Slot Payout Percentages

Online Casino Payout Percentages

Should mention of percentages bring you out in a cold sweat and bring about unwelcome flashbacks to impenetrable maths lessons in your teens, then don’t panic – this article is just about the simple stuff that’s worth knowing when it comes to payout percentages and online slots.

Reading our reviews and maybe taking a peek at the in-game information provided by all the best online slots, you might have noticed reference to the ‘RTP’ of the game and a percentage figure next to it.

This is the ‘Return To Player’ or ‘payout percentage’ associated with that slot game, and it is an indicator of how much the game pays out in relation to how much players eagerly wager on it. In the rawest terms, the higher the number the better for players as it means more of their combined wagers will be used as winnings.

For obvious reasons, the casino expects to make a profit from its slot games therefore the percentage will always be less than 100% – more than 100% would mean the game pays out more in winnings than is wagered on it, which would be commercial suicide for the casino operator. Before the rise of online casinos on the Internet, typical ‘generous’ slot payout percentages at land-based clubs would be in the region of 80%, but the phenomenal success and competition of online gambling means players can routinely expect the best online slots to be certified with RTP figures in the high 90s!

Whilst a high RTP figure is highly desirable for slot players, it’s important not to make the mistake of thinking it indicates that you can personally expect to get that percentage back whenever you play.

The RTP figure relates to all winnings paid out, so a few lucky players account for the lions share of that total payout, funded by the unlucky wagers of all other players. In a real-world session you might get back more than you wager, or win nothing, so the RTP shouldn’t be judged as an accurate measure of your personal likelihood of winning.

What the RTP figure can tell you is the relative value-for-money a slot can offer in the long run. Higher RTP slot games favour the players, so you can get a feel for how generous the game is in terms of how much profit the casino expects to make from each wager through it.

Ultimately the RTP figures of most online slots today are within a few percent of each other, and so there’s not a lot to concern the majority of players at the best online casinos. A lower RTP doesn’t mean you won’t win on the game, nor does a high RTP mean you will.

As mentioned above it best serves as a guide to the potential value-for-money a particular slot game offers and, in conjunction with slot variance , can be another useful factor players can use to whittle down the huge choice of online slots available today into a shortlist that have just the ‘right stuff’ for their needs.