Betfred Review 2024

In the 50-plus years Betfred has been in existence, it’s gone from a single betting shop in Salford, Greater Manchester to being one of the world’s largest independent bookmakers.

Betfred claims to have over 800,000 active customers in the UK alone, the majority of who access its service through either an excellent app or one of the best betting sites around.

Since launching its online operations in 2011, Betfred have been dubbed ‘the bonus king’ by the betting community due to their string of market-busting offers and promotions.

They continue to churn out those offers today, but before getting into those, bettors can enjoy one of the biggest welcome bonuses on the market.

It’s a nice introduction to a bookmaker that prides itself on doing things their way.

Betfred Sign up Offer

The Betfred welcome bonus rewards new customers with £50 in free bets, one of the largest sign-up rewards currently available. 

To get your hands on the free bets, open an account and deposit a minimum of £10 using a debit card within seven days of registration.

Bettors will then need to wager at least £10 on any sports market on a selection with odds of evens (2.0) or greater.

Within 10 hours of your qualifying bet being settled, you’ll receive your free bets. They are broken up into £30 in free sports bets and £20 in accumulator free bets. 

While other bookmakers are reducing their welcome offers or restricting their use, Betfred has increased the value of its sign-up bonus, making it a market-leader.

Betfred Promotions For Existing Customers

Betfred’s bonus king moniker is well-earned with the bookmaker running promotions for a variety of sports. 

Like many betting sites, Betfred's main focus is on horse racing and football offers, but they don’t neglect other sports. For example, they are, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best rugby betting sites, particularly for rugby league bettors.

Betfred Football Promotions

With chairman Fred Done being a big Manchester United fan, you’d expect he’d want his bookmaker to be rubbing shoulders with the best football betting sites, and in a lot of ways they do. 

Betfred are particularly strong on football betting offers with their Acca Flex promotion likely to delight fans of accumulator bets.

By placing a pre-match acca of five legs or more, with minimum odds of 1/2 (1.5) per selection, you’ll qualify for the offer. 

If your accumulator wins, your payout could be boosted by as much as 50%. If one leg of your acca lets you down, Betfred will refund your stake in cash up to £10.

My personal favourite is Betfred’s Double Delight & Hat-trick Heaven offer, which has proven popular with football bettors. 

Just bet on the first goalscorer, or next goalscorer market if wagering in-play, and wait for them to score. If they get the first or next goal and then score a second you’ll get paid out at double the odds.

If they bag a hat-trick, the wager will pay out at triple the starting price.

Those are two of Betfred’s permanent offers but they run plenty more time-sensitive ones, including money back as a free bet on losing PickYourPunt wagers for big games.

You’ll also find a huge selection of price boosts for football on the Betfred homepage with the odds increased on a range of pre-selected singles and accumulators daily.

Betfred Horse Racing Promotions

Betfred’s horse racing offers probably deserve a review of their own due to the sheer volume of them, and the numbers only go up with Cheltenham betting offers and Grand National offers when they roll around.

Not many horse racing betting sites will beat Betfred for offers, with the firm offering daily money back races, giving you a refund in free bets if your selection finishes second in a chosen race. 

This offer is expanded to include second and third place on selected races from Betfred’s international racing market.

Then there are the extra place and super extra place races, which are again run daily and cover tens of races.

Betfred’s Lucky Bonus promo rewards those who place a winning Lucky 15/31/63, Yankee, Canadian or Heinz bets with up to a 25% bonus on their payout. Meanwhile, those who place a winning tricast on a race will receive a 10% bonus.

Betfred also operate a scheme called Rewards4Racing where you can earn points for wagering on any sport that can then be used to purchase tickets for race meets, including all the big UK and Irish festivals.

If that wasn’t enough, Betfred offer Best Odds Guaranteed on all UK and Irish races, which can all be watched via live stream on the desktop site or Betfred app.

More Betfred Sports Betting Offers

Betfred sponsors the majority of British rugby league competitions, including the top-tier Super League, and so it’s no surprise to see the sport given more prominence than it would usually get from a betting site.

Betfred will double your odds on a first tryscorer bet in selected Super League matches if the player goes on to score again. They also offer the PickYourPunt function on all Super League games.

Greyhound racing also sees a bit of special treatment with a free bets club where you can earn a £10 credit from betting on three or more spaces on select days. There’s also a 10% boost on winnings for successful tricast bets.

They’ll offer price boosts and free bets on blue chip events from the worlds of tennis, cricket and darts, albeit you need to meet certain wagering requirements for the free bet. 

You’ll find extra places and price boosts provided for golf majors too.

In-Play Betting Options & Features

In-play betting has a prominent role on Betfred and they have a massive range of sports available to bet on live.

At the time of writing this review, there were no less than 14 sports available to bet on live, or that would be available to bet in-play on later that day. 

In-play betting sites don’t always show you what they’ll have available to bet on in-play later so I appreciated that touch from Betfred.

You can also filter the in-play options by which have a live stream to watch and I was a little disappointed with the choice after selecting that filter when comparing Betfred’s offering with other live streaming betting sites.

Bet Builder

PickYourPunt is Betfred’s version of a bet builder. You can request bets from Betfred using the hashtag #PickYourPunt on X, formerly Twitter, or you can use the PickYourPunt tool to create a bet on the desktop site or app.

Betfred are superior to other bet builder sites in that they offer PickYourPunt on more than just football with rugby league and darts also covered, although when I asked Betfred to clarify if they offered it on any other sports, they weren’t able to say.

You can have a maximum of five selections in one PickYourPunt, which is significantly less than some rival bet builders.

Betfred will often run promotions tied into football bet builders, offering money back as a free bet on losing PickYourPunt bets on big domestic and international matches.

Unfortunately, you can’t combine multiple bet builders on Betfred into an accumulator, but it remains an above-average provider for fans of bet builders.

Depositing & Withdrawing at Betfred

Betfred Mobile Betting Review

There’s very little difference in appearance and usability between the desktop site and app which makes switching between them seamless.

Betfred’s site has been optimised for mobile betting and while it’s still slightly easier to navigate on a big screen, I didn’t find it took too much longer to find the market you want and place a bet.

As far as betting apps go, it’s one of my favourites to use, although other punters have complained of it being slow and crashing at times.

Still, it has a strong rating on Apple’s App Store of 4.4 out of five, ranking it inside the top 30 free sports apps in the UK. 

The score on Google’s Play Store is slightly lower at four out of five with more Android users reporting issues with the app crashing than those on iOS .