Best Sportsbook Free Bets 2023

Free Bet sign up bonuses are an extremely generous way to get new users in the door. The downside to this generosity is that they are offered far less commonly than some other types of sportsbook sign up bonuses, such as risk free bets and deposit bonuses. Free bet sign up offers will always require you to sign up. However, free bets may not always require you to deposit or place a bet to unlock the offer, and they certainly don't require you to lose your first bet like risk free bet offers do.

Free bets are the most user-friendly bonus out there, but this also means sportsbooks don't give them out quite as often. However, existing customer free bets are a bit easier to find once you've already signed on with a sportsbook.

While free bet sign up offers are great, they can only be used once. A practice employed by many sports betting sites is to regularly offer free bets to existing customers.

This keeps them coming back for more and offers more value than just the basic sign-up bonus.

Regular free bet promos can be varied. Often they are themed around a special event, like the Olympics, March Madness, or a game in which the betting site has some sort of sponsored interest. For example, there is a litany of free bet offers for the NFL season currently being promoted.

Additionally, sportsbooks that feature pools often offer free entry into their daily pools, allowing you to win cash prizes with no money down.

Other times, sportsbooks will require action on your part to unlock a free bet promo. This can include referring a friend to use the site or just using one site feature for the first time.

Sportsbook Existing Customer Free Bets

• BetMGM - Free bets for regular users every Monday
• Caesars Sportsbook - $100 free bet for referring a friend
• PointsBet - $100 free bet for referring a friend
• Unibet - $10 in free bets every week
• FanDuel Sportsbook - $50 sportsbook free bet for referral
• DraftKings Sportsbook - Free to play pools offered daily
• Barstool Sportsbook - $5 bonus for customizing profile
• SI Sportsbook - Win free bets by playing free NFL Perfect 10
• BetRivers - Free bets for backing local teams

Currently the most popular sportsbook bonus on the market, the risk free bet puts both the player and the betting site in a position to succeed.

You start by placing a real-money wager. If your bet wins, you don’t get anything. However, if you lose you’ll be refunded your bet amount, usually in on-site credits.

So you have defacto bet insurance, but you’ll only get the benefit if your bet loses.

Due to how comparatively beneficial it is for the sportsbook, top betting sites like PointsBet, Unibet, and FanDuel Sportsbook have all adopted this model.

Top Risk Free Bet Offers

• Caesars Sportsbook - Valuable bet insurance
• BetMGM - Up to $1,000 back
• PointsBet - Try traditional and PointsBetting wagers
• Unibet - NJ bettors get refunded in real cash
• FanDuel Sportsbook - No turnover on bonus
• Fubo Sportsbook - Flexible bonus offer

With more and more legal online betting platforms being certified across the country, sportsbooks need to make themselves stand out. To do so they will offer valuable sportsbook bonuses to new users as a carrot to entice customers to their platform.

One of the most valuable betting offers available is the free bet. Free bets are so valuable because they are truly free. Different from the risk free bet, free bets allow you to play with house money, so to speak, and not risk any of your own hard-earned cash upfront.

The betting site will deposit a certain amount of on-site credits into your account. You can then play with these credits instead of money you’ve deposited.

This is obviously a great value for the player since they don’t take on any risk and get to try out the sportsbook for free. The sportsbook benefits by marketing this promotion and using it to draw in new customers. As long as the player sticks around to bet on their site, the sportsbook’s investment has paid off.

One very interesting twist with this type of bonus offer is that they are often offered with little-to-no initial investment required on your part.

The no deposit free bet offered by some sportsbooks is an incredible value for first-time bettors. You can test drive the site with absolutely no risk. You can see how things work and what some betting terms mean in a real-life scenario.

The best part is that you’ll be able to keep your winnings in most offers. This can of course differ from site to site depending on turnover requirements, but oftentimes you’ll find sites have a simple 1x turnover requirement for bets of this type.

These offers are fairly rare because they're pure player value with less upside for the sportsbook, so they're offered a bit less frequently. There are many free bets offered for the NFL season, and other special occasions, but they tend not to run as frequently.

Free bets can be offered in different ways depending on the site you’re using. There can be different requirements for unlocking your offers, as well as different ways in which your offer can be utilized.

Let’s dig into these two areas.

While free bet no deposit offers are fantastic and offer you the best value, they are often not available. These types of offers have relatively little value to the sportsbook itself, outside of drawing in a new customer, and even then there’s no way of stopping the user from using the bet and then never coming back to the site.

To prevent this and make sure they get value in return, sportsbooks usually require you to make an initial qualifying deposit or wager. These can be as low as $5 or $10, but they guarantee that the sportsbook receives some ROI out of offering the free bet.

For example, to unlock Bet365’s bet credits offer, you must first make a qualifying deposit of at least $10.

Free bets that require you to make a qualifying deposit are very similar in structure to deposit bonuses, another popular sportsbook bonus.

Another element that can vary from offer to offer is how you can spend your bonus money.

Some sites offer you free bets in lump sums. This means that you can only spend your total bonus amount on one bet. While this is still nice to have, it is not the most flexible bonus, so it doesn’t offer the highest value.

The best free bet offers will allow you to divvy up your bonus amount however you like. So if your free bet bonus is for $10, you’ll be allowed to place 10 $1 wagers or 1 $10 wager (or anything in the middle of those two extremes, of course).

Also known as ‘Bet Credits,’ these offers are much more flexible for the user and make for the best free bet bonuses.

Nothing lasts forever. Unfortunately, that's also true for free bet offers. While the exact timeline can vary from site to site. No sportsbook's sign up bonus is eligible for use in perpetuity. While Barstool Sportsbook's free bet offer will expire a year after registration. That's quite a long timeline, but unfortunately the exception, not the rule. For example, Bet365's bet credits must be used within 30 days of signing up as a new user.

As always, this restriction can differ greatly across sportsbooks, so make sure to double-check your terms and conditions before allowing your free bet opportunity to expire!

Sportsbooks usually place restrictions on what bet types free bets can be used with. Luckily, Barstool Sportsbook and Bet365 are both fairly liberal with their sign up offers and allow you to engage in multi-leg wagers. However, it is not unheard of for a sportsbook to restrict a free bet sign up offer to only straight bets, meaning no parlays are eligible.

As a general rule of thumb, sportsbook free bets are not eligible for casino wagers, cannot be used on pre-existing promotional wagers such as odds boosts and multipliers, and do not qualify for other bonuses.

For example, Bet365's bet credits can be used in parlay bets, however, any parlay wager placed using your bet credits will be ineligible for the sportsbook's various parlay bonuses offered to regular users.

Even with free bet offers, there might be some strings attached. It’s your responsibility to keep yourself informed of all of the different key features that could impact the potential value of your free bet.

Here are some things to look out for when signing up for a sportsbook with a free bet.

Free bets are very generous but being so generous has also made them less frequently offered by sportsbooks. So, other bonus offers have grown in popularity.

Deposit bonuses are another common sportsbook bonus you’ll see offered.

Here, the sportsbook will evaluate how much you place into your initial deposit. From there, they will usually match that amount up to a certain extent.

More user-friendly than the risk free bet, but less generous than the free bet, deposit bonuses are offered by sites like DraftKings Sportsbook and BetRivers.

Sportsbook Deposit Bonuses

• Caesars Sportsbook - 100% up to $1,500
• BetRivers - Deposit matched 100% up to $250
• DraftKings Sportsbook - Match 20% of deposit over time

Of course, once they get you in, sportsbooks want to ensure that you'll actually wager with them and are on the path to being a regular user of their platform. To accomplish this goal, some sign up bonuses are locked until you have actually wagered with the site. This is the case with Bet $10 Get $50 offers.

Bet $10 Get $50 offers reward you for betting $10 on the sportsbook by rewarding you with $50 in free bets after your wager is concluded. You get your bonus whether your bet is a stud or a dud.

Bet $10 Get $50 offers are commonly presented to existing customers around major sporting events, but a few are offering similar deals as a sign up bonus.

Sportsbooks often offer enhanced odds to users as a bonus to keep them coming back to the site. These odds boosts alter the given odds of an outcome in order to make a potential winning bet even more profitable!

Depending on the sportsbook, odds boost can be offered for straight bets, parlays, or both. FOX Bet regularly employs "super boosts" for straight bets, while BetMGM has extensive parlay boosters.

More often than not, these odds boosts are offered to existing customers and are not a part of or eligible to be combined with a sign up bonus. Occasionally, these odds boosts are offered in conjunction with a team or league with which the sportsbook has a partnership.

Sportsbooks with Odds Boosts

• Caesars Sportsbook - Most regular boosts
• FOX Bet - Daily super boosts
• PointsBet - Boosts for select games
• BetMGM - Regular parlay boosts
• DraftKings Sportsbook - A plethora of daily boosts
• FanDuel Sportsbook - Section of website dedicated solely to boosts