Best Betting Exchange Sites in the UK July 2026

The first major Betting Exchange operator was Betfair but over recent years, a number of newer operators such as Matchbook and Smarkets have entered the market. These are currently the best betting exchange sites so check out their current sign-up offers below:

1. EasyBet - Brand New Betting Exchange

One of the newest betting exchange sites is EasyBet - another arm of the Easy Group best known for Easyjet airlines and holidays. EasyBet uses Matchbook's liquidity and offers its customers fantastic promotions, along with a competitive 2% commission rate (4% for UK and Irish customers, 2% for Rest of World players). 

EasyBet started out with just 16 sports, but since we first wrote this article about betting exchanges, it’s upped that number to 20, proof that it’s an exchange always looking to progress. 

One thing that really surprised me when I took a closer look at the product was the liquidity of its markets, but it’s with explaining what exactly we mean by that.  

The odds you can get are excellent, not just for the biggest football, cricket or tennis matches, or UK horse racing, but also for slightly more under-the-radar sports, like greyhound racing or snooker. 

Whether you’re backing or laying, you can get really good bets on markets that often have overrounds of just 101% or 102%. After all, let’s remember that many sportsbooks have overrounds of 108% or more. So even when you factor in commission, it’s often worth placing your bets here as opposed to at a fixed odds bookmaker. 

But that comes with two caveats. The first is that though you can get bets on at great prices, they won’t always be for big amounts of money. So, for example, you might be able to place a bet here at EasyBet exchange for £15 at the great price of 4.5 on a greyhound when it’s just 3.8 at a sportsbook. But at Betfair for example, you may be able to get those same odds of 4.5 and back it for £50, whereas at the sportsbook, you could probably back it for at least £200, albeit at a considerably shorter price, as we know.  

The second caveat is that, to ensure good liquidity in major markets like the match odds of a football match or the winner market of a golf tournament, they offer fewer markets to ensure there's money reserved for the big ones. 

On another note, EasyBet is a curious case of an exchange that realises that in some ways, it can’t compete with Betfair, so it does a few things that Betfair doesn’t. Such as giving you the chance to place (Exchange-based)Bet Builders  or selected accas at bigger odds than usual, known as Enhanced Specials, In both cases, they’re similar to what you’d find at a sportsbook but not often found at an exchange. 

In terms of the site itself,  I was impressed with the intuitive interface of it and app thus far. They have certainly hit the ground running and will surely only get even better.

2. Matchbook - Best Betting Exchange for NFL

Matchbook is one of the best betting exchanges, offering its customers market-leading odds and great liquidity whilst also keeping its commission rate at just 2% (for UK and Irish customers, 4% for Rest Of World players). Matchbook excels when it comes to horse racing, football and NFL but offers a decent offering across all the major sports. They are also one of the best betting companies for betting related content with expert tips and podcasts available via their social media channels.

If you were listening to rock music in the 2000s, you would surely have heard of Matchbox20. But have you heard of Matchbook Zero No? Well, we’re about to tell you what it is. 

On football markets, including those from domestic leagues (like the Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A), selected international matches, and certainly, the World Cup, plus UK and Irish horse racing, you can bet with zero margin and pay zero commission. 

Zero marin means you’re betting without a house edge at all, whichever runner you’re going with.  So, whereas a Sportsbook will have a house edge of between  5% and 10%, meaning the odds on each runner will be 5 to 10% lower than what they mathematically should be,  here they’re 100% what they should be. Meaning, of course, bigger payouts. 

Which brings us  to the zero commission part. Your payout on winning bets will not have commission taken away from it because, well, zero commission will be applied to it. So you get the best of both worlds here, but there are a couple of stake restrictions: 

• One bet per event.
• Maximum payout of £200.
• One selection per race or football match.

We know that at the moment, Matchbox Zero only exists for football and racing (let’s hope that increases in the future), but what we don’t know is how they make money from it! Doesn’t matter. 

A word of caution, though. Matchbook runs two welcome offers. The first allows you to get £30 in free bets when wagering £20, the second allows you pay 0% commission on wins from all sports, not just football and racing. You have to choose one or the other, you can't pick both. The advice is to go with the £30 in free bets because if you choose the other one, you won’t be able to take part in the MatchBook Zero offer at any stage in the future. So take the long-term view there. 

There are other things about Matchbook that catch the eye. One is that they also offer accas/multiples just like you’d find at a Sportsbook and the other is that they run a fair few promos. They’re a combination of rebates on Bet Builders/Multiples and free bets if you come close, but not close enough. 

Add in some excellent liquidity, a site that’s easy on the eye, and an extremely thorough responsible gambling section, and you can see why this is so highly rated as an exchange.

3. Betfair - Biggest Betting Exchange

Betfair is the original, biggest and generally considered the best betting exchange, attracting bets across a wide range of sports and special markets. 

It all started back in 2000 with the idea of replicating the stock market concept for sports betting. Rather than  the laws of supply and demand determining the price of shares in a listed company,  they determined what should be the correct price of a particular outcome in a betting market bt the two customers, one on each side of the bet, agreeing on it all. 

Now this may all sound pretty basic by today’s standards, and all seasoned punters will know already precisely how an exchange works, but let’s not forget it was Betfair that created that concept before anyone else did. 

Now to the crucial part. There have been many who have ‘copy-catted’ the betting exchange idea, but Betfair remains Number 1 some 25 years later. The crucial thing here is that it has so much more liquidity than its competitors. 

Liquidity means money, and all that extra money comes from having so many more customers than any of its competitors that it’s been accumulating since it went live in 2000. Many of those will still be using it 26 years later!   

More customers means more money being put into those markets, ensuring there are more bets to be matched and more money to match them for. In other words, better odds are available and everyone can have pretty much as much money on them as they like. 

By extension, the extra liquidity means that less popular sports such as table tennis or snooker also have far more liquidity in their markets than they would at other exchanges, so fans of them can get their bets matched on them, as well. 

So the secret to their success is that greater liquidity coming from their 25-year legacy, and it’s unlikely that shift in power will change anytime soon. 

A good, handy feature is that you have two ways of securing a profit on any market if the odds change in your favour. 

The first is to manually do the opposite of what you did to begin with (back the bet if you laid it first, or vice-versa) and decide how you want your profits distributed across the different runners. The second is to just press the Cash Out button above the market, which will give you the same profit on all outcomes, so you don’t have to worry about doing the maths yourself.  

Racing punters can also bet at Betfair SP which is a great USP and allows you to place your bet early but still benefit from the enhanced liquidity that comes just before the off. 

Betfair users have the opportunity to choose from different reward plans with the ‘Basic’ option including 2% commission on Exchange bets however you should be aware that this does reduce the number of promotions you can receive on the Sportsbook platform. The Betfair Rewards plan that you choose determines how much commisson you want to pay on winning bets. So it’s up to you whether you want more freebies at the end of each month and pay less commission on winning bets, or less freebies, but you pay less commission. Your decision will probably be based on how active you are on the Exchange. 

4. Smarkets - Best Betting Exchange for Politics

Smarkets have established themselves as one of the biggest competitors to Betfair and Matchbook in recent years via its great all round offering for sports betting and trading plus they really stand out when it comes to Politics betting and specials. So whether you’re looking to put your money where your mouth is on who will be the next US President, the next British Prime Minister, or Keir Starmer’s exit date, you’ll be able to do so here. 

The website features engaging charts that focus on odds movements, making it an attractive and engaging site to use. 

What makes it even easier to use, especially for those who have trouble getting their heads around odds, is that prices are displayed as percentages rather than odds. So if you find it easier to understand that JD Vance has a 19% chance of being the next US President rather than Vance being a 5.25 chance, this could be the exchange for you.   

In the name of fairness and objectivity, it’s worth pointing out that of the four exchanges featured in this article, Smarkets is the one with the poorest liquidity. 

That means that you’re not guaranteed to get odds as good as you might get on other exchanges, and that there won’t be as much money waiting to be matched. 

The commission rate is just 2% for the majority of customers. However, at the moment, new customers registering via this page can qualify for 0% commission for the first 60 days.

One area where Smarkets are good is when it comes to having a good range of payment options. All of Trustly, Instant Bank Transfer, PayPal, Neteller and Visa debit are available to use, so plenty of choice based on your needs. 

We also found that they were fast to approve KYC checks, and that they processed withdrawals quickly, so those are two fewer things to worry about.