Rebate Calculator: What a Cashback Offer Costs
A rebate or cashback hands back part of your money. This calculator sets that against what the game keeps on average, then shows what the offer still costs you after it is paid, and the rate at which it would just break even.
Three kinds of offer
Offers that give money back usually take one of three shapes, as commonly described. We have not seen any platform’s offers, so type in the terms of the one in front of you.
- Rebate: a percentage of everything you stake comes back, win or lose.
- Cashback or loss-back: a percentage of your net loss over a period comes back, and nothing comes back if you finish level or ahead.
- Fixed reward: a set amount is paid once your turnover, the total you have staked, reaches a target.
This page covers those three. For a bonus that comes with a wagering requirement, use the bonus calculator.
How to use it
- Choose how the offer pays.
- Enter its rate, or its reward and target.
- Enter your stake, your rounds per hour and the hours you play. For a fixed reward the target sets the number of rounds.
- Choose the game odds, or type your own app’s figures under “My own numbers”.
- Read the net cost, then the table, which repeats the offer against four illustration games.
Break-even is the game’s edge
The game keeps a share of every stake on average. Call it the edge. Stake ₹6,000 in a game with a 2.00% edge and the game keeps ₹120 on average. A rebate of 0.5% returns 0.5% of the same ₹6,000. So the net cost of a period is the turnover multiplied by the gap between the edge and the rebate rate, and the offer breaks even when the two rates are equal.
The calculator opens on an illustration, not a real offer: 0.5% of ₹6,000 staked, which is 60 rounds at ₹100. The rebate returns ₹30 against the ₹120 the game keeps, so the period still costs ₹90 on average. The rebate covers a quarter of the average loss and would need to reach 2.00% to break even.
Switch to the colour illustration, where the game keeps 6.90%. The same 0.5% still returns ₹30, but the game keeps ₹414, so the net cost is ₹384. The four break-even rates in the table are 2.00%, 6.90%, 11.80% and 11.80%. Whatever rebate an offer states, hold it up against the rate for your own game.
Cashback pays only when you are behind
Now choose the cashback option in the first box: 10% of net loss, 2 hours at 60 rounds an hour and ₹100 a round. That is 120 rounds and ₹12,000 staked in the two-way game. The average loss is ₹240. The cashback returns ₹56 on average, so the period costs ₹184.
Why ₹56, and not 10% of ₹240? Cashback pays only on periods that end behind. Count the periods that end ahead as a loss of zero, and the average loss is ₹559. Ten percent of that is ₹56. Even so, cashback would have to return 42.9% of every net loss to cover the average loss, and 60.8% of periods end behind, so there is something to return most of the time.
It also helps little where it matters. In a bad period, one of the worst 1 in 20, you lose ₹2,004, or ₹1,804 after the cashback. It takes a tenth off a bad period. It does not remove it.
A fixed reward at a turnover target
Take ₹50 once your turnover reaches ₹10,000. At ₹100 a round that is 100 rounds, about 1.7 hours at 60 an hour. In the two-way game, staking ₹10,000 costs ₹200 on average, so the ₹50 covers a quarter of it and the offer costs ₹150. The reward would have to be ₹200 to break even. In the colour illustration the same target costs ₹690 on average.
The target is what costs money. Staking ₹10,000 costs the same whether or not a reward is attached. The reward decides only how much of that cost comes back.
What it cannot tell you
Offers can come with caps, minimums, expiry dates, lists of games that count, and rules on which rounds are valid. This tool sees none of them. It takes the offer as you type it and the odds as you type them, and the averages are exact for those numbers. Any one period can land far on either side of an average.
It cannot say whether an offer is worth taking, because that depends on your stake, your odds and your limits. To set a limit first, use the session budget calculator, and see bonus offers for what to check in the terms. The other free tools cover links, files and sessions.
Common questions
What is the difference between a rebate and a cashback?
As commonly described, a rebate returns a percentage of everything you stake, win or lose. A cashback, or loss-back, returns a percentage of your net loss over a period, and nothing when you finish level or ahead. Offers use both words loosely, so read the terms.
How big does a rebate have to be to cover what the game keeps?
As big as the game’s edge. If the game keeps 2.00% of every stake on average, a rebate of 2.00% of what you stake just pays for the average loss, and anything smaller leaves a cost. The calculator shows this rate as the break-even rate.
Why does a 10% cashback return more than 10% of my average loss?
Because it pays only on periods that end behind. Count the periods that end ahead as a loss of zero and the average loss is larger than the plain average, where gains cancel losses. In the example it is ₹559 against ₹240, so 10% of it is ₹56.
Does a rebate change my chance of winning a round?
No. A rebate is paid on what you stake, not on how the round turns out, so the chances of each round stay as they were. It lowers the average cost of playing and does nothing else to the round.
Does staking more to reach a bigger rebate pay for itself?
Only if the rebate rate is bigger than the game’s edge. Staking more brings more rebate and more expected loss together, and when the rate is below the edge each extra ₹100 staked still costs money on average. The net cost line shows it.
Does this calculator keep the offer I type in?
No. The sums are done in your browser, and nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored. If you use the copy-link button, the numbers travel in the part of the link after the # sign, which a website never receives.