RTP, or return to player, tells you what share of the money staked on a game it pays back as wins over the long run. A slot with 96% RTP returns on average 96 units for every 100 staked in theory, and the remaining 4% is the house edge. It is a useful number for comparing games, and an easy one to misread.
This guide explains what RTP means and what it does not, how it differs from volatility and hit rate, and where to find a game's RTP.
RTP is a mathematical property of the game, calculated from every possible outcome and its probability. It describes an average that only emerges over an enormous number of rounds – millions of spins. The house edge is its mirror image: 96% RTP means a 4% edge, 97.30% RTP a 2.70% edge. Table games usually quote the edge instead. European roulette returns 97.30%, blackjack with basic strategy typically about 99.5% and the Banker bet in baccarat about 98.9%. For slots, RTP varies from game to game and is set by the studio.
Suppose you play 500 one-unit spins on a 96% RTP slot. You stake 500 units, the theoretical return is 480 and the expected loss is 20 units. In reality the session can end almost anywhere: you might lose most of your bankroll or hit a bonus round worth many times your stake. The more rounds you play, the closer the overall result tends to drift to the theoretical figure, but 500 spins is far too small a sample. A game is never due a win either: every round is independent.
Two games with the same RTP can feel completely different: one pays small wins steadily, the other drains the bankroll for long stretches and returns much of its RTP in rare big hits. Always read RTP together with volatility.
A large part of a slot's RTP can come from rare events such as big bonus-round wins or jackpots. Miss them and your actual return falls well below the RTP; hit one and it can be many times higher. That is normal variance, not a hot or cold machine: every spin is drawn by the random number generator independently.
You will usually find it in the game's help or info screen, and on our game pages it is shown in the game facts. Some studios release the same game in several RTP versions, so check the figure for the game you are actually playing. Studio averages in our catalogue show the spread: Habanero slots average 96.90%, Pragmatic Play 96.36%, NetEnt 96.02% and Novomatic 93.45%.
Slots from well-known studios in our catalogue average roughly 93–97%. A figure clearly above that is high for a slot, but check the volatility as well.
No. RTP is a theoretical long-run average, and a single session can differ from it widely in either direction.
RTP tells you how much a game returns on average; volatility tells you how that return is spread, in frequent small wins or rare large ones.
No. It is built into the game's maths and does not change depending on whether the game has paid out recently.