account. 

What does all mean? That you need to check the terms and conditions carefully before you get too excited about the welcome bonuses offered by gambling sites. 

Top 5 gambling sites for free spins  

Genesis is our number one gambling site for free spins – 300 free spins puts it 50 ahead of its closest rival, Jackpot247. 

Free spins are an important part of the introductory package offered by a casino as they give gamblers a chance to play some of the top slots games for free. 

Of course, this means little to people who already have an account with these sites, as free spins are for new gamblers. 

An important thing to know about free spins is that they come with conditions. Some of the most common conditions are that you get them for a set number of days, receive a certain amount each day, or can only use them on specific slots games. 

Top 5 gambling sites for RTP 

RTP (return to player) is one of the most competitive categories for gambling sites (just 0.63% separates the top five) but Casumo comes out on top for overall RTP, with 97.23%. 

There’s a good reason that RTP is such a competitive category for gambling sites – it’s the way the industry measures how good the payout is that you’re getting from gambling sites and games. 

How does that work? We’ll explain using the example of a £100 bet. 

If a casino has an RTP of 97.23% it means that £97.23 of every £100 wagered is paid back to gamblers over time – so the higher the RTP the better your chance of winning some money, in theory. 

The key thing to know with RTP is that it’s not as simple as you spending £100 and getting £97.23 in return. This is because it’s an average that accounts for multiple gamblers and bets, some of which will win and some of which won’t.

So use RTP as a guide for how likely you are to win some money at a casino but remember that chance and skill play a huge part in how much you’ll actually win – or lose. 

Top 5 gambling sites for games 

Games are the key to great gambling sites – without games there’s nothing for you to wager on and no chance of you winning some cash. 

Genesis just pips PlayOJO to the top spot in our list of the top gambling sites for games. 

Both Genesis and PlayOJO offer the same number of games (an excellent 1,000 each) so it came down to RTP to make the decision on which of the two sites should rank number one. 

It’s a close-run thing, but Genesis’ RTP of 97.00% is slightly better (0.08%) than PlayOJO’s 96.92%. 

While this is a strong indication that Genesis is a great gambling site for games, we recommended you check the site to see if it has the titles you want. 

Top 5 gambling sites for roulette 

Roulette is a casino game that’s so well-known it’s passed into popular culture – 007 is partial to a game and there’s a (predictably wild) betting strategy named after James Bond.  

Due to its popularity, casinos need to offer a good roulette package if they’re going to be among the best in the business. 

This means having lots of top-quality games that give you a good chance of winning some money – gamblers expect them to have a blend of both fun and results. 

As you can see from our top five gambling sites for roulette, there are plenty of great gambling sites that have a great roulette package. 

However, there can be only one winner and that’s Roxy Palace – we explain why in the next section.

Best gambling site for roulette: Roxy Palace 

Credit: Roxy Palace

Roxy Palace has the most roulette games of the gambling sites we reviewed – 58. 

Roxy Palace also has the best roulette RTP of the gambling sites we’ve used – 99.28%.

You might think that’s enough for Roxy Palace to be the best gambling site for roulette – and it is. However, it’s not simply that it has lots of games, it’s also that they’re varied and of a very high standard. 

You can choose from Speed Roulette, Premier Roulette, European Roulette, and more, while there’s also a good blend of live and online games.   

Top 5 gambling sites for blackjack

Whether it's playing the game at one of the many great casinos or seeing it on the big screen, if you’re a fan of gambling it’s almost impossible to be unaware of blackjack.  

Part of the reason blackjack is such a big draw is its simplicity – it takes no time to learn the basics of blackjack and only a little longer to get to grips with the basic blackjack strategy. 

But that’s not the only reason blackjack is so popular – it often has the best RTP of the games you’ll find on gambling sites, frequently getting close to 100%. 

What this means is that gamblers expect gambling sites to offer a great blackjack package, with plenty of games and a very competitive RTP. 

As you’ll see from our top five gambling sites for blackjack, there are many great places you can play the game. But what’s the best gambling site for blackjack? It’sGenesis, and we explain why below. 

Top gambling site for blackjack: Genesis 

Credit: Genesis

We’ll start by saying this Genesis doesn’t have the best RTP of the gambling sites we’ve reviewed – the top spot for blackjack RTP is shared by 32Red and Roxy Palace, each with 99.91% 

But Genesis is only just behind those two casinos, with its RTP of 99.87%, and when it comes to games it’s streets ahead. 

Genesis has 50 blackjack games, nearly twice as much as the gambling site with the second-most blackjack games, which is 32Red on 27. 

You can pick from a great variety of blackjack games at Genesis, with live dealer titles and online games both well-represented. 

So, we recommend you head over to Genesis if you love blackjack. And once you’ve had a few games at Genesis, you could brush up your blackjack card counting skills and see if you can use them at a live casino. 

Find out about all the other great games at this top gambling site by reading our Casino Genesis review. 

Top 5 gambling sites for slots 

Head over to almost any of the best gambling sites and visit the games section. While each one will have its own preferred titles and priority games, you’ll almost certainly notice that one thing is the same – there are more slots games than any other. 

Slots are such a competitive area for gambling sites and because there are next-to-no rules or strategies to learn – you simply pull the lever and see what result the RNG (Random Number Generator) gives you. 

What you’ll also find (as you’ll see from how close four of the top five gambling sites are in our list above) is that many gambling sites offer very similar RTPs – even though LeoVega tops the list with 99.99%.

This means it often comes down to how many slots games a gambling site has, and there was a clear winner when we reviewed the best gambling sites – LeoVegas, with 780. 

Below, we talk a little more about the slots games on offer at LeoVegas. 

Top gambling site for slots: LeoVegas

Credit: LeoVegas

The slots section of LeoVegas’ games catalogue has an RTP of 99.99% – that means £99.99 of every £100 wagered is returned to gamblers over time. 

Such an impressive RTP is a huge pull for gamblers, but where LeoVegas really shines is in the number of games it offers – a truly incredible 780. 

As you’d expect from such a huge library of games, there’s a great range to the slots titles you get from LeoVegas – from fantasy to classic tiles, massive paylines, and some great secret bonuses. 

You can find out even more about the great slots offering from this by reading our Casino LeoVegas review. 

Top 5 gambling sites for poker

Few casino games can rival poker for popularity – it’s a multi-billion industry, one where its best players can earn livings that rival those of film stars. 

Poker is a game that’s incredibly varied – there are many great types of poker available for gamblers to try their hand at, and this means poker fans need a broad selection of games to play. 

Gambling sites are competing with poker cardrooms, such as PokerStars, to get the attention of poker fans. This means they also need to give gamblers a great RTP with their poker games – something that’s clear from our top five list for poker.

We’ve picked Mr Green as having the best poker offering of the sites we’ve reviewed – see below for our reasons why. 

Top gambling site for poker: Mr Green 

Credit: Mr Green

Mr Green’s poker offering features 50 games and an overall RTP of 99.65% – both of which are enormously appealing. 

What’s also on offer from Mr Green is a superb variety of poker games, with both online video poker and live casino betting covered, and lots of poker types for gamblers to choose from (Carribean stud poker, Texas hold ‘em, and three-card poker being just three examples). 

In addition to this, Mr Green also provides its gamblers with some superb poker resources, so they can get a better understanding of the game and improve their skills.  

Find out why this is our poker pick from the gambling sites we’ve covered by reading our Casino Mr Green review. 

Top gambling site for sports betting: Betway 

Credit: Betway

We spent a long time thinking about which site provides the best sports betting, and we concluded that Betway’s offering trumped its rivals. 

Why? 

Because of its range of bets, attention to detail (it has an exceptional interface and an incredible blog), and the enormous number of sports you can pick from. 

Considering that sports betting is a multi-billion industry (one projected to be worth £119.62 billion in 2024) it’s surprising that not every gambling site offers it to its gamblers – less than half the gambling sites we review offer sports betting. 

Because not all gambling sites offer sports betting, you might expect the sites that do to give less attention to it than you’d like to see – but you’d be wrong. 

The competition was fierce among the gambling sites that offer sports betting – with Betfair, 32Red, and Mr Green all making very strong cases to be crowned the best gambling site for sports betting. 

What this means is that while Casino Betway review confirms it to be exceptional for sports betting, we recommend you try all of the other great sports betting sites we’ve covered to find out which one works for you.

Licensing and legislation to look out for at gambling sites

Some of the things gamblers expect is about games – for example, how many titles they can choose from to play and the payouts that they offer. However, there’s a key feature that simply can’t be overlooked – licensing and legislation. 

Licensing and legislation is a simple detail that many people. There’s a straightforward reason for this – it’s a given that the gambling sites you use are licensed and legislated. 

And it’s true, it is a given. 

It’s a given because every casino that operates in the UK is subject to specific requirements to be able to offer gambling services to its players. These requirements are that the gambling sites are subject to the rules and laws of governments and gambling organisations. 

To confirm that they’re compliant with the rules and laws they need to be, casinos list the icons of licensing and legislation authorities on their websites – these are the ones you need to keep an eye out for: 

UK Gambling Commission  

Credit: Gambling Commission 

All UK gambling sites will be regulated by the UK gambling commission. 

Government of Gibraltar  

Credit: Wikipedia

If a casino site is licensed in Gibraltar then you’ll find the logo of the Gibraltar government on its site. 

Malta Gaming Authority 

Credit: Malta Gaming Authority

If a gambling site is licensed in Malta then you’ll see the logo of the Malta Gaming Authority on its website. 

Spelinspektionen

Credit: Spelinspektionen

Any gambling site that is licensed in Sweden will have the Spelinspektionen logo on its website. 

Gambling sites don’t only want their players to know that they take their legal obligations seriously, they also want gamblers to know that they’re serious about their commitment to responsible gambling. 

To be sure that the places you’re betting at are committed to responsible gambling, look out for these icons on their websites: 

GamCare

Credit: GamCare

GamCare is a UK charity that exists to help problem gamblers tackle their betting issues. 

GAMSTOP

Credit: GAMSTOP

GAMSTOP allows gamblers to self-exclude from gambling companies. This works by gamblers registering with the organisation and then stating they wish to be excluded from a gambling site for a set period of time – during this time they will be blocked from using the site. 

FAQs

What are the best sites to win real money? 

Winning money is one of the reasons people gamble – it’s the thing that adds a competitive edge to gambling. We’ve reviewed the best real money casinos and explained why each of them is a great place to gamble. 

It’s always good to learn how to play games and then practise your skills at free gambling sites – blackjack is just one of the many games with free sites for you to bet at. 

Can using gambling sites affect your credit score?

Betting online doesn't affect your credit score – as far as credit agencies are concerned, spending money at Mr Green is exactly the same as buying something at Amazon. 

However, where gambling sites could have an impact on your credit score is if you borrow money to fund your betting habit. 

The reason for this is that any approved lending (credit card, loans, etc… ) requires a credit check to complete the application. Your credit rating will then be impacted by how you repay the borrowing – if you miss payments then it will be damaged. 

If you are borrowing money to fund your gambling habit, then you should seek help from organisations set up to provide assistance to problem gamblers.   

What gambling sites are on GAMSTOP? 

GAMSTOP is an organisation that lets people self-exclude from gambling sites. Many gambling sites are already on GAMSTOP but not all of them are. You can contact GAMSTOP to find out more about which gambling sites are registered with it.