Smarkets Review: Cheaper Commission, Thinner Markets Than Betfair

An exchange is a market where you bet against other people rather than against a bookmaker, and the house takes a cut of winnings instead of building a margin into the price. On that measure, Smarkets is the cheaper house: 2% on net winnings, against Betfair's headline rate of up to 5%.

Cheaper is only half of the story. A low commission costs you nothing until you cannot get your bet matched at a fair price, and that is where Smarkets' size matters.

What the saving is worth

Put numbers on it. Say you back a selection at evens (2.00) with a £100 stake and it wins. At 2% commission your £100 profit becomes £98. At Betfair's top headline rate of 5%, it becomes £95. That is a £3 gap for each £100 won.

Now ask how much worse a Smarkets price can be before the saving vanishes. Our own arithmetic says that a Smarkets back price of about 1.97 yields the same £95 net as 2.00 on Betfair at 5%. So you can give up roughly three ticks of price at that level and break even. Betfair's real rate varies by market and by your discount, so use your own figure, but the method holds: net return after commission is what you compare, never the raw price.

The Good Money Guide's review scores pricing at 4.5 out of 5, and a Betfair-focused comparison adds that Smarkets has no equivalent of Betfair's Premium Charge, which can push heavy winners' effective commission far higher. That second source is an affiliate page and a weak one, so we lean on it only for the direction of the claim.

Liquidity, the cost you cannot see

The same review gives market access a 3.0 out of 5, the lowest of its five sub-scores, and lists liquidity "not as good" as Betfair's as the main drawback. It also says Smarkets uses market makers to fill gaps, and that they fill a large percentage of bets. One affiliate site puts Smarkets' depth at roughly 15 to 25% of Betfair's. We could find no independent data for that, so treat it as an estimate.

What that means for you is concrete. In a Premier League match, the book is deep enough that you can work an order. In a Tuesday night Championship game, a lower-league cup tie or a niche politics market, you may see a wide gap between back and lay, and the 2% saving is eaten by the spread. The sensible habit is to look at both exchanges before staking, which is what matched bettors have long done.

The app, and what changed

The App Store listing used to read "Smarkets Betting Exchange". It is now "Smarkets: Prediction Markets", with the tagline "Trade on Sports & Politics", an 18+ rating, and a score of 4.77 from 4,635 ratings on version 3.0.1 (lookup on 7 November 2026). By comparison, Matchbook, another UK exchange, scores 4.75 from 1,618 ratings in the same lookup.

The rebrand signals where Smarkets thinks growth sits, and for some bettors that will be good news. Others will see an exchange app shifting attention to a different kind of market. It is early to judge, and we would watch whether sports exchange features keep getting updates.

The written reviews show the spread. One 2022 review calls the app "quick, slick and very easy to navigate", while another is titled "Awful app and service". As ever, individual comments are only a prompt to try it yourself.

Company, licences and the new-customer offer

Smarkets was founded by Jason Trost, a former UBS banker, and is based in London. It received a Malta Gaming Authority licence in 2011 and a UK Gambling Commission licence in 2015. It also runs SBK, a conventional sportsbook for markets that the exchange does not list.

The headline offer is 0% commission for 60 days with code COMMFREE, for new UK, Irish and Maltese customers whose first deposit is at least £10 by card or Instant Banking. That terms summary comes from a review last updated in December 2025, so read the live terms before you rely on it.

Verdict

Use Smarkets if you already understand back and lay, bet mostly on big football, major racing or leading political events, and want to keep more of your winnings. It is the logical second exchange account, and for some people the first.

Do not make it your only exchange if you trade obscure markets, bet in size, or need to get large bets matched quickly. For those uses Betfair's depth is worth its commission. Joining is free, but exchanges can lose money fast, particularly when laying: a lay bet's liability can be many times your stake. No exchange offers a dependable way to make a living.

Responsible gambling: you must be 18 or over. Set deposit limits in your account, check your liabilities on every lay, and contact GamCare on 0808 8020 133 or BeGambleAware if gambling stops being fun.