Trading programs, staking tools and betting bots explained
Betting software is easy to buy and often impossible to use without the right account.Software we’ve reviewed
MakeYourStats
A free tool that shows how a football betting rule did in the past. We tested a full year of matches on it.
Betaminic
A database of fourteen years of football odds with a filter tool on top. Build a betting rule, see what it would have earned, and check published strategies since the day they were shared.
The Staking Machine
Software that puts 50 staking plans on the same list of bets and shows what each one would have done to your money. It also reports your real edge, your break-even strike rate and whether your record is big enough to trust.
Sorting betting software by the account it needs
Betting software is easy to buy and often impossible to use without the right account. So before you compare features or prices, check what a program needs from you. Almost no guide starts there.
Many lists of the best betting tools come from a company that sells one of them, and its own tool sits at the top. Most are also written for bettors in the United States. This page sorts software by what it asks of you before it does anything useful.
Three checks before buying betting software
Which account does it need? Some tools read only the numbers you give them. Others cannot start without an account at a betting exchange.
Which machine does it run on? Many desktop programs here run only on Windows. Web tools open in any browser.
What can you see for free? A free plan lets you try the tool on your own numbers before any money moves.
Software that needs no betting account
This group works anywhere. These tools read your bet history or their own database and never touch a bookmaker.
The first kind is staking analysis. A staking plan is the rule that decides how much money goes on each bet. The Staking Machine applies about fifty staking plans to one list of bets. We compared seven of them on a losing set of bets, and not one finished in profit.
Backtesting is the second kind: you run a betting rule on past results to see what it would have earned. Betaminic holds fourteen years of football odds. The strategy we built there made 22 percent in the early years and lost money in the later ones.
MakeYourStats also backtests football, with bet365 odds. We ran a home-form filter on a year of matches there, and every form group lost money.
Each of these tests ran on a free plan. Did any of the tools ask for a betting account? Not one.
We tested this whole group without paying and without opening a betting account.
Trading software that needs an exchange account
Bet Angel, Geeks Toy, Gruss and BF Bot Manager are the best-known names in this market.
They are built for a betting exchange, where you can bet against an outcome as well as on it. Prices move during the event, and a trader closes a position for a profit before the match ends.
Every one of them needs an exchange account. Exchanges are licensed in a short list of countries, so many readers cannot open one, and we could not either. The Bet Angel trial asks for your exchange login, and our registration ended with a "403 Forbidden" error.
Bet Angel's own pages offer a rented server with a UK address as a way round location limits. Where you live decides who may hold an account. The address of your connection does not change that, and using one can lead to ID checks, a frozen balance or a closed account with money still in it.
The software itself costs little. Bet Angel sells day passes from 99 pence a day, and a year at 149.99 pounds.
Bet Angel costs 99 pence a day. The account it needs is closed in most countries.
Betting bots for bookmakers do not exist
Betting exchanges publish an API, a documented way for a program to place bets. Ordinary bookmakers do not, so nothing official connects a program to your bookmaker account.
What gets sold as a bookmaker bot is usually a script that clicks inside your browser. That breaks the bookmaker's terms and gets accounts closed. Sometimes it is only a tool that finds bets and leaves the placing to you, and sometimes it is a scam.
Tools that find bets do work, and our arbitrage scanner guide covers them. You still place every bet by hand.
Free betting software and where it stops
Each free plan here stops in a different place.
The Staking Machine limits a free copy to ten bets. Its random data generator still built five hundred rows for our test, and every plan calculated on all of them.
Betaminic gives away the whole strategy builder. Free means one bet type, no picks and no saving, and the save button asks you to confirm before it shows the paywall.
On its pricing page, MakeYourStats lists backtesting as a paid feature. Our free account still ran full backtests and downloaded the results to Excel. Alerts and extra stats are what PRO adds.
Reading yield, drawdown and sample size
Every vendor shows results. Four checks tell you what those results are worth, on any tool on this page.
Start with sample size. Yield is profit measured against everything you staked, and 20 percent over 200 bets means very little. Our Betaminic strategy made 22.69 percent on its first 260 bets and lost money after that. On MakeYourStats, a team with a "100%" home record may have played a single home game.
Then set drawdown against profit. Drawdown is the deepest fall from your highest point. Over all fourteen years, the same Betaminic strategy fell 65 units on the way to a 5-unit profit.
Which odds do the results use? Betaminic measures every strategy at the closing line, the last price before kick-off, but sends its picks a day or two earlier. MakeYourStats uses bet365 odds, and some of them changed between two runs of the same filter.
Last, look at which years the result covers. With enough filters, almost any rule looks good on past matches.
The useful number is how a strategy did on the years after it was built.
The real cost of automated betting
If you want bets placed for you, the licence is only the first payment.
To automate The Staking Machine you need a second paid program, The Bet Machine, then Gruss and an exchange account. Betaminic strategies can run through BF Bot Manager, which needs the same exchange account.
A desktop program also needs a computer that stays on. Bet Angel rents its own servers from 24.99 pounds a month. With the annual licence the total comes to about 37 pounds a month, and 12.50 of it is the licence.
Not a best betting software ranking
Our grid holds only programs we have tested ourselves. Many lists above us rank tools from their sales pages, and several are run by a company that puts its own product first.
Our bet tracker guide follows the same rule. For how much to stake on each bet, see the Kelly criterion guide.
So where do you start? With the account you can open, then with what the free version shows you, and the price last.
The tools we have tested
Every review here is hands-on and was run on a free plan. A program joins this grid after we have tested it.