Betfair Exchange Commission: What You Really Pay on a Winning Market
An invented £100 back bet at 2.40 wins, the slip says £140.00 of profit, and at an example rate of 5% the profit you keep is £133.00. The £7.00 gap is exchange commission: it comes off winnings only, a lost market costs nothing, and your country of residence picks the rate.
How much does Betfair Exchange take? Exchange commission is charged only on your net winnings in a market, never on stakes and never on a market you lose. The rate depends on where you live. Where My Betfair Rewards applies (the UK and Ireland among them), your package sets it, and Betfair's own Basic example is 2%. Elsewhere it is a country's Market Base Rate (6.5% is the default for most) times one minus your Discount Rate, and that discount is capped at 20% until your identity checks are complete. Australia and New Zealand are a separate company with its own rates. Take an invented £100 back at 2.40 that wins, as your only bet in the market: at example rates of 2% and 6.5%, the fee is £2.80 and £9.10. Every figure is a snapshot, so check the current terms.
What exchange commission is, and when Betfair charges it
Betfair charges exchange commission on your net winnings in a market. Your stakes are not part of the sum (its terms say so in as many words).
A lost market costs nothing.
The unit is the market, not the bet. Back a selection and lay it later in the same market, and the two results are netted before any fee is worked out; you can follow the sums in why a back and a lay pay one fee together. No Betfair page we read sets one rate for backs and another for lays. For one bet followed all the way to settlement, read commission in a settled bet, step by step.
Amounts are rounded to two decimals, and Betfair states its charges inclusive of VAT where VAT applies. For the rest of a bet's moving parts, the hub has everything else on how exchanges work. The Betfair Sportsbook shows no such line, because there you bet against Betfair's own prices, and you can see the two compared in why the Sportsbook shows no commission line.
Which of the three rate regimes you are in
Betfair does not print one rate; it prints three ways of setting one, and your country of residence picks the way.
| Where you live | How the rate is set | Figures Betfair itself prints | What to check first |
|---|---|---|---|
| My Betfair Rewards regions (the UK and Ireland among them) | The package you choose in My Account; leave it unchosen and Betfair eventually places you in Rewards | Basic package 2%, in Betfair's own example (£100 of net profit, £2.00 of commission). Other package rates: third-party sites only | Your package in My Account, and whether your country is still on the region list |
| Everywhere else | Market Base Rate for your country × (1 - Discount Rate) | Default Market Base Rates of 5%, 6.5% or 7% by country (a help-page image); a Discount Rate capped at 20% until identity checks are complete | The rate in Betfair's emails and web messages, and your ID checks |
| Australia and New Zealand | A separate company, Betfair Pty, with rates of its own | 6% for most sport on its Australian help page (AU/NZ only) | Its own help pages: not covered here |
Now the awkward part. Betfair's Charges page names the Rewards regions as the UK, Ireland and a few others, Croatia and Ukraine among them, and that list looks partly stale. Croatia and Ukraine also appear elsewhere: Croatia is in the 7% group of default Market Base Rates, and Ukraine has a discount table of its own. We found nothing that reconciles the overlaps, so your own account settles it.
In a Rewards region the package you pick sets the rate. Third-party sites quote 5% for Rewards and 8% for Rewards+; we could not confirm either on a Betfair page, so the 5% below is a default Market Base Rate, not a Rewards figure. Betfair Points still build up there but, Betfair says, do not change your rate, except on events based in Australia.
The Market Base Rate, and where its defaults sit
The Market Base Rate is the most commission you pay on some markets. Betfair sets it by your country of residence, not by the sport (Australasian events are the exception), and on a Rewards package it applies only to those Australasian markets.
Betfair's help page shows the defaults in an image, so this comes from an archived copy: 5% for the UK, Ireland, Italy, Gibraltar and Malta; 6.5% for all other countries; and 7% for Albania, Armenia, Croatia, Monaco, Serbia, Montenegro and Slovakia. The 5% for the UK and Ireland matters mainly on Australasian events, because both sit in the Rewards scheme. We found no global table of rates by sport.
The Discount Rate, and what lifts it
Betfair Points drive the Discount Rate, and they are the part you can move. Every 10p of commission paid on a winning market earns 1 point. A losing market earns points too, as if the fee had been charged (Betfair calls it implied commission), though no money is taken. So 1,000 points stand for £100 of commission paid or implied, before any fading.
Every Sunday at midnight GMT, Betfair recalculates your discount and then cuts the points balance by 15%, so points melt unless you keep earning. Betfair Holidays pause the melt: one arrives on registration and another every three months, up to four unused, and markets that settle in a holiday week earn nothing.
Thirty rungs make up the main table. A few of them: 2% off above 1,000 points, 10% above 7,000, 20% above 17,000 and 60% above 150,000, with more in between. Switzerland and Ukraine follow a separate table (1% off above 1,000 points, up to 50% off above 126,000), and Albania, Australia and New Zealand get no Discount Rate at all.
Read the cap first. Betfair holds your Discount Rate at 20% until you have completed its identity and verification requirements, however many points you pile up, so the rungs above 20% wait on the identity checks that lift the cap, and withdrawals need those checks anyway.
Take the 6.5% default: unverified, a 6.5% account cannot fall below 5.2% (6.5% × 0.80), and the top rung (verified, over 150,000 points) gives 2.6% (6.5% × 0.40). Both are our arithmetic, not figures Betfair prints.
Betfair's own worked example (an archived copy, so check the current terms) runs like this: a customer with £400 of net winnings on a market, a Market Base Rate of 5% and a Discount Rate of 40% pays £400 × 5% × (1 - 0.40) = £12.00 in commission and earns 120 points, where the same win with no discount at all would have cost £20.00 (our sum).
The price you see is the price before the fee.
What the arithmetic does to one 2.40 winner
Back to the invented £100 at 2.40, which wins £100 × (2.40 - 1) = £140.00. Assuming it is your only bet in the market, that is your net winnings, so what comes off is £140.00 times the rate.
Read each bar from its empty end: a bettor on the 2% example rate keeps £137.20 of the £140.00 and hands Betfair £2.80, while a bettor on the 6.5% default keeps £130.90 and hands over £9.10, so two identical winners at identical odds leave one account £6.30 poorer, and nothing on the price screen tells you which account that is.
Put it as a price: the effective odds are 1 + (2.40 - 1) × (1 - rate), which is 2.372 at 2%, 2.330 at 5% and 2.302 at 7%. For a lay, where the fee lands on the stake you win, use a lay calculator for the other side of the bet, which adds the liability.
Run your own stake, odds and rate
The calculator takes a back or a lay, your stake, decimal odds and a rate, which you either type (the box opens at an example 2%, which is not your rate) or build from a Market Base Rate and a Discount Rate. It shows what the bet wins or loses, the fee on the market's net result and what is left, and two optional boxes take your other bets in the same market; it assumes the whole bet is matched at the price you type. If you want a page built around the tool alone, open the full calculator, with your own stake and rate.
What a broker's tool changes
A broker's exchange tool is a commercial arrangement under the broker's own terms, not a Betfair account in your name, so the exchange fee and the charges around it follow the broker's terms and are not the Betfair rates above. For that route, read when the rate is the broker's own. Fees, limits and country lists differ by broker, and you will find what each broker charges, country list included laid out in one place.
None of them reopens Betfair's country list. BetInAsia excludes the UK and the USA, AsianConnect's help centre lists the USA and China (its sign-up form disagrees on some countries), MadMarket excludes the UK, the USA and Australia, and Sportmarket the UK, the USA and France. Check the current terms, and if you are unsure a direct account is open to you, the order to try things is in which route to try first.
What this page does not cover
The Expert Fee is a separate weekly charge, and Betfair puts the share who pay it below 0.5%. Its thresholds and a worked example are in where the Expert Fee sits among the limits. Transaction Charges apply only to very high-frequency automated use, and the API page covers what automated access costs. The older Premium Charge survives for Australia and New Zealand only.
Deposit and withdrawal costs are set on the pages inside My Account, and we go through them in what it costs to move money in and out.
The calculator above leaves out all of these, plus Australia's extra charge, the Betfair Points arithmetic (you type the discount, it does not derive it), rounding direction, and any broker's or other exchange's own fees. That last question is taken up in how other exchanges set their own rates.