HOW TO CHECK A SLOT’S RTP

Not sure which to choose? See what we recommend for each type of player.

Method 1: read the game’s rules screen

This works for any provider and needs nothing but the game, in demo or real-money mode.

1. Launch the exact game. Editions are separate games: Pragmatic Play’s page gives Sweet Bonanza 96.48% and Sweet Bonanza 1000 96.53% (both read 29 October 2026), and some casinos only carry one of them. Duel, for example, listed only the 1000 and 2500 editions on 17 September 2026.
2. Open the information pages. Look for an “i”, a “?” or a menu icon, then the section called rules, game info or paytable.
3. Search the text for “RTP” or “return”. Slots with optional modes usually print one figure per mode. Sweet Bonanza’s base game and Ante Bet mode carry different values.
4. Write down the figure, the mode and the date. A casino can replace a build without notice, so an old note is only a starting point.

Method 2: read the rtp value from the engine

The rules screen is text inside the client. The engine init value is the setting the server hands to the maths engine when the session opens, which makes it the closest thing to the configuration a player can see. This is the method behind the tier A rows in our tracker, and so far it is documented here for Pragmatic Play slots only.

1. Use a desktop browser and open the casino’s page for the game. Open the developer tools (F12, or Cmd+Option+I on a Mac) and select the Network tab before the game loads.
2. Start demo or fun mode. If the game sits in an embedded frame, opening the frame’s address in its own tab often makes the traffic easier to follow.
3. Filter the request list for gameService. Pragmatic Play’s client posts to a path ending in /gs2c/ge/v3/gameService; the initialisation call, doInit, sets up the session.
4. Open that request’s response and search it for rtp=. For Sweet Bonanza it contained rtp=96.49,96.60: the base-game RTP, then the Ante Bet RTP.
5. Note what launched. The traffic also carries the operator’s style name (rare_stake on Stake’s launch), which confirms the game came from the casino you meant to check. Record the value, the casino and the date.

Method 3: the casino’s label, and why it comes last

Lobby badges and game-page blurbs are written by the casino, often from a reference sheet rather than from the build that runs. In our September comparison, Gamdom and Rainbet labelled Sweet Bonanza at exactly the engine value, while Stake’s blurb added one hundredth of a point and 7Bit’s two. None of that is large, but it shows that the label is not produced by the game. Use it as a prompt to open the rules screen, not as an answer.

The provider’s own page belongs in the same category for a different reason. It gives one headline figure per title, and neither of the two Pragmatic Play pages we read mentions other versions. It tells you what the studio advertises, not what your casino licensed.

Read the mode as well as the game

Optional modes change both the return and the price. Sweet Bonanza’s Ante Bet returned 96.60% against 96.49% for the base game in every engine we read, but the BitStarz paytable (15 September 2026) listed the bet multiplier as 25x instead of 20x. A higher RTP on a bigger stake can still cost more per spin: about 0.85 coins against 0.70. Compare RTPs only within one mode, and compare costs per spin when choosing between modes.

Turn the figure into a cost

RTP is easier to judge as money. The house edge is 100% minus the RTP, and the expected cost of play is that edge times the total you wager, not times your deposit. At 96.49% the expected cost is $35.10 per $1,000 wagered; at 96.60% it is $34.00. The house edge calculator does the arithmetic for any figure you find, and RTP vs house edge explains the relationship.

When the figure is lower than you expected

If the rules screen shows less than the provider’s headline, assume the casino runs a different build of the game rather than a fault. You can play another title, or check the same title at another casino. If the screen shows no RTP at all, that is worth knowing too: at a casino licensed in Great Britain the RTP or an equivalent measure of the chances of winning should be easy to find, and elsewhere the absence tells you how much the casino chooses to disclose.

None of this changes the outcome of a session. A difference of a tenth of a point disappears inside the swings of a few hundred spins; it only matters over large volumes of play.