OddsPortal: a narrow bookmaker list, a deep price archive

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5. The closing price archive is the best reason to use OddsPortal. Its tool pages also explain their own methods. The bookmaker list is the weak part. We counted twenty books on one match, several showing identical prices. Seven of those twenty cannot be removed from your account.

Scope: this OddsPortal review is built from our own use of the English version, before and after opening a free account. Every count below was taken from one connection, on the same day as the same test on a rival grid.

What OddsPortal is

OddsPortal is a free odds comparison site. It lists live odds from bookmakers side by side and marks the best odds in each column. Click that price and you land at the bookmaker. Comparing prices this way before every bet is called line shopping.

Its copyright notice runs from 2008, and its scores and stats come from Opta. Around the grid sit free tools, bookmaker reviews, standings, archived results, a bet calculator and a community section where users publish predictions.

How many bookmakers OddsPortal really compares

The sign-up window promises odds from 45 or more major bookmakers. The match page shows a smaller number.

On a Champions League qualifier we counted nineteen rows before signing in and twenty after. A second match told the same story: its coupon panel printed twenty bookmakers as well. On a rival grid, the same day and from the same connection, our qualifier carried forty-six books.

Two things move that number, and neither is mentioned next to the promise. The country you connect from changes the list. So do your account settings, which decide who appears in your table.

The sign-up window promises 45 or more bookmakers. The match page gave us twenty, and the coupon agreed with twenty.

Twenty rows, fourteen prices

The list gets shorter again if you count prices instead of logos. Six of the twenty rows repeat a price another row already showed, to the second decimal.

1xBet and Megapari both quoted 3.04, 3.24 and 2.58, with the same payout of 97.5%. So did 22Bet and Melbet at 2.96, 3.15 and 2.52. Betfury, Rainbet and Roobet shared one price across three rows. Cloudbet and Duelbits matched each other, and so did Bets.io and N1 Bet.

These are separate brands running on shared platforms. Twenty rows on that match came from fourteen independent prices, and one of those rows was a withdrawn offer. Fourteen is the number that matters when you pick a second account.

The bookmakers you cannot switch off

A free account lets you pick which books appear in your table. That choice works in one direction only.

The settings page splits the list in two. Under Popular Bookmakers each book has a live checkbox. Above it sits a block titled Premium Bookmakers, marked as impossible to remove, with its boxes greyed out. The locked boxes are 1xBet, Bet105, bet365, Betfury, BetInAsia, Bets.io and Cloudbet.

The home page says the same thing in plainer words. Displayed odds are the highest across premium plus preferred bookmakers. So the best price is the best across your own picks and seven you did not pick.

Seven bookmakers sit in your table with the checkbox locked. The best price is the best among those, plus whoever you keep.

What the odds table shows

Every book gets a row, with a price for each outcome and a small arrow showing which way that price last moved. A payout column runs down the right-hand side, so the margin is visible without a switch to turn on. Our odds converter turns any of those prices into an implied probability.

On our match the payouts ran from 91.3% up to 97.5%. That is a spread of six points between the most and least generous book on the same match.

Removed offers stay in the table. One of our twenty rows showed its prices crossed out, with a dash where the payout belongs. That book has pulled the market, so the row is a record rather than a price you can take. It is also one of the six repeats above, which leaves nineteen live rows.

Tabs above the table split the list into all books, classic books and crypto books. That tab exists because a large part of this grid is crypto brands, which is not true of every free grid.

Closing odds, and why OddsPortal has them

Hover any price on a finished match and a panel opens with its full history. Every change is listed with a date and a time, and the footer names the opening price.

On one finished tie the panel ran from an opening 1.36 down to 1.32. The last change was stamped one minute before kick-off. That last number is the closing price, and it is the number closing line value is measured against. Our closing line value guide works through the sum.

That last number is the closing price. It is the one figure a free grid gives you that a bookmaker will not.

The blocked odds page confirms the same thing in writing. It states that the prices it displays are average closing odds.

This is the clearest gap between the two grids. Our Oddspedia review found opening, highest and lowest prices on every selection, but no closing price at all.

The odds archive, and what is missing from it

Past seasons keep their historical odds, not only their results. The route is not obvious. Open a league, switch to the results tab, pick a season, then open a match and its odds tab.

A Premier League match from two seasons back still showed a full table with prices and payouts. The list was much shorter, though. Seven books where a live match carries twenty.

The archive is real and useful. It holds a sample of the market rather than all of it.

OddsPortal dropping odds

The dropping odds list collects selections whose price has fallen. The old price is crossed out beside the new one, and a best current price is named. Filters cover the last twelve hours and the size of the drop.

The falls on our list were severe: 56.00 down to 23.00, 71.00 to 31.00, 14.50 to 7.00. Every one sat in a thin market. Ours included a first-half line in a women's league and a high goals total in Honduras.

A price that moves that far has usually moved for a reason you do not know yet. Those markets also carry low limits.

OddsPortal sure bets, capped at ten

A sure bet, or arbitrage, is a set of prices at different bookmakers that together return a profit whatever happens. The site lists them free and stops at ten rows, with an upgrade link for more.

The profits on the free list were modest and believable: 9.4%, 9.1%, 7.9%, 5.8% and 5.7%. That is a useful contrast with a rival list we tested, where the top row promised 93.84% on a mispriced line.

The page also explains the method with a worked example, and the arithmetic holds. Their example splits 100 into 65.68 and 34.32 across two prices and returns about 106.40 either way, a profit of 6.39%. We checked it. Our arbitrage scanners section covers the paid tools that do this at speed, and what they cost.

Nine percent on a free arbitrage list is believable. Ninety-three percent, which a rival grid showed us, is a bookmaker error.

OddsPortal blocked odds

Blocked odds shows markets that bookmakers have removed, with a column giving the share that have pulled it. Ours ran from two books in eight up to a handball market with two books quoting it, both of them out.

A market that most books have dropped, while a few still price it, shows where the late money went. It also shows who has not reacted.

One row also put a number on the grid's size. A Europa League tie showed six of twenty books blocked, so that match carried twenty as well.

A value bets page sits in the same menu. We have not tested it yet, and it is not covered here.

What a free OddsPortal account changes

Registration takes an email and a username, and nothing is paid. After that you sign in to a settings page called My Bookmakers.

A free account brings four things worth having. You choose which of the non-premium books appear in your table. You build a coupon across matches and save it. You set your own commission for a betting exchange, with five percent filled in for Betfair. That commission can be deducted from the displayed prices automatically. You can also hide the lay odds if you do not bet on an exchange.

No other free grid we have opened handles exchange commission. A lay price with the commission taken out is the price you actually get.

A lay price with the exchange commission already deducted is the only price on that row you can actually bet.

The account also joins you to the prediction side, where your published tips build a public record and an ROI figure. That record can be wiped, but only once every thirty days.

Sports and markets covered

Football is the deepest sport here. The sidebar runs from the major leagues down to third and fourth tiers in small countries. Basketball, tennis, baseball, hockey, American football, handball, cricket and boxing all have their own sections, and esports appears in the footer.

Markets on a football match cover the result, over and under, Asian handicap and both teams to score. Behind those sit double chance, draw no bet, correct score, half time and full time, and odd or even.

Trust scores that do not agree with ratings

Each book carries two numbers in the settings list, a trust score and a rating. The two often disagree.

One brand showed zero out of five for trust and four out of five as a rating. Another scored zero on both. Whatever the rating measures, it is not how far the site trusts the operator. The settings page explains neither number.

OddsPortal against Oddspedia

Both grids are free, both keep price history, and on our test match both landed on the same three best prices. Two of those three came from the same bookmaker on both sites. The third did not, because the two lists overlap by less than half.

OddsPortal is the better tool for a closing price, an archive and an exchange. Oddspedia is the better tool for coverage. It had more than twice as many books on the same match, and more mainstream European brands. Both are free, so there is no reason to pick only one.

What the table does not tell you

The grid does not promise the price is still live at the bookmaker, because it updates on its own clock. It does not tell you whether a locked premium book will accept you, or keep accepting you once you win.

It also cannot tell you what to stake. That comes from your own numbers, and our Kelly criterion guide works it through. If you want your bets kept in one place afterwards, our bet tracker reviews cover that side, starting with mybets.gg.

Who OddsPortal suits

The site suits a bettor who checks closing prices, keeps records, or bets on a betting exchange. For that work we have not found a better free tool.

It suits a pure price shopper less well. Twenty rows that resolve to fourteen prices, seven of them locked in place, is a narrow view of a market. Read the payout column and take the archive. Then compare the grid against a second one before deciding where the best price is.