The field

Which SA bookmaker is actually cheapest?

Ranked by what they charge you, not by the size of their sign-up bonus. Books we cannot read are listed too, with the reason.

Cheapest right now: Playabets at 8.12%. Dearest: 10bet at 10.27%.

Ranked cheapest first

This week's margin table

SA Bookmaker Margin Index

Measured 21 AUG 2026 · 20939 MATCH MARKETS · 7 BOOKS

South African bookmaker margins, cheapest first
Pos	Bookmaker	Their cut	Payout	Range	Markets	Open an account
1	Playabets Cheapest	8.12%	91.88%	2.81–10.82%	1623	Best value
2	Betway	8.37%	91.63%	4.49–13.26%	1255	Open
3	BetBus No partnership	9.06%	90.94%	4.94–11.74%	314	Open
4	Hollywoodbets No partnership	9.98%	90.02%	5.65–11.91%	671	Open
5	Lucky Fish No partnership	9.98%	90.02%	5.65–11.91%	694	Open
6	ZARbet No partnership	10.01%	89.99%	4.27–12.35%	982	No partnership
7	10bet No partnership	10.27%	89.73%	2.54–14.14%	1643	No partnership

Book by book

What each one is actually good at

Playabets

8.12% margin 1623 MARKETS MEASURED

On the numbers we measured, the best value in the field. If you bet European football, this is the price to beat.

Strengths

Cheapest margin of every book we measured, on both the overall board and the shared-fixture comparison
Tight and consistent pricing across the English league slate
Clean market presentation, with 1X2 and totals clearly separated

Watch for

Front page defaults to major European leagues, so South African competitions take more clicks
Smaller domestic fixture list than Hollywoodbets

Open Playabets Playabets in detailSponsored · 18+ · Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board Playabets in detail

Licence: Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board, bookmaker licence 10141335-018; also Mpumalanga Economic Regulator 9-2-1-09689
Payout: 91.88%
Range seen: 2.81–10.82%
How we read it: Prices render in the public football page; read once per week from a single request

Hollywoodbets

9.98% margin No partnership 671 MARKETS MEASURED

The most complete South African book. Not the cheapest we measured, but the one that actually prices the domestic game in depth.

Strengths

Deepest South African coverage of any book we measure: PSL, MTN8, KZN cup football and full domestic racing
Prices SA fixtures weeks in advance, so early markets are available when rivals have none
Consistent margin across competitions rather than loading the smaller leagues

Watch for

Cup and MTN8 markets ran dearer than their PSL markets in our measurement
Widely cited as running around 4.5% on football; our measurement puts it materially higher

Open Hollywoodbets Hollywoodbets in detailSponsored · 18+ · KwaZulu-Natal Gaming and Betting Board Hollywoodbets in detail

Licence: KwaZulu-Natal Gaming and Betting Board, with Western Cape licensing for retail
Payout: 90.02%
Range seen: 5.65–11.91%
How we read it: Public JSON API, unauthenticated, the same endpoint their own website calls

Coverage, stated plainly

Books we can send you to but have not measured

Being absent from the table above is not a verdict. It means we have no number yet, and we would rather say that than guess.

Betway

Not measured NO RANKING, NO VALUE CLAIM

The most visible sportsbook in the country and the title sponsor of the South African top flight. Visibility is not the same as price, and until we have measured it we will not tell you whether it is cheap or dear.

Why it is not in the table

Betway builds its price board in the browser rather than serving it in the page, and our generic reader pulled promotional widgets instead of match prices, and it returned a negative margin, which is arithmetically impossible and told us the reading was wrong. Rather than publish a number we could not stand behind, we left Betway out. A dedicated adapter is the next one on the list.

Go to Betway What we knowSponsored · 18+ · Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board · we earn a commission and have measured nothing here

10bet

Not measured NO RANKING, NO VALUE CLAIM

A licensed South African operator with a smaller local footprint than the big four. No measured margin yet, so no opinion on price.

Why it is not in the table

Not yet in the collection run. Adding a book costs us roughly a day of adapter work, and we ordered that work by how many South Africans actually bet at each one.

Go to 10bet What we knowSponsored · 18+ · Mpumalanga Economic Regulator, bookmaker licence 9-2-1-09661 · we earn a commission and have measured nothing here

These links pay us exactly the way the ranked ones do. That is the reason they sit in their own section with the word unmeasured on them rather than mixed into the table, where their placement would read as an opinion we have not earned.

Not in the index

Books we do not measure, and why

Some are still being built. Some told us to stay off, in their own published rules, and we listen. Either way it goes on the page.

Not measured yet, our side

Betway

Their site publishes prices openly and robots.txt permits reading. Our first extraction pulled promotional widgets instead of match prices and returned an impossible negative margin, so we withdrew it rather than publish a number we could not stand behind. Betway runs Super Group's own in-house platform, shared with no other SA book, so it needs a bespoke adapter.

Our backlog, not their rule The full reason →

Not measured yet, our side

ZARbet

Their public site publishes no sport routes we can discover from outside, and no prices render. Nothing here is refused; we simply have nothing to read.

Our backlog, not their rule The full reason →

Not read, by their choice

BetBus

The site presents a bot challenge and publishes no robots.txt. We never work around a challenge, so BetBus stays out until they grant access directly.

Their instruction, respected The full reason →

Cheapest book we can link you to Measured across 20939 markets

Playabets is cheapest this week

They take 8.12%, the lowest of the 7 books we measured. On a R20 000 season that is about R361 back in your pocket versus the dearest book.

8.12% Their cut

91.88% Market payout

1.80 pts Better payout than the dearest comparable book

R361 Back in your pocket, per R20k

Go to Playabets See all 7 books

Ranked on measured margin, never on what a book pays us. The method · how we make money. Costs you nothing; we may earn a commission. 18+. 0800 006 008.

Straight answers

Choosing a bookmaker

Which bookmakers are licensed in South Africa?

Every bookmaker on this page holds a provincial licence, which is how sports betting is regulated in South Africa: KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, Mpumalanga and others each license operators who then trade nationally. We only ever measure licensed operators.

Why are some bookmakers missing from the index?

Three reasons, all listed openly below: some are still being wired in, some publish rules that tell automated readers to stay off certain pages, and some serve a challenge instead of a page. We follow those instructions rather than working around them, so those books stay out and the reason is printed.

Do you rank bookmakers you earn commission from higher?

The ranking is, and the numbers make that checkable: every position is set purely by measured margin computed from each book's own public prices, so a partner that charges more ranks below one that charges less and nothing about commission moves it. What the table is NOT is a survey of the market. It covers the bookmakers this desk works with, and books it holds no relationship with are not listed. Read it as what our partners charge, not as the cheapest book in South Africa.

How do I choose between them?

Use the margin as your default and the individual price as your decider. A book with a low margin gives you better value on average, but no book has the best price on every market, so for a specific bet check that specific price on our fixture pages.

See it on a real match

The margin tells you who is cheaper on average. The fixture pages tell you who is cheaper on the bet you actually want.

Browse fixtures → This week's case study