Horse racing and betting have been synonymous with one another for generations – if you want to be taken seriously as a company in the gambling industry, then you better have a good horse racing product.
It’s the bread and butter of sports gambling but there are plenty of ways for betting sites to differentiate themselves, so we’ve ranked and reviewed the best horse racing betting sites out there to help you find the one that’s right for you.
Whether you are just learning how to bet on horses or are an experienced bettor looking for new horse racing sites, now is the perfect time to familiarise yourself with what UK betting companies have to offer when it comes to horse racing.
Horse racing betting sites UK ranked and reviewed
Imagine it’s Cheltenham Festival week and you fancy a punt on the nags. Or it’s Grand National Saturday and you want to get involved with a wager on the gee-gees. Where should you go?
Almost every betting company in the UK offers horse racing odds but some give a better experience than others. Below, we’ve highlighted 10 of the best horse racing betting sites but rather than a straight, slightly arbitrary ranking from one to 10, we’ve chosen the specific aspect of betting they excel at to create a ‘best-in-class’ list for your needs, whether that be free bets, price boosts or live streaming.
Horse racing betting site |
Best feature |
Betway |
Free bets |
Unibet |
Price boosts |
BoyleSports |
Accumulators |
Bet365 |
Live streaming |
BetGoodwin |
Money-back offers |
Kwiff |
Cash out |
Betfred |
Best Odds Guaranteed |
BetMGM |
Profit boosts |
LiveScore Bet |
Extra places |
BetUK |
New offers |
BetVictor |
Horse racing betting app |
To find out more about our process and gambling responsbily scroll down this page.
Best horse racing betting site for free bets: Betway
If you’re after some freebies to complement your horse racing betting, then Betway is a good place to start. Their weekly Free Bet Club can see you earn £10 in free bets (which can be used on racing markets) if you stake at least £25 on trebles, accumulators or bet builders (on any sport) the previous week.
As well as £10 in free bets, Betway also offer a free-to-play game 4 to Win each day, in which bettors try to pick the winner of four races for a chance to win the £1,000 jackpot.
Betway’s odds are extremely competitive as far as horse racing sites go and they have streams of nearly every race available to bet on.
If you’re not already a Betway customer, the Betway sign up offer is also one of the best on the market, giving you up to £30 back in free bets if your first accumulator loses.
Best horse racing betting site for price boosts: Unibet
A lot of horse racing betting sites offer some form of price boost but it’s hard to beat Unibet’s when it comes to horse racing. Their neatly-named ‘Uniboost’ promo allows you to get bigger odds on any horse you choose up to three times per day. The maximum stake is £20 but this is still a handy tool for boosting any horse that you’re particularly confident about.
Their site is clean and easy to use, especially on desktop and their highly-rated mobile app, while the Unibet sign up offer gives punters up to £40 back in free bets if their first wager loses, as well a £10 bonus for their best online casino.
Best horse racing betting site for accumulators: BoyleSports
If you’re an accumulator lover, head over to BoyleSports, whose Acca Rewards and Acca Loyalty programmes make them the best choice among horse betting sites for racing accas.
BoyleSports’s Acca Loyalty is the betting equivalent of a coffee shop stamp card, where customers are awarded a £5 free acca bet once they’ve placed five £5 accumulators (with at least five selections and total odds of greater than 3/1).
Meanwhile, Acca Rewards allows you to either boost or insure your horse racing accumulator. In any acca of at least three legs, you can insure to get your stake back as a free bet if one selection lets you down or boost so that your odds are improved by increasing amounts if you win (from a 3 per cent boost for a three-leg acca, to a 100 per cent boost for a 14-strong selection).
The BoyleSports sign up offer, giving users a £20 free bet when they wager £10, can also be bet on racing accumulators, or other system wagers, such as a trixie bet or a yankee bet.
Best horse racing betting site UK for live streaming: Bet365
Bet365 market themselves as the home of live streaming and the amount of live sport they’re able to show backs that up. In terms of horse racing sites, the amount of global coverage they stream makes them the perfect choice if you want to watch the race and closely follow your horse.
Unlike many live betting sites, Bet365 stream every racing meet in the UK and Ireland, including every race from major events such as the Cheltenham Festival and Royal Ascot, even once the TV broadcasts have gone off air. They also have selected international meetings available to view. Most races are free to watch, provided Bet365 accounts are funded, but occasionally a nominal bet on an individual event may be required to enable access.
Aside from live streaming, Bet365’s entire horse racing offer is impressive, with competitive odds, a clean site and app, plus the bet365 sign up offer can be wagered on horse racing, as long as you met the requirements of the bet £10, get £30 promotion.
Best horse racing betting site UK for money-back promos: BetGoodwin
BetGoodwin are one of the new horse racing betting sites on the block but have already made waves in the industry thanks to a veritable feast of racing-specific bonuses, offers and money-back promotions.
Their Best Odds Guaranteed for all UK and Irish racing means you’ll always get the best price but they also offer a free bet refund (up to £100) for a wide range of scenarios where you’d probably consider yourself unlucky as a punter. You will get your money back if your horse:
It’s a strong offer from the newcomers in a competitive market and, allied with the BetGoodwin welcome offer that gives users 50 per cent back on first day loses plus good site useability, it all adds up to earn them a recommendation from us as one of the best horse racing betting sites.
Best horse racing betting site for cash out: Kwiff
Another newbie making waves, Kwiff are trying to disrupt the industry with innovative, unique features that traditional horse betting sites haven’t considered. Users will regularly earn surprise bets, which are placed on wagers selected by Kwiff’s sophisticated betting algorithm.
Their cash out offer is also unique as customers can qualify for a ‘Supercharged’ cash out. Not every cash out will be supercharged but it adds more funds to the total cash out amount available when randomly triggered. Kwiff’s cash out facility is easy to use and speedy, with transactions quickly settled, helping it to distinguish it amid a sea of cash out betting sites.
The Kwiff sign up offer is a bit more traditional, giving new customers £30 in free bets, which ca be wagered on racing.
Best horse racing betting site for Best Odds Guaranteed: Betfred
Some, although not all, horse racing betting sites offer Best Odds Guaranteed, which is a win-win for gamblers. The premise is that punters can take an early price on a horse but if the starting price is longer than when they made the bet, they’ll still be paid out at the longer odds.
Betfred are particularly good for this feature as their Best Odds Guaranteed prices are generally available from 8am on the day of the race, whereas most other companies don’t release theirs until 9 or 10am. It allows punters looking bet online more time to find market inefficiencies and secure longer odds than would otherwise be available.
More generally, Betfred offer a good all-round horse racing product and new customers can earn up to £50 in free bets for betting £10 on a sports market as part of the Betfred welcome offer.
Best horse racing betting site UK for profit boost: BetMGM
We discussed price boosts earlier, with Unibet pegged as the best horse racing betting site for them, but profit boosts are a slightly different beast, despite both being designed to increase potential returns.
Whereas a price boost applies to an individual price, a profit boost is applied to specific types of horse racing bets, such as accumulators, with the potential profit increased by a set percentage. BetMGM’s Golden Silks Daily Racing Boost promo is one of the best examples of this. By opting in on a Monday and staking up to £20 on any horse racing market, customers will unlock seven 10 per cent profit boosts – one per day of the week.
This is part of an impressive all-round offer from BetMGM, one of the best new horse racing betting sites. BetMGM are well-known in the American market but are only just starting out in the UK and already turning heads.
The BetMGM sign up offer is one of the biggest among betting sites, although sadly not all of the bet £10, get £40 offer is eligible to be spent on horse racing bets.
Best horse racing betting site UK for extra places: LiveScore Bet
Betting on a race where extra places are available is a great way to back an each-way hunch and while most horse racing bookmakers will offer extra places on occasion, LiveScore Bet do so on selected races every single day and many more races than other horse betting sites. Boyles and Betfred are also good in this category with more regular extra place races than most horse racing sites in the industry.
While it’s the extra places that really make LiveScore Bet stand out, they also have a handy offer where you’ll get your money back as a £10 free bet if your horse finishes second or third in a selected race.
The LiveScore Bet welcome offer gives new customers £30 in free bets, although only £20 is eligible for horse racing betting, while there’s a £5 free acca bet available each week when you place four accumulators with a combined value of at least £5 on horse racing.
If that wasn’t enough, LiveScore Bet also offer Best Odd Guaranteed and live streams of every meeting from the UK, Ireland, France and South Africa. Not too shabby for an operator more likely to be associated with football betting sites.
Best new horse racing betting site: BetUK
BetUK may be new on the scene but there’s plenty to recommend them as a good option for horse racing betting, not least of which is their Free Bet Club. If you opt into the club and bet £15+ on horse racing between Monday and Sunday (at odds of evens or greater), you’ll earn a £3 free bet. The £15 must be a single racing bet but you can do it on two occasions during the week, so could earn £6 of free bets for placing £30 of initial bets.
The BetUK sign up offer allows you to earn £30 worth of free bets when you sign up, deposit and bet £10 on any sport. That £30 is made up of a £10 horse racing free bet, a £10 free bet builder and a £10 football free bet.
There is a free-to-play weekly predictor game called Racing Six, where you predict the winners of six races and can win up to £50,000, and BetUK also offer daily specials on horse racing, all of which make them the pick of new betting sites for horse racing.
Best horse racing betting app: BetVictor
Horse racing betting sites fight hard to be ranked number one for betting apps and currently sitting at the top of tree is BetVictor, who have a 4.7 rating on the Apple Store and 4.2 on Google Play.
From the app, punters can enjoy several racing offers, including the BetVictor sign up offer specifically for racing punters that rewards new customers with £20 in free bets when the join.
BetVictor also do a money back offer where your stake is returned if your horses is deemed to have lost any hope of victory at the start of a race.
BetVictor’s prize wheel hands out rewards each day to users, while they will often produce a range of price boosts for that day’s cards in the UK and Ireland, all of which is available via the BetVictor app.
How we rate horse racing bookmakers
We take the rating and recommendation of horse racing bookmakers very seriously and have stringent criteria for companies to even be considered for our list. Here are some of the factors that went into our thinking:
Regulation
This is a non-negotiable before we recommend any horse betting sites. They have to be regulated by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) for us to even consider rating them, so you can be confident that every site above is safe to engage with. There are too many illegitimate gambling companies out there to take chances – every site mentioned on this page is UKGC-regulated and secure to use.
Reputation
Our recommended horse racing bookmakers are a mixture of household names and new horse racing betting sites. The reputation of the company was very important to us and while the well-known sites such as Betfred, BoyleSports and Bet365 have reputations that precede them, we also considered the burgeoning renown of the newer companies generating buzz in the industry and how well-regarded they are overseas.
Odds & offers
A good selection of promotions can transform a regular bookmaker into one of the best horse racing betting sites and we’ve highlighted some of the top racing offers currently available in this article. But offers are just one part of the package we are searching for when examining horse racing betting sites with competitive odds, and in particular, best odds guaranteed, also high on the wanted list.
Payment methods
Horse racing betting sites should be able to offer punters a range of payment methods, everything from the traditional debit card and bank transfer options, through to e-wallets and potentially even cryptocurrency. PayPal betting sites are pretty common now but with so many alternatives, bookmakers should provide a variety of options for those who want to use e-wallets.
Responsible gambling
Similarly to regulation, how committed the bookmaker is to responsible gambling was important to us. Is ‘When the fun stops. Stop.’ just a slogan to the company or have they taken genuine steps to ensure their actions towards their customers are morally sound? We considered their approaches to vital tools such as deposit limits, loss limits, reality checks and self-exclusion. More on this below.
Customer experience
How good an experience the site provides for its customers was also taken into account when choosing the best horse racing betting sites – across desktop, mobile and betting app. If the site design is smart and well laid out, if the useability is logical and straightforward, then that all makes for a better customer experience. Similarly, how easy it is to interact with staff and solve any potential issues is also a factor.
Horse racing betting tips
With any kind of betting, there is no such thing as a guaranteed winner. No matter how much research you do and how careful you are, there is always a chance your bet will lose, perhaps more so in horse racing than any other sport given you are betting on an animal.
But there are steps you can take to give yourself a better chance of winning. Here are just a few simple steps you can take to potentially improve your chances of picking a winner on horse racing betting sites.
1. Form: This doesn’t just refer to the form of the horse and how he’s been performing lately, but also the form of the jockey and trainer too. Has the jockey been giving plenty of good rides to his mounts recently and getting them in the frame for a win? Is the trainer’s yard in good form, or have they gone off the boil? There’s more than just the horse you are betting on to consider when looking at form.
2. Going: Different horses prefer different types of ground so always check your selection has the conditions they are likely to thrive in. Keep checking the going as conditions can quickly change at any time of year in the UK and Ireland.
3. Course & distance: Trainers will usually know the right distance to race their horses over, but it’s worth checking to see whether they be dropping him back or stepping him up in distance for a race before putting a bet on. It’s also worth checking a horse’s record at a particular track as some seem to enjoy certain venues over others.
4. Tipsters: It can be tricky to find the time to do all this research, or perhaps you are struggling to find out as much information as you’d like about a particular race. Horse racing tipsters can be a valuable source of information and while you should never follow their suggestions blindly, they can provide hints you might not find elsewhere to steer you in the right direction.
Remember to gamble responsibly
The paramount thing is to gamble responsibly. Betting should only ever be considered a form of entertainment – it has not, and will never be, a surefire way to make money, no matter how much you think you know about horse racing betting.
When betting on gambling sites, always assume you’ll lose and therefore, only bet what you can afford. Sports betting can also be addictive, so please take steps to remain in control of your time and budget.
Make sure you use the responsible gambling tools offered by betting companies such as deposit limits, reality checks, loss limits, time outs and self-exclusion. These can stop your gambling from getting out of hand.
There are several charities and healthcare providers should you wish to seek help for gambling-related issues. The providers below offer guidance, support and information:
Best horse racing betting sites summary
Ultimately, while we can recommend what we think are the best horse racing betting sites, the truth is that everyone is looking for something different from their chosen bookmaker.
What’s ‘best’ for one person will be different to what’s ‘best’ for another. You may want to focus on odds boosts, another person may want to have money-back offers if your horse is pipped at the post as a priority. Whatever your requirements, hopefully this information can help you make an informed decision about where you place a bet.
Remember, each of our recommended horse racing betting sites is fully licensed and regulated by the UKGC, ensuring that your personal and financial data is secure. Every site listed here is safe and legal.
Horse racing betting sites FAQs
What is the best horse racing betting site?
Our research has uncovered that horse racing betting sites each have their own strengths and weaknesses, hence why we split our recommendations up by category, rather than rank them one to 10. Which is the best horse racing betting site ultimately comes down to personal preference with every bettor wanting something different from online bookmakers.
How do you place a bet on horse racing?
If you are interested in betting on racing, you’ll first need to find a licensed and regulated bookmaker. All of the horse racing betting sites we’ve recommended are fully licensed. After registering, you’ll need to make a deposit into your account. Next, find a race you want to bet on and follow our horse racing betting tips before making any wager. When ready, add the selection you want to back to your bet slip and enter your stake before placing the bet.
What is an each-way bet on horse racing?
An each-way bet is a type of bet in horse racing that pays out if your selection wins or finishes in the top three or four places. Your wager is split into two, half covering the win part of the bet and half covering the place part. The conditions of the place part of the et are set by the horse racing betting sites, who will pay out on a horse that finishes in a certain place at a fraction of their starting odds.
