Which bookmaker has the lowest margin? 6,080 matches, 33 bookmakers, and why the usual ranking misleads
Short answer. Compared on the same matches as Pinnacle, the cheapest bookmakers we track for football 1X2 were Dafabet (level with Pinnacle), then Coolbet, Betano, BetOnline.ag, Superbet and 1xBet, all within about 1–2 percentage points of Pinnacle. On the big five leagues and the Champions League, 1xBet, Unibet (SE) and Coolbet priced below Pinnacle on average. The most expensive were SBO and the French books (Unibet FR, PMU, Winamax FR, Betclic), 7–9 points above Pinnacle on the same matches.
The longer answer matters, because the usual way of ranking bookmakers — one average margin each — gets several of them wrong.
What we measured
The margin (overround) of a 1X2 market is the sum of 1/odds for home, draw and away, minus one. A fair market sums to exactly 100%; the excess is what the bookmaker keeps on average.
For every bookmaker and every match we took the last 1X2 price before kick-off — no in-play prices — from 8 June to 4 October 2026: 75,787 prices on 6,080 matches in 89 leagues, from 33 bookmakers. Betting exchanges (Betfair Exchange, Matchbook) are left out: they charge commission on winnings instead of a margin, so the two are not comparable. Pinnacle is the benchmark because it is the sharpest public price.
The straight average
This is what most margin rankings show, and what our live Bookmaker Margin Index shows for the last 30 days: each bookmaker's average over the matches it priced.
| Bookmaker | Matches | Average 1X2 margin |
|---|---|---|
| Coolbet | 1,939 | 5.03% |
| BetAnything | 849 | 5.17% |
| BetOnline.ag | 1,992 | 5.37% |
| GTbets | 831 | 5.61% |
| Pinnacle | 5,562 | 6.03% |
| Unibet (SE) | 2,039 | 6.57% |
| Dafabet | 2,887 | 7.08% |
| 1xBet | 5,321 | 7.65% |
| … | ||
| William Hill | 5,291 | 10.56% |
| BetVictor | 3,149 | 11.12% |
| Unibet (FR) | 1,629 | 11.77% |
| SBO | 2,433 | 14.60% |
It looks clear. It is not.
Why the straight average misleads
Bookmakers do not price the same matches. Margins are much higher on lower leagues than on the Premier League, so a bookmaker that mostly prices Argentine third-tier football looks expensive even when it is not — and one that only prices big European leagues looks cheap.
Pinnacle shows the effect on itself. On the matches it shares with the European books in our data its margin averages about 3.9%; on the lower-league matches it shares with the others, about 7%. Same bookmaker, different matches.
Two examples from our data:
- Dafabet sits mid-table on the straight average (7.08%). On the 2,793 matches it shares with Pinnacle, its margin was 7.02% against Pinnacle's 7.06% — level, and cheaper than Pinnacle on 41% of those matches.
- Marathonbet appears twice in our data, from two different odds feeds that cover different leagues: 6.79% and 10.12% on the straight average. On the same matches as Pinnacle, both versions sit 2.9 points above it. The gap between them was the league mix, not the bookmaker.
The fair comparison: same matches as Pinnacle
For each bookmaker we kept only the matches Pinnacle also priced, and compared the two margins on exactly those matches.
| Bookmaker | Shared matches | Its margin | Pinnacle | Difference | Cheaper than Pinnacle on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dafabet | 2,793 | 7.02% | 7.06% | −0.04 pts | 41% of matches |
| Coolbet | 1,816 | 5.01% | 3.99% | +1.02 | 25% |
| Betano | 3,515 | 8.34% | 7.14% | +1.20 | 29% |
| BetOnline.ag | 1,910 | 5.35% | 3.93% | +1.43 | 11% |
| Superbet | 2,331 | 8.72% | 7.16% | +1.56 | 25% |
| 1xBet | 5,104 | 7.67% | 6.06% | +1.61 | 26% |
| Bet365 | 3,540 | 9.76% | 7.15% | +2.61 | 16% |
| William Hill | 5,186 | 10.57% | 6.08% | +4.50 | 5% |
| 888sport | 2,647 | 9.86% | 4.79% | +5.07 | 1% |
| Unibet (FR) | 1,550 | 11.76% | 3.81% | +7.95 | 0% |
| SBO | 2,426 | 14.60% | 5.90% | +8.70 | 0% |
Selected pairs are compared the same way, match by match, on our head-to-head pages.
The big leagues are cheaper — at every bookmaker
On the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and the Champions League (223 matches in the window, most of them from mid-August), Pinnacle averaged 3.37%. Three bookmakers were cheaper on the same matches:
| Bookmaker | Matches | Its margin | Pinnacle |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1xBet | 220 | 2.30% | 3.37% |
| Unibet (SE) | 219 | 2.84% | 3.37% |
| Coolbet | 219 | 3.04% | 3.39% |
| William Hill | 220 | 8.03% | 3.37% |
| Unibet (FR) | 214 | 9.17% | 3.38% |
Even the expensive books charge less on big matches: William Hill averaged 8.0% on these leagues and 10.7% on everything else.
Is the order stable?
Week by week over the 17 weeks, ranking bookmakers by how far they sat above Pinnacle on shared matches (at least 30 shared matches that week): Dafabet had the smallest gap in 9 of the 14 weeks it qualified, Coolbet in 5 of 15, Betano in 2 of 17 and 1xBet in 1 of 17. The cheap group stays cheap; only the order inside it changes. None of the expensive bookmakers made the top three in any week.
What the difference costs you
A margin m costs you roughly 1 − 1/(1 + m) of everything you stake, before any skill or luck. On the same matches, a Pinnacle-level 3.8% margin costs about €37 per €1,000 staked; Unibet (FR) at 11.8% costs about €105. For someone who stakes €10,000 a year, that is roughly €370 against €1,050 — around €690 a year for the same bets, at the same results.
That is the whole effect of a lower margin: you pay less for each bet. It does not make a bet profitable. If your picks have no edge, the cheapest bookmaker only loses you money more slowly — which is still worth knowing.
Limits of this measurement
- 1X2 only. Totals, handicaps and bet builders carry different margins.
- Last price before kick-off. Margins earlier in the week can be different.
- Coverage differs. For Bet365, Betano, Dafabet, Superbet, 10Bet, BetVictor, SBO, Marathonbet and one of the two Unibet feeds, our prices come from a feed that covers leagues outside the big European ones. Their big-league margins are not in this sample, so they are absent from the big-league table, not missing from it by choice.
- Availability. Not every bookmaker takes customers in every country, and we have no commercial relationship with any of them.
The live numbers update every hour on the Bookmaker Margin Index, each bookmaker has its own page (for example Bet365), and removing the margin from a price yourself is explained in devigging.
Method notes: margin = Σ(1/odds) − 1 over the three 1X2 outcomes of the last pre-kick-off capture per bookmaker and match; captures with three valid prices and an overround between 0.9 and 1.4 only; window 8 Jun – 4 Oct 2026 (ISO weeks 24–40). Same-match comparisons use only matches where both the bookmaker and Pinnacle had a valid price. "Big leagues" = Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, UEFA Champions League.