Online poker rake and rakeback: how much the room takes

Rake is the fee a poker room charges for running the game. You are playing against other players, not the house, so the room earns by taking a slice of the money that moves between them. In cash games that slice is a percentage of each pot, up to a cap. In tournaments and sit-and-gos it is a fee on each entry. Rakeback and loyalty schemes give some of it back. Over a large number of hands, rake adds up to a large cost, as the worked example below shows.

Cash-game rake: percentage with a cap

The room takes a percentage from each pot, then stops at a maximum called the cap. Caps usually rise with the stakes and fall when fewer players are dealt in, so heads-up and three-handed pots are raked less.

GGPoker's Texas Hold'em page is a clear example. Its 6-max No Limit Hold'em rake table, as we read it on 14 October 2026, lists a 5% rake with caps by number of players dealt in. Three of the rows:

Two things follow from the cap:

• Small pots pay the full percentage. A $10 pot at 5% pays $0.50.
• Big pots pay less as a percentage. At $0.50/$1 with five or more players, a $300 pot would be $15 at 5%, but the $5 cap applies. That is under 1.7%.

When most pots are small, as in the example below, most of the rake is paid at the full rate.

Some rooms also apply no flop, no drop: no rake on hands that end before the flop. Whether a room does this, and how rake is rounded, is set out in its own terms.

Worked example: rake per 100 hands

This example is illustrative: the mix of hands and pot sizes is made up to show the method, and the arithmetic is our own. Take a 6-max $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em game with a 5% rake and a $5 cap, the same figures GGPoker lists for that stake with five or more players. To keep it simple, assume six players, no rake on hands that end before the flop, and this mix of 100 hands:

In this illustration the table pays $76 per 100 hands. The big blind is $1, so that is 76 big blinds per 100 hands across the table. Shared evenly among six players it is about 12.7 bb/100 each.

Put that next to a win rate. A player who wins 5 bb/100 after paying that share would be winning about 17.7 bb/100 if there were no rake. The rake is more than double what they keep. A player who breaks even before rake loses about 12.7 bb/100 after it.

The cap barely matters in this example. Across $1,770 of raked pots (45 × $6 + 25 × $30 + 5 × $150), $76 of rake is about 4.3%, close to the full 5%.

Tournament and sit-and-go fees

In tournaments the rake is the entry fee. A £10 + £1 buy-in puts £10 in the prize pool and pays the room £1. The fee is:

• £1 ÷ £11 = 9.1% of what you pay, or
• £1 ÷ £10 = 10% of what goes into the prize pool.

Rooms publish this in different ways. 888poker's knockout tournaments page shows an $11 buy-in split as $5 prize pool, $5 bounty and $1 fee. GGPoker's Spin & Gold page states a 7% tournament fee taken from each buy-in.

Fees add up. One hundred £10 + £1 tournaments cost £100 in fees, whatever your results. Two events at the same headline buy-in can carry different fees, so compare the fee before you compare the prize pools. For the formats themselves, see poker tournaments explained and Spin & Go and fast-fold poker.

Rakeback and loyalty schemes

Rakeback returns part of the rake you pay. It comes in a few general forms:

• Points schemes. You earn loyalty points per unit of rake or fees paid, then exchange them for cash, tournament tickets or bonuses. Many schemes have tiers, and the rate rises as you climb.
• Cashback. A fixed or tiered percentage of rake paid back as cash. partypoker, for example, describes its scheme in Cashback Points per $1 rake, and its Fastforward Happy Hours page offers boosted rates during set hours.
• Missions and challenges. Rewards for playing a set number of hands or tournaments in a period.

Rooms also differ in how they count your rake:

• Dealt method. The rake from each pot is shared equally among everyone dealt in.
• Contributed method. The rake is shared in proportion to how much each player put into the pot. Players who enter more pots are credited with more rake.

Continuing the illustrative example above, a player credited with 12.7 bb/100 in rake who gets 30% back receives about 3.8 bb/100 ($3.80 per 100 hands at $0.50/$1). The other 70% is still a cost. Rakeback reduces the room's take; it does not turn a losing player into a winning one, and it should never be the reason to play more hands than you planned.

Mistakes to avoid

• Ignoring rake when judging results. Compare win rates after rake, at the stakes and format you actually play.
• Assuming big pots set the cost. Much of the rake can come from small and medium pots raked at the full percentage.
• Forgetting caps fall short-handed. The same stake can carry a lower cap with two or three players dealt in.
• Playing for points. A loyalty tier is worth having only if you would play those hands anyway.
• Comparing buy-ins without fees. £10 + £1 and £10 + £0.50 are not the same price.

Where to play

Rake structures and loyalty schemes are set by each room and can vary by market. Read the room's rake page before you sit down. Our listings for UK poker and New Jersey poker, and the poker markets hub, cover licensed sites. For the games themselves, see Texas Hold'em rules, poker hand rankings, Pot Limit Omaha, Short Deck poker and mixed games.