Smarkets Review: Promo Code COMMFREE for 0% Commission for 60 Days

Smarkets promo code

COMMFREE is horse.bet’s Smarkets promo code. Enter it at registration and you pay 0% commission on every bet that settles within 60 days of your first deposit.

The offer is for new UK customers aged 18 and over. Make a first deposit of £10 or more by debit card or instant banking and that is it: no qualifying bet, no minimum odds. Back and lay as usual and keep the full profit on each winning market.

How to use the Smarkets sign-up code

1. Open Smarkets through the Claim button on this page.
2. Choose Join or Register to start a new account.
3. Find the Promo Code field on the registration form.
4. Type COMMFREE exactly as shown, in capitals.
5. Complete registration, then make a first deposit of £10 or more by debit card or instant banking. Skrill, Neteller, PayPal and virtual or prepaid cards do not qualify.
6. Back and lay as normal: bets that settle within 60 days of that first deposit pay 0% commission.

Smarkets sign-up offer: 60 days of 0% commission explained

On an exchange there is no bookmaker margin built into the odds; instead, the exchange takes a percentage of your net winnings in each market. At Smarkets’ standard 2%, a £50 profit on a race costs you £1. With COMMFREE, that charge is waived on every bet that settles within 60 days of your first deposit, with no cap on the value published in the offer terms.

The offer applies to all exchange markets, horse racing included. It is worth timing your sign-up around a busy stretch of racing, a Festival week or a run of big Saturdays, so that the 60 days cover as many settled bets as possible. Once the period ends, the account reverts automatically to the standard rate.

Because Smarkets is an exchange, a commission waiver is worth more here than it first sounds. Other bookmakers may lead with free bets, which can look more appealing on the banner, but on Smarkets you keep the full profit on every winning market for two months, and there is no limit on how many markets that covers. When your bets settle within the period, no commission is charged, whatever the result.

The offer is open to new users in the UK, Ireland and Malta only, cannot be combined with other promotions and is not available to anyone who has already signed up with the SBK sportsbook. Customers who bet through an API or trading software are also excluded.

1. Register through our link and enter Promo Code COMMFREE in the promo code field.
2. Deposit £10 or more in a single payment by debit card or instant banking. Skrill, Neteller, PayPal and virtual or prepaid cards do not qualify.
3. Back and lay as normal: every bet that settles within 60 days of the deposit pays 0% commission.
4. Expect standard commission after day 60, including on bets placed earlier that settle later.

Smarkets horse racing: back, lay and trade

Smarkets lists British and Irish horse racing in separate win and place markets, plus ante-post markets on the big races and greyhounds. Every market can be backed or laid, before the off and in-play, and positions can be closed early with the trade-out button. Prices come from other customers rather than a bookmaker, so the depth of each market determines how much you can get on, and at what price. Our live odds panel shows Smarkets back prices on today’s races.

Back and lay betting on racing

Backing on Smarkets is the familiar bet that a horse will win, or place in the place market. Laying is the opposite: you take the role of the bookmaker and win the backer’s stake if the horse loses. Lay a horse at 5.0 for £10 and you collect £10 if it is beaten but pay out £40 if it wins. Combine the two and you can trade, backing early and laying later at a shorter price to lock in a profit whatever the result.

Back and lay prices are colour-coded on the Smarkets screen, so it is easy to see which side of the market you are on. Your bet is only matched if there is enough money waiting at your price; if not, it sits in the market until someone takes it or you cancel. You can take the odds on offer from other customers, or set your own and wait for the market to come to you, and in some cases the price you get matched at is well above what fixed-odds bookmakers are offering.

Best Odds Guaranteed and place terms

There is no Best Odds Guaranteed on an exchange, because bets are matched at the price two customers agree. Instead of each-way bets, Smarkets runs separate place markets whose terms follow the field size, for example two places in races of five to seven runners and four in handicaps of 16 or more, unless the market name says otherwise. For big-field races such as the Grand National, check the number of places on the market before you bet. Non-runners are handled by reduction factors, the exchange equivalent of Rule 4.

Streaming and racing features

Smarkets streams greyhound racing in its app, and independent reviewers report that selected British and Irish horse racing is streamed as well. Smarkets does not publish the qualifying rules for streams. Price alerts let you follow a runner’s odds, and the trade-out button lets you close a position before the race is settled.

Price charts, the order book and how the money moves

Exchange regulars like to see how a market has traded before they commit, and Smarkets makes that easy. Live charts plot a runner's price history through the day, and an order-book view shows how much money is waiting at each price on both sides, so you can see where the support is going on a race.

Because the odds adjust with market activity, they give a fair reflection of how the betting public sees the race, and since Smarkets makes its money from commission rather than a margin built into the price, the odds are often bigger than those found with conventional bookmakers.

Smarkets on the racecourse

Smarkets has put money into the sport as well as taking bets on it. Its first racing sponsorship, a partnership with The Jockey Club for 2018, covered 35 fixtures at 11 of the group's courses, Aintree, Epsom, Haydock and Sandown among them, starting at Wincanton in January and taking in Haydock's Rose of Lancaster Stakes in August. Some 240 races carried the Smarkets name that year. The SBK sportsbook followed in 2021 by putting the Flat jockey Richard Kingscote in SBK-branded colours.

Smarkets markets: sport, politics and current affairs

Smarkets was set up in 2008 by Jason Trost and Hunter Morris as a transparent online betting exchange. Unlike conventional sportsbooks, it lets you wager against other customers rather than against the bookmaker, backing an outcome to happen or laying it not to. You can set the odds yourself or take a price that may be considerably higher than the one offered by high street bookmakers.

Horse racing and football are the mainstays, but Smarkets is not restricted to sport. It offers markets on politics, current affairs, TV and entertainment, and esports, and some of these unconventional markets draw more money than mainstream sporting events.

In August 2019 Smarkets launched SBK, a fixed-odds sportsbook app built around a more social experience, with its prices taken from the exchange. Existing Smarkets customers can sign in to SBK with the same login details, which makes it easy to take a bookmaker-style bet on some events and trade on the exchange on others.

Smarkets commission and liquidity

Smarkets runs three commission tiers. Standard customers pay 2% of net winnings in each market. High-volume customers who place 1,500 bets or stake £1m in a calendar month can opt into the Pro tier, which charges 1% per settled bet. Customers with net profits over £25,000 in the previous 12 months move to the Select tier at 3%. One detail matters for newcomers: opting into Pro, or being moved to Select, permanently removes eligibility for 0% commission promotions.

Smarkets sets no betting limits as such; how much you can get matched depends on the money in each market. Reviewers report that racing liquidity is thinner than at Betfair, and that shows most at smaller meetings and on outsiders. Many racing punters hold accounts on Smarkets, Betfair and Matchbook, using whichever shows the best matched price. Our betting exchange guide compares the three. Smarkets says it welcomes winning, matched and arbitrage bettors, though the Select tier means the most profitable pay more.

Smarkets app and payments

The Smarkets iPhone app is rated 4.8 from 4,634 ratings on the UK App Store, and has added in-app greyhound streaming. See our betting apps guide for the alternatives. Smarkets also runs the SBK sportsbook, which Smarkets customers can open with the same login.

Smarkets accepts Visa and Mastercard debit cards, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, Trustly and bank transfer, although only debit card and instant banking deposits count for the welcome offer. The minimum deposit is £10 by every method except PayPal, which needs £20 and is capped at £200 a day; Skrill and Neteller deposits are capped at £5,000 a day. Withdrawals by Open Banking take around 12 hours, e-wallets and Trustly one to two business days, debit cards one to six business days and standard bank transfer five to ten. Support is by live chat; Smarkets’ app listing says it is available around the clock.

You can deposit as soon as your account is open, though you will need to verify your email address first. Card details can be saved for quicker deposits, or you can pay by bank transfer or e-wallet. Smarkets does not impose account limits on winning customers; how much you can get on is governed by the money available in each market.

How to open a Smarkets account

Opening an account takes a few minutes. Follow our link to Smarkets, then work through the registration form in this order:

Registration step by step

Account details: enter your email address, a password and your date of birth, along with Promo Code COMMFREE for zero commission for 60 days.

Personal details: provide your full name, mobile number, country, currency and home address. These are used for the identity checks every UK-licensed operator must carry out.

First deposit: deposit £10 or more by UK debit card or instant banking so that the welcome offer applies, and set your deposit limits at the same time.

Once the deposit lands, the 60-day commission-free period starts, and you can begin backing and laying straight away.

Smarkets Promo Code terms: what the 60-day waiver covers

A commission holiday has fewer moving parts than a free bet, but the Smarkets terms still contain a few clauses that decide how much the 60 days are worth.

No code, no waiver

COMMFREE has to go into the Promo Code field during registration. A new customer who leaves it blank and deposits is simply placed on the standard 2% rate, and there is no route in the terms for adding the code once the account is open.

Settlement, not placement, sets the clock

The 0% rate applies to bets that settle within 60 days of the first deposit, and to nothing else. That matters for racing: an ante-post bet struck in week one on a race that is run in month three settles after the window closes, so it pays the standard rate on any profit. Day-of-race win and place bets, which settle within minutes, get the full benefit.

Single deposit of £10 or more

The first deposit must be at least £10, paid in one transaction by debit card or instant banking. Two £5 deposits do not count, and an e-wallet or virtual card on the first deposit rules the account out, even if a qualifying card is used afterwards.

A worked example

Back a horse at 6.0 for £20 in the morning, then lay it at 4.0 for £30 once it shortens. Whatever the result, the position shows £10 profit. At the standard 2% Smarkets would take 20p of that; inside the first 60 days it takes nothing. Scale that across a Festival week of trading and the waiver is worth real money, while a punter who mostly loses pays no commission either way.

Making the Smarkets sign-up offer work on racing

Because commission is charged per market on net winnings, the waiver favours punters who win often in small amounts: place-market backers, those who lay short-priced favourites, and in-running traders. Each separate place market is its own commission line, so a punter who backs to place across a card saves on every winning market rather than once on the day.

The obvious timing is to register just before a run of big meetings, so the 60 days cover the cards you intend to bet on. Smarkets says it welcomes matched and arbitrage bettors, and commission-free trading makes lay bets in particular cheaper to use. When the period ends the account reverts to the default rate automatically, and nothing needs to be cancelled.

Who qualifies for the Smarkets welcome offer

New customers aged 18 or over in a country where Smarkets can open accounts, which in practice means the UK, Ireland and Malta. Smarkets limits the code to one per individual, family, household address, email address, payment account, IP address and shared computer, and removes the waiver if a second claim comes from the same household. It cannot be combined with any other sign-up promotion, and customers who have been told by email that they are ineligible for bonuses are excluded. If the 0% rate does not appear after a qualifying deposit, Smarkets asks customers to contact support@smarkets.com.

Is Smarkets safe and legit?

Smarkets is run by Smarkets (Malta) Limited, with a UK office in St Katharine Docks, London, and holds a UK Gambling Commission licence under account 39173, issued in September 2015. It is an independent company led by its founder and chief executive, Jason Trost. The account offers deposit limits, and as a UK licensee Smarkets must also provide GAMSTOP self-exclusion. Its UK exchange continues to operate while the firm pursues a separate prediction-market licence in the United States.

Smarkets is also licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority. For British customers, it is the Gambling Commission licence that matters, and it means deposit limits, GAMSTOP self-exclusion and links to support through GambleAware.org are all part of the account.

Screenshots from the Smarkets app listing on the UK App Store.

Smarkets compared with Betfair and Matchbook

Terms checked on each operator’s own site. Read the full terms before you bet. More detail in our Betfair review, Matchbook review.

Smarkets pros and cons

Smarkets for horse racing: our verdict

Smarkets has been taking bets in Britain since 2009 and has built its reputation on low commission and a highly rated app. The standard rate is 2% of net winnings, high-volume customers can drop to 1%, and new customers who register with COMMFREE pay nothing for 60 days. The iPhone app is rated 4.8 from 4,634 ratings, and it covers British and Irish racing with win and place markets, ante-post betting and in-play trading.

Its weakness is the one every challenger exchange shares: depth. Racing markets on Smarkets are thinner than on Betfair, so larger stakes or lays on outsiders at smaller meetings may wait to be matched. Customers with net profits above £25,000 over a year also move to a 3% Select rate. A score of seven reflects keen pricing and an excellent app, balanced against liquidity that still trails the market leader.

Smarkets racing FAQs