CanadaBet is your reference for the best sports betting sites that serve Canada. You have questions: Which sites are reputable, offer great odds, Canadian dollar accounts & have CAD banking methods? We have the answers.

Top CAD Sports Betting Sites

You’d think that choosing a sports betting site from Canada would be easy. However, every online sportsbook serves a unique mix countries, supports a unique selection of currencies and offers their own distinct features. Not every site accepts Canadian customers nor offers CAD accounts. When trying to bet from Canada your first priority should be to avoid wasting time at sites that will not accept your registration. This is a problem.

If you have watched any European soccer matches, you will have noticed many betting brands advertised at the side of the field. However, many of these brands like Ladbrokes, SkyBet, BetFair, Paddy Power, bet-at-home.com and others will not accept customers from Canada.

Further making it harder for you to select the right betting site, many sportsbook review sites or odds sites often promote brands directly to Canadians that do not offer Canadian dollar accounts. It sounds crazy but it’s true. Brands like 5Dimes, BetOnline, Bookmaker.eu and many others will accept your account, but you’d need to play in another currency, which means you will pay significant, hidden currency exchange fees.

All the sites that we list will accept your registration and support CAD accounts. With all the confusion that can exist in merely choosing a betting site from Canada, we know you will likely have other questions about online sports betting and the related processes. Given this we outline some of the most important topics as they pertain to the Canadian situation. You’ll see these issues noted in the top navigation. Simply click on them to scroll directly to that issue.

Canadian Sports Betting Laws: Is it legal to bet on sports in Canada?

The legal situation with regard to sports betting in Canada is strange to be sure. We’re not lawyers, but plenty of writing has been done on the subject and plenty of news reports have discussed the topic in consultation with Canadian gaming industry lawyers. The bottom line is that you can register with off-shore betting sites, deposit money, bet with it, and withdraw money back to Canada without any worries. That’s all you really need to know, but we’ll cover a little more for those that are interested.

Sports betting in Canada is governed by the provinces. Across Canada, as stipulated by the Criminal code, gambling on the outcome of single sporting events is not allowed. From an anecdotal perspective, you likely know this is correct if you have ever played the various sports betting games run by provincial lottery corporations. All these games require players to choose ‘parlays’, or wagers that require more than one correct predicted result in order to play. This is why most interested players move to betting sites that are run from other jurisdictions - more freedom in the ways to play, let alone more competitive odds.

Is this likely to change soon? This is difficult to foresee completely. There have been recent attempts to regulate sports betting through amendment of the criminal code. The latest attempt, Bill C-221, was defeated in parliament in 2016. If it had passed, provincial lottery corporations could have moved to offer their own betting sites that essentially offer parity in terms of service compared top international providers. Or, provinces could move to officially regulate private providers. Either one would see revenues that go offshore, return through fees and taxes. As it stands, bettors will continue to choose superior betting experiences that are only available through off-shore providers.

Further complicating the issue is that First Nations groups have moved to become leaders in the area of international online gaming regulation. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission, located in sovereign Mohawk Nation lands just outside of Montreal, is now the regulator of many top international gaming brands including the only purely Canadian sports betting brand, Sports Interaction. Given the rights of this group to conduct this business as they see fit, it is unlikely that ‘off–shore’ sports betting in Canada is to see any regulation to contradict this right in the near or mid-term future.

Update June 2021: Canada passed Bill C-218 to allow single-event sports betting. Finally. While Kahnawake will remain its own legal jurisdiction, which may complicate matters, the various Canadian provinces may now allow for traditional single event wagers within their various respective offerings in this regard. Most provincial lottery corporations have made adjustments to allow for this within their respective sports betting games and websites. However, Ontario has actually gone a step further in order to create a new market for various online sportsbook brands to serve its citizens. This approach to license online sportsbooks will create one of the largest jurisdictions in the world with perhaps upwards of 50 legal Ontario betting sites. These licensed bookmaker brands will need to pay fees and share profits with the province, and submit to testing and responsible gambling mandates.

What is KYC? - Know Your Customer: It’s not just for Canadians & it’s easy

Every reputable betting site around the world is mandated by their regulators to establish anti-money-laundering practises. KYC or Know Your Customer is the main process for this and it is for ALL customers, not just those from Canada. Before you will be able to withdraw funds from your betting account, your online sportsbook will ask you to upload scanned copies of government issued identification and another document, such as a utility bill that proves your identity and that you live where you say you live. Your KYC document information will need to match the information used to register your account. This KYC account verification process often only takes about a week to complete with most companies. Don’t worry, you can start betting as soon as you make your deposit. Only your withdrawals are contingent on KYC process completion. When it comes time to make your first withdrawal, have a little patience. Your chosen betting site is only following their protocols.

VIP sports betting in Canada: Which betting sites have the highest limits?

Most betting sites set their limits by the amount that can be won in a given day, in a given sport, by a single person and within certain betting markets. If you want to bet on the main betting markets for top sports leagues like the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, the Champions League, NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL you can win as much as half a million CAD per day with most of these betting sites. For details, you can find the limits within the betting rules or help sections of each given site.

Early Cash Out Features: Which betting sites offer it?

Several betting sites have developed a feature that lets you settle your bet before an event has reached its natural conclusion. This means that your betting site might make you an offer to settle your bet during the match or in some cases, before the match has begun. Each of these features is a little different with regard to the sports they work with and the kinds of bets to which they may be applied in terms of singles, parlays or round robins.

Gambling Help in Canada

Gambling and sports betting can be addictive. Both activities are risky, you may lose all the money that you wager. Sports betting should for be for entertainment purposes only. When the fun stops, please stop. You likely have people that rely on your financial support. Please think of these people. If you need help, please visit to the Responsible Gambling Council to find help in your province.

Canadian Dollar sports betting sites: do not take CAD account availability for granted

A lot of people search for ‘Canadian betting sites’ or even ‘Canadian Dollar betting sites’. Unfortunately, many highly respected odds sites and sportsbook review sites market themselves as ‘for Canadians’, but they recommend betting sites that would force you to exchange your funds into another currency in order to play. If you are going to bet online, ensure you do so directly in Canadian Dollars as it removes the complication and cost of currency exchange. A lot of people don’t think very much about this. They think the funds just get converted to the new currency and that’s it. That’s not it. Every time you have a transaction in this world that involves a currency exchange, you are paying a significant hidden fee.

Your currency exchange provider, be it a bank, credit card company, e-wallet company etc. simply provide you with a rate of exchange. This rate of exchange has their profit margin built right in, but they don’t show this to you.

The exchange rate that they paid to actually secure your funds is lower than the rate provided to you. In effect, with every currency exchange, whether depositing funds or withdrawing them back to Canada, you’ll be losing approximately 3% to 5% of the original value.

Why would you want to just give this kind of money away when there are established, reputable providers that can offer you everything you want AND they offer accounts in your native currency. Keep your money for your enjoyment. You pay enough in banking fees as it is in Canada. All the betting sites listed on CanadaBet.ca let you deposit, bet and withdraw CAD.

Mobile sports betting in Canada: Are there iOS or Android Apps available?

While there are a limited number of sports betting apps available within Canada, all the best companies for Canadian bettors that we list offer their service in a mobile perspective through your mobile web browser. Assuming you are using a smartphone on one of the 4G LTE networks, your experience will be very fast and you will be able to follow matches live and bet in play without much of a hint of lag.

The one aspect of mobile betting that may be limited is with regard to the kinds of banking with which you may proceed. You will likely be able to deposit via your mobile depending on your methods of choice. However withdrawals are often only available when managing your account wallet from a normal desktop or laptop interface.

How betting odds work: Getting the best odds from your Canadian Dollar sportsbook

Simply put, odds are the expression of how a betting site is returning value to you for your bet. We could get into a long discussion about how this works, but we’ll keep it very brief. First of all, each betting site is hoping to balance out their exposure for how much they’ll have to pay out to all bettors for a given event betting market. Ideally, they will use the stakes from the lost bets on a given betting market to pay off the winners. Ideally there is money left over as revenue for the company.

This is essentially how betting sites make money. However, the odds that are available from site to site can differ considerably. Canadian online sportsbooks build a profit margin into their odds, the higher the margin, the worse your odds. Companies that tend to offer new-customer bonus incentives tend to have higher odds margins in order to pay for bonus offers. This means that betting sites with promotional bonus incentives tend to have lower-paying odds

You can easily see how good the available odds are in a relative sense by taking a look at point spread betting markets. Using decimal format, if there were no profit margin on the spread for an NFL game, the odds would be 2.00 on each of the Underdog and the Favourite. Sportsbooks need revenue, so in actuality, odds will be lower than this with margins ranging from 1.5% to over 5%. While these figures might seem small in this sense, remember that an odds profit margin of 4.5% is 200% more than a profit margin of only 1.5%. Think about the importance of this:

If you enjoy betting frequently, these kinds of differences add up, especially if you enjoy parlays or round robin betting where your odds are potentially multiplied many times over. This leads to payouts that can vary from 10% to over 50% between betting sites for the exact same predictions.

Below, you’ll find the odds margins and the odds for the point spread from each of our listed betting sites for Super Bowl 52 as of January 29, 2018. You will see the relationship between high odds and lower odds margins. (NE was the favourite in terms of the point spread, with lines ranging from -4 to -4.5 points)

Banking with your sports betting site from Canada in CAD

Transacting with your chosen betting site from Canada is super easy for most. For others, you may need to explore payment services that might not be familiar to you. First let’s talk about the most common forms of banking or making payments with your betting site of choice: credit cards and debit cards. To start, some Canadian banks may refuse to process your transaction with these cards. If yours does, simply move to use the methods listed below, there are plenty that will not have these issues.

Second, you may not want to use credit cards as your main funding method. When funding a betting account with a credit card from Canada, your transaction is treated as a cash advance as opposed to a purchase. This means that interest will begin to accrue from the moment of your transaction. This might be satisfactory if you just want to get started fast, but you should look into other methods below as they will be less costly over the long term. For example, you may prefer to use your debit card. Whether you know it or not, your Canadian bank debit card can be used essentially everywhere MasterCard or Visa is accepted, even if your card does not display this logo. Simply enter your bank card number as if it were a Visa or MasterCard and follow the prompts. The betting site will debit your bank funds as CAD directly to your Canadian Dollar betting account.

If you are curious about PayPal as a banking method for online sports betting from Canada, unfortunately, due to regulatory reasons, PayPal and other popular e-wallets Skrill and Neteller are not available for use in Canada for use in this manner. You may have read some information on other review sites to the contrary. Those review sites just want to get you excited to sign up, which is all they care about. You’ll find out afterwards that you must bank in another way. Rest assured, some sites do offer PayPal, but only to customers in a few European countries where regulations are different.

Don’t worry though, there are great bank account debit services like Instadebit and iDebit that let you deposit and withdraw funds securely and cheaply with your betting site. EcoPayz is another e-wallet payment platform that also lets Canadians transact with betting sites in a manner that is very similar to PayPal. You can also pay directly with your bank account, using an e-cheque as if you were paying a bill, make a bank transfer or even in some cases, like with 10Bet and Sports Interaction, with an Interac email transfer.

Are there any deposit bonus offers available to new customers in Canada?

Yes! Though you should understand straight away that these sports betting bonuses are meant to encourage and reward your continued play. They are not intended to exist as an offer of ‘free money’. None of the offers are free. They all require that you make a deposit and then a number of qualifying wagers. To be a ‘qualifying wager’, a bet usually must be placed on an event that has odds that are above a set threshold. In other words, a bet on a heavy favourite like Real Madrid over a relatively weak team is unlikely to be counted as a qualifying bet.

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This set of tables indicates that BetHard can be referred to as ‘reduced-juice’ betting sites with margins at 2.5% or less. ‘Juice’ is another term for odds margin. Since they operate with lower profit margins, they tend to consistently have very competitive odds. It should be stated that some betting sites operate at different margins for different sports. For example, BetVictor operates with much lower margins when dealing with top-level soccer matches.

Note that low odds margins do not always make for the best odds. Odds can change and fluctuate based on how the given company has seen action at their site. If for some reason a given team has seen a disproportionate amount of betting at a given company, that company may need to adjust their odds in an effort to balance their payout exposures. So even if a company works with higher odds profit margins, they could have better odds for your current predictions. So if you enjoy parlays, round robin betting or outright winner betting markets, it actually makes economic sense to compare your odds and payouts with a betting odds comparison site for Canada like oddsjet.com. Their service is free and private, and they have a version just for Canadian bettors. For your convenience below, we’ve provided links to some of the most popular leagues and betting markets for bettors in Canada.