What a bingo ticket costs
The price on the screen is per game; the number that empties an account is per hour. Here is how to get from one to the other
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What tickets cost
On the sites we track, bingo tickets run from a penny to about a pound, and most rooms sit between two and ten pence. Penny rooms exist on every site with real bingo and they are where the chat is busiest, because the price lets people stay for hours. Higher-priced rooms carry the guaranteed prizes and the jackpots, because a bigger prize needs a bigger pot.
The price shown is per ticket per game. Rooms let you buy several tickets for one game — six is the default on most, with a limit somewhere between six and a few dozen — so the cost of one game is the ticket price multiplied by how many you take.
Games per hour, by format
This is the number nobody publishes and everything depends on.
| Format | Typical game | Games an hour |
|---|---|---|
| 30-ball (speed) | about 1 minute | around 60 |
| 50-ball | about 2 minutes | around 30 |
| 80-ball | 2 to 4 minutes | around 20 |
| 75-ball | 2 to 6 minutes, by pattern | 15 to 25 |
| 90-ball | 4 to 6 minutes | 10 to 15 |
Rooms publish a schedule rather than a rate, so the way to check is to watch the countdown twice and take the gap. It is worth doing once per room you use regularly.
The sums
Cost per hour equals ticket price times tickets per game times games per hour. Three examples from the rooms on the sites we track.
A penny room, ninety-ball, six tickets. £0.01 × 6 × 12 = 72 pence an hour. This is genuinely cheap entertainment and it is where most of the chat is.
A ten-pence room, ninety-ball, six tickets. £0.10 × 6 × 12 = £7.20 an hour. Reasonable for an evening, and about the price of a cinema ticket for three hours of it.
A five-pence room, thirty-ball speed, six tickets. £0.05 × 6 × 60 = £18 an hour. The cheapest-looking ticket on the list, and the most expensive hour, because the clock runs four times faster. This is the trap in speed bingo and it is purely arithmetic.
Notice that the ticket price barely predicts the hourly cost. The format does.
Pre-buy, and how it gets away from you
Pre-buy lets you buy into games that have not started, including games you will not be awake for. It is genuinely convenient — you can secure tickets in a popular room before it fills — and it is the fastest way to lose a grip on a budget, because a single decision pays for twenty games.
If you use it, price the block rather than the ticket: twenty games at six tickets of ten pence is twelve pounds, and the screen will show you ten pence. Some sites cap pre-buy at a number of games; where they do not, the cap is the deposit limit you set.
Setting a limit that holds
Every site licensed in Britain must let you set a deposit limit per day, per week and per month, and must apply a decrease immediately while an increase waits out a cooling-off period. That asymmetry is what makes the tool work: you can tighten it in a moment of clarity and you cannot loosen it in a moment of frustration.
Set it to the hourly figure you worked out, times the hours you actually intend to play in a week. It is in the account menu rather than the lobby on most of the sites we track, and it is off until you turn it on. Reality-check reminders, which interrupt a long session with what you have spent, are in the same menu and are worth switching on at thirty or sixty minutes.
Three more checked sites
Dove BingoUK Gambling Commission 39175 · 90, 80, 75 and 30-ball, plus Bingo BlastVisit Dove Bingo18+ · Sponsored link · BeGambleAware · Full terms apply
Daily Record BingoUK Gambling Commission 39175 · 90, 80, 75 and 30-ball, plus Bingo Millions roomsVisit Daily Record Bingo18+ · Sponsored link · BeGambleAware · Full terms apply
Free Spins BingoUK Gambling Commission 39175 · 90, 80, 75, 50 and 30-ballVisit Free Spins Bingo18+ · Sponsored link · BeGambleAware · Full terms apply
Questions readers ask
How much does online bingo cost per hour?
Ticket price times tickets per game times games per hour. A penny room at six tickets is about 72p an hour in 90-ball; the same six tickets at 5p in a speed room is about £18, because speed bingo runs four times as many games.
Why is speed bingo more expensive than it looks?
Because the price is per game and the games come about once a minute. The per-game price is what the lobby shows and the per-hour price is what leaves your account.
Does buying more tickets improve my odds?
It improves your chance of winning that game in proportion to the tickets, and it costs in the same proportion. It does not change the house edge, which is the share of the pot the operator keeps.
What is the cheapest way to play bingo?
A penny room in 90-ball with a small number of tickets, which can run under a pound an hour. Funded rooms, where tickets are free, are cheaper still — our page on free bingo explains how to get into them.
