The only formula you need
To calculate Stake rakeback, every figure comes from a single line of arithmetic:
Rakeback = Wager × House edge × 3.5%
Three numbers go in: how much you wagered, the house edge of the game, and Stake’s flat rakeback rate of 3.5%. Stake confirms this rate directly in its own help centre, where the company describes rakeback as 3.5% of the house edge returned as cash across slots, table games, and live dealer games. The rate does not change as you climb the VIP tiers – Bronze and Diamond players earn the same 3.5%. Higher tiers unlock bigger reloads and level-up rewards, but the rakeback percentage itself is fixed.
Work through Stake’s own example and the formula proves out. Wager 1 BTC on a game with a 2% house edge: 1 × 0.02 × 0.035 = 0.0007 BTC back, win or lose. That is the exact figure Stake quotes, which tells you the formula above is the real mechanism and not an approximation.
The part that trips people up is never the 3.5% or the wager – both are easy. It is the house edge. Get that number right and the rest is multiplication.
Step one: turn RTP into house edge
The house edge is the slice of each wager the casino expects to keep over time. You rarely see it published directly, but you almost always see its mirror image: the return-to-player percentage, or RTP. The two always add up to 100%, so:
House edge = 100% − RTP
A slot listed at 96% RTP carries a 4% house edge. One at 97.5% RTP carries 2.5%. A Stake Original such as Dice or Crash runs at around 99% RTP, which is a 1% house edge. Once you can do this one subtraction, you can find the house edge for any game on the site.
Here is how the common Stake game types typically fall. Treat these as starting points and replace them with the real RTP of the specific game you played, which matters because the next section explains why a single rough figure rarely describes a real session.
| Game type | Typical RTP | House edge (100% − RTP) |
|---|---|---|
| Stake Originals (Dice, Crash, Limbo) | ~99% | ~1% |
| Live dealer tables | ~98.5% | ~1.5% |
| Video slots (mid-range) | ~96% | ~4% |
| Sportsbook (Stake’s fixed assumption) | – | 3% (applied by default) |
Where do you find a game’s actual RTP? On slots it usually sits in the game’s information or paytable panel, opened from inside the game itself. Stake Originals publish their RTP in each game’s help text. This is also the first honest limit of any hand calculation: not every provider displays RTP clearly, and a handful of slots ship in multiple versions with different RTPs, so the figure you use is the published long-run average rather than a guarantee for your particular session.
Step two: why your real rate is a blend, not one number
This is where most rakeback estimates quietly go wrong, and it is the reason this guide exists alongside the simple formula.
A single calculation assumes you played one game at one house edge. Almost nobody does that. A normal evening might be £400 on Dice, £300 on a couple of slots, and a £200 sports bet. Three different house edges, three different rakeback figures – and no single bucket describes the whole session honestly. Run that night through one “slots, 4%” estimate and you overstate it badly; run it through “Originals, 1%” and you understate it.
The fix is to calculate each game separately and add the results. Your real rakeback for a session is the sum of the per-game figures, and your effective rate across the night is that total divided by your total wager. Worked by hand, the session above looks like this:
| Game | Wager | House edge | Rakeback (wager × edge × 3.5%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dice | £400 | 1% | £400 × 0.01 × 0.035 = £0.14 |
| Slots | £300 | 4% | £300 × 0.04 × 0.035 = £0.42 |
| Sports bet | £200 | 3% | £200 × 0.03 × 0.035 = £0.21 |
| Session total | £900 | blended | £0.77 |
Across £900 wagered you earned £0.77, an effective rate of roughly 0.086% of turnover. Notice how far that sits from the headline “3.5%” – because 3.5% applies to the edge, and the edge is a small fraction of each bet. A single-bucket guess would have missed it in either direction. The blend is the only honest number.
The calculator below is built for exactly this. Add a row per game, enter the wager and either the house edge or the RTP, and it returns each game’s rakeback, your session total, and your effective rate across everything.
Stake rakeback session calculator
Add a row for each game you played. Enter the wager and either the house edge or the RTP. Rakeback is a flat 3.5% of the house edge — the calculator blends your games into one real session figure.
| Game | Wager | House edge % | or RTP % | Rakeback |
|---|
Reading the result, and checking Stake’s own figure
Once you can produce the number yourself, the most useful thing you can do with it is verify the figure Stake shows you. Accumulated rakeback appears in your account under the VIP page, on the Rakeback tab, and you claim it manually from there – it is available to take at any time, so the only real discipline is remembering to collect it rather than leaving it sitting unclaimed.
If your hand calculation and Stake’s displayed figure are in the same ballpark, the system is behaving as expected. If they are wildly apart, the likeliest culprit is the house edge you assumed – a real session blends games you may not have logged precisely, and the published RTPs are long-run averages rather than a record of your exact spins. Your calculation tells you the right order of magnitude, not the penny. Where the gap is large and persistent, Stake’s support or, for high-tier players, a VIP host can confirm how a specific figure was reached.
Two quirks are worth building into your expectations before you compare. On the sportsbook, Stake does not read a per-bet house edge at all; it applies a default 3% assumption to the theoretical value of your bets and pays 3.5% of that, which works out to roughly 0.105% of your sports turnover. And voided or cashed-out sports bets are ineligible – they generate no rakeback, so letting a bet settle naturally is the only way it counts. Poker is handled differently again, calculated as 3.5% of the actual rake rather than a house-edge estimate.
Calculating your rate is not the same as chasing it
Here is the part a generic tool article leaves out. Being able to calculate your rakeback per game is genuinely useful – for understanding your true return, and for choosing between games you were going to play anyway. If you would happily play either of two slots, knowing the rakeback on each is a fair tiebreaker.
What the maths must not become is a reason to pick higher-edge games to “earn more rakeback.” The figures make the trap obvious. A 4% slot pays four times the rakeback of a 1% Original on the same wager – but it also costs you four times as much in expected losses. Rakeback is always a small fraction of the edge it rebates, never larger than it, because the casino keeps the rest. That is the whole business model. Chasing rakeback by moving to worse-odds games means paying far more in losses than you claw back in rebate.
So the honest framing is narrow and worth holding onto: calculate per game to know your return and to choose between games of similar value, never to maximise rakeback by seeking out the house’s better-paying tables. The number that pays the most rakeback is the number costing you the most to play.
This is also why the rate alone rarely decides where to play. Some rivals advertise far higher headline figures – Jack, for instance, promotes up to 30% rakeback – and on the percentage alone Stake’s 3.5% does not lead the field. Whether that matters depends entirely on the house edges and the wider rewards involved, which is the kind of like-for-like comparison better handled across operators than inside a single-site calculator. Our crypto casino rakeback hub lists the published rate for every platform we track, and the Stake vs BC.Game rakeback comparison puts two of the biggest head to head.
Final verdict
Working out your Stake rakeback rate comes down to one formula and one skill. The formula is wager × house edge × 3.5%; the skill is turning RTP into house edge by subtracting it from 100%. Stake’s rate is a flat 3.5% of the house edge – not your stake – confirmed in the company’s own help centre, fixed across every VIP tier, and unlocked once you have wagered $10,000 to reach Bronze.
The honest takeaways are two. First, your real rate is a blend: calculate each game separately and add them up, because no single bucket describes a mixed session. Second, calculating precisely is for setting expectations and choosing between games you would play regardless – not for chasing higher-edge tables, where the extra rakeback never covers the extra losses. Used that way, the number is a small, genuine rebate on play you were already doing. Keep your stakes within a comfortable budget and treat the rakeback as a bonus on top, not a target to grind toward.
If you are still new to the concept underneath all this, our explainer on what rakeback is and how it works is the right place to start, and the exact rate and how it compares are covered in how much rakeback Stake pays.
FAQ
To calculate Stake rakeback, multiply your total wager by the game’s house edge, then by 3.5%. For example, £1,000 wagered on a slot with a 4% house edge is £1,000 × 0.04 × 0.035 = £1.40. To find the house edge, subtract the game’s RTP from 100% – a 96% RTP slot has a 4% house edge. For a session across several games, calculate each game separately and add the results.
The Stake rakeback rate is a flat 3.5% of the house edge, applied to every casino wager regardless of whether you win or lose. It is the same at every VIP tier from Bronze upward. Note that the 5% figure seen on some sites refers to Stake.us, the separate US sweepstakes platform, not the main Stake.com site.
No. The 3.5% rate is the same for all levels. Going from Bronze to Platinum and above gets you access to bigger reload bonuses, level-up rewards and other perks, but the rakeback percentage itself does not go up.
Your hand calculation is an estimate based on published RTPs, which are long-term averages, while Stake calculates on the exact house edge of each individual game you’ve played. A mixed session blends several edges, so small differences are normal. If the gap is large and persistent, contact Stake support or your VIP host.
Yes, but differently. The sportsbook applies a default 3% house edge to the theoretical value of your bets and pays 3.5% of that, roughly 0.105% of turnover. Voided and cashed-out bets earn no rakeback, so a bet has to settle naturally to count.


