Index last measured 24 July 2026. Cheapest book this week: Playabets at 6.00 percent. Edges takes no bets and never holds your money. Over 18s only.

EDGES

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 6.00%. Dearest: Supabets at 10.41%.

Ranked cheapest first

This week's margin table

SA Bookmaker Margin Index

Measured 24 JUL 2026 · 204 MATCH MARKETS · 4 BOOKS
South African bookmaker margins, cheapest first
Pos Bookmaker Their cut Payout Margin scale Range Markets Open an account
1 Playabets Cheapest 6.00% 94.34% 5.83–6.28% 48 Best value
2 Hollywoodbets 8.92% 91.81% 5.63–12.15% 107 Link pending
3 ApexBets 9.08% 91.68% 8.51–10.91% 37 Link being fixed
4 Supabets in-play slate No partnership 10.41% 90.57% 6.9–11.91% 12 No partnership

Book by book

What each one is actually good at

Playabets

6.00% margin 48 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 PlayabetsPlayabets in detailSponsored · 18+ · Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board Playabets in detail
Licence
Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board
Payout
94.34%
Range seen
5.83–6.28%
How we read it
Prices render in the public football page; read once per week from a single request

Hollywoodbets

8.92% margin 107 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
Affiliate approved, tracking link pending. No outbound link until it is issued. Hollywoodbets in detail
Licence
KwaZulu-Natal Gaming and Betting Board, with Western Cape licensing for retail
Payout
91.81%
Range seen
5.63–12.15%
How we read it
Public JSON API, unauthenticated, the same endpoint their own website calls

ApexBets

9.08% margin 37 MARKETS MEASURED

Broad coverage and admirable transparency about its own fixtures, but you pay for it in the price.

Strengths
  • Publishes its entire fixture list openly, which is rare and makes them the easiest book to verify
  • Very wide coverage: lower English leagues, table tennis, international minor leagues
  • Consistent margin across the leagues we sampled
Watch for
  • Margin ran materially above the cheapest book on shared fixtures
  • Homepage leads with casino rather than sport, so the sportsbook takes finding
We hold an affiliate account here, but the tracking link we were given lands on an affiliate signup page rather than the sportsbook. Disabled until it is corrected, because sending you to the wrong place is worse than sending you nowhere. ApexBets in detail
Licence
Licensed South African bookmaker; operational rules published under Western Cape gambling regulation
Payout
91.68%
Range seen
8.51–10.91%
How we read it
Prices render in match pages; they publish a full fixture sitemap of over two thousand URLs

Supabets

10.41% margin No partnership in-play slate 12 MARKETS MEASURED

Measured but flagged. Until we can read their prematch board, treat their number as indicative of in-play pricing rather than their league offering.

Strengths
  • Labels its market types explicitly, which makes verification straightforward
  • Strong in-play offering with markets available on minor international fixtures
  • Large retail network for punters who prefer a shop
Watch for
  • The board we can currently read carries in-play and minor-league fixtures, which price dearer than a league slate, so their figure is not comparable to the others
  • We hold no commercial relationship with Supabets, which we disclose rather than hide
No commercial relationship with this bookmaker. Measured and published anyway. Supabets in detail
Licence
Mpumalanga Economic Regulator, trading nationally
Payout
90.57%
Range seen
6.9–11.91%
How we read it
Prices render on the public homepage board; the prematch board uses a websocket we do not yet read

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 BetwayWhat 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 10betWhat we knowSponsored · 18+ · Mpumalanga bookmaker licence 30003 · 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

TopBet

Nothing is refused: their robots.txt carries an empty Disallow, which permits everything. Verified 2026-07-25 that TopBet runs on the Aardvark platform (adv.bet), sharing one backend with Easybet, Betfred SA and the Supabets prematch board. One adapter covers all four, and it is the next one we are building.

Our backlog, not their rule The full reason →
Not measured yet, our side

Betfred SA

Their published sitemap carries horse racing meetings and results but no soccer match pages. Nothing is refused: robots.txt carries an empty Disallow. Verified 2026-07-25 that Betfred SA shares the Aardvark backend with TopBet, Easybet and Supabets prematch, so it arrives with that 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 →
Not read, by their choice

Sportingbet

Their site is readable and their price feed sits at a public URL, so this is not a technical barrier. Their own robots.txt carries Disallow: /*/api/ and the prices live under exactly that path, so reading them means going against a published instruction. Rechecked 2026-07-25. We do not.

Their instruction, respected The full reason →
Cheapest book we can link you to Measured across 204 markets

Playabets is cheapest this week

They take 6.00%, the lowest of the 4 books we measured. On a R20 000 season that is about R533 back in your pocket versus the dearest book.

6.00% Their cut
94.34% Market payout
2.66 pts Better payout than the dearest comparable book
R533 Back in your pocket, per R20k
Go to Playabets See all 4 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?
No, and the numbers make that checkable. The ranking is purely by measured margin, computed from each book's own public prices. Supabets is currently the one book we hold no relationship with, and it is included anyway. Any book that undercuts our partners ranks above them.
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