In poker, rake is the fee the room takes for hosting the game. It comes out of cash-game pots and sits on top of tournament buy-ins, and it is the only way an online poker site actually earns a living from the tables. Whether you are grinding a £0.05/£0.10 cash game or chasing a Sunday major, you are paying it on every hand.
Rakeback is the flip side of that fee: a slice of the rake you have paid that the operator returns to you, usually through a loyalty or VIP scheme. Get a handle on both terms, and you understand why poker bonuses work nothing like casino bonuses or free bets, and why two players can deposit the same amount yet finish the month in very different positions.
This guide is built for UK players claiming online poker offers at UKGC-licensed sites. We answer what rake in poker actually is, look at the rake structures you will run into, explain how rakeback works in practice, and unpack how the rake you generate is what really unlocks a poker welcome bonus.
How Casinos Make Money from Rake
Poker is a player-versus-player game. Unlike roulette, where the green zero gives the house its mathematical edge, or blackjack, where probability sits with the dealer, the cards in a poker game are dealt between you and the other players at the table. The casino has no stake in who wins the hand. So, it cannot rely on a built-in edge the way it does in every other game in the lobby.
Instead, the poker room takes a service fee for hosting the game. That fee is rake, and it is the principal mechanism by which any cardroom, online or live, generates revenue from poker. Software, lobby tools, responsible-gambling features, payment infrastructure and customer support all have to be paid for somewhere, and that somewhere is rake.
That has practical consequences. The most uncomfortable one is the quirk that catches new players out: you can win every hand you play and still hand money over to the house, because rake is taken out of pots regardless of who scoops them. Win £50 in a hand, and the room may take 50p before the chips even slide your way.
The upside, if you want to call it that, is transparency. Reputable UKGC-licensed poker rooms publish their rake structure, and you should be able to check what you are paying before you sit down. If a room does not show you the rake schedule, that is a red flag worth heeding.
Types of Rake Structures
There are three rake formats you will actually meet on a UK poker site, plus one rarer one worth knowing.
Pot rake (cash games). This is the classic format. The room takes a small percentage of each cash-game pot, capped at a maximum. Many online cash games use a rake of around 5% of the pot, usually with a cap that varies by stake and format, and sometimes a reduced rate at the highest stakes where the volumes do the heavy lifting. Caps tend to start from around 50p at micro stakes and rise to a few pounds at higher limits. Most UK-facing cash games use a ‘no flop, no drop’ rule: if the hand ends pre-flop, no rake is taken. That protects you in unraised pots where you fold the small blind without seeing a card.
Fixed fees. A flat penny-per-hand model is rare these days, but you will see it on fast-fold formats at micro stakes, where hand volume is so high that a percentage calculation would be fiddly and the dealing software wants to keep things snappy.
Tournament fees. Buy-ins are quoted as two numbers, for instance £10 + £1. The first number goes into the prize pool. The second is the room’s fee. Typical fees range from 5% to 10% of the buy-in, depending on the format and stake. Rebuys, add-ons and re-entries are all charged the same way, which is worth remembering if you are a regular re-entry player: the fee is paid every time you fire.
Time charges. A flat fee collected every half hour, used almost exclusively in high-stakes live games. You will not see this on a UK online site at recreational stakes, but it is part of the family.
Rake is calculated to the penny, and the best rooms publish the exact rounding rule they use. It sounds pedantic, but over thousands of hands, the difference between rounding up and rounding to the nearest even penny adds up.
What Is Rakeback?
Rakeback is the loyalty mechanism that gives some of your rake back. Think of it as a fee discount, paid retrospectively. The poker room would rather keep you playing than lose you to a competitor, so it returns a slice of what you have paid as cash, points, tournament tickets or some combination of the three.
Two methods are commonly used to work out who gets what.
The dealt method awards the same amount of rakeback to each player dealt into the hand. Sit at a six-handed table, watch a £20 pot get raked £1, and every one of the six players is credited with a sixth of that rake, whether they folded pre-flop or stacked off on the river. This format favours tighter players who fold a lot.
The contributed method rewards players based on their actual contribution to the pot. Put chips in and you build rakeback credit. Fold, and you build none. This format favours active players, and it is the more common of the two at modern UK-facing rooms.
A few things to know about how this lands in your account. Most UKGC-licensed rooms do not market a flat ‘X% rakeback’ figure. Instead, they run points-based VIP schemes where the effective rakeback depends on how much you play and the tier you climb to. A casual player might see an effective rate in the 10% to 15% region, while a serious volume regular at the top tier can reach 25% to 40%, sometimes more during promotional periods.
Whichever model your room uses, the principle is the same. Generate rake, get a portion of it back. It is one of the few mechanics in online gambling that genuinely rewards loyalty in pounds rather than in marketing fluff.
How Rake Affects Your Poker Bonus
This is the bit that catches everyone out the first time. Sportsbook welcome offers are simple: place a qualifying bet, collect a free bet. Casino bonuses unlock with a deposit and clear with wagering. Poker bonuses are different. They release through rake.
A typical UK poker welcome bonus will be quoted as something like ‘100% match up to £100, released as you play.’ Read the small print, and you will find a clearance rate. Say it pays you £5 in bonus money for every £25 of rake you generate. To unlock the full £100, you need to generate £500 of rake. Tournament fees count. Cash-game pot rake counts. Sit & go fees count. A small deposit and a single session will not get you anywhere close.
The bonus typically releases in tranches rather than as a lump sum, which is helpful for player protection (you only see in your wallet what you have actually earned) and useful for the operator (your activity is rewarded over time rather than gamed in a single sitting). Most rooms run a clearance window of 30, 60 or 90 days. If you do not generate enough rake before the clock runs out, the unreleased portion typically expires.
It is worth comparing offers on rake-to-bonus ratios rather than headline numbers. A ‘£50 match’ that clears at £2 of bonus for every £10 of rake is friendlier than a ‘£100 match’ that demands £6 of rake for every pound released. The full list of current UK welcome offers and ongoing promotions is on our poker bonuses page, with the clearance rates for each operator laid out.
Rake vs. Wagering Requirements
The simplest way to grasp poker rake is to put it next to the bonus mechanics you already know.
A casino bonus typically attaches a wagering requirement. Take a £50 bonus with 35x wagering and you have to turn over £1,750 in qualifying bets before any winnings convert to withdrawable cash. The bonus stays ‘sticky’ until that target is met. Full breakdowns of those offers sit on our casino bonuses hub, and there is a deeper explainer on the mechanics in our guide to wagering requirements.
A sportsbook free bet typically requires you to place a qualifying bet at minimum odds (often evens or 4/5). Win or lose, the free bet credits. From there it is a single-use stake, and you only get the winnings back, not the stake. Our front-page list of betting offers shows what is currently in market across UKGC-licensed bookmakers.
A poker rake-based bonus sits between those two. There is no wagering requirement in the casino sense. Once a tranche of bonus has cleared, it is real money in your account, free to withdraw or to keep playing with. But unlike a sportsbook free bet, you have to generate activity to release it, and that activity is rake.
The crucial difference is what happens to your bankroll while you clear the offer. A casino wagering requirement can be cleared at a net loss (and often is), because every spin is a negative-expectation bet. A poker rake-based bonus is a fixed cost on top of skill-based play. Two competent regulars can clear the same bonus and finish the period with very different bankrolls, depending on how well they have run and played.
How to Minimise Rake and Maximise Bonus Value
You will never play rake-free poker at a UKGC-licensed room, but you can absolutely play smart about it.
Compare the structures, not the headlines. Two rooms might both advertise 5% rake, but the caps decide what you actually pay over a session. A lower cap at your usual stake means less rake paid on the big pots. Look at the rake table for the stake you actually play, not the highest stake the room offers.
Mind the stake-to-cap ratio. Rake hurts most at micro stakes, where the cap is rarely reached and you pay the full percentage on small pots. Move up a level (responsibly, and only within your bankroll) and the cap starts to bite the room rather than you.
Pick the right rakeback model for your style. If you play tight and fold a lot pre-flop, a dealt-method scheme returns more, because you are credited for hands you never put money into. If you play loose and aggressive, contributed methods reward your activity better. Most rooms use one or the other, not both, so check before you commit.
Stack rakeback with the welcome offer. During the bonus clearance window, both mechanisms are running at once. The rake you generate releases the welcome bonus and earns rakeback points. The combined return on your rake spend during this period is the best it will be all year.
Time your volume to promotions. Rake races, mission weeks and double-points weekends are common at UKGC-licensed rooms. The rake itself does not drop, but the effective rakeback rises, sometimes substantially. A serious player times their heavier sessions accordingly.
Watch the bonus clock. Work out the rake per day you need to clear the offer in the window, then ask honestly whether your usual volume gets you there. If it does not, scale the bonus down or pass on it. Forcing volume to clear an offer is the classic way to turn a value-positive sign-up into a losing month.
Above all, play within your means. Bonuses, rakeback and VIP tiers are designed to keep you playing, and they are good value if you would be playing anyway. They are a poor reason to play more than you would otherwise choose to. UKGC-licensed rooms offer deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion as standard. Use them. Free, confidential support is available from GamCare and GambleAware, and self-exclusion across UK-licensed operators is managed by GamStop. 18+.