House edge calculator
RTP and house edge are one number stated from opposite ends. This converts either into the form that actually matters: what an hour of play costs at your stake and speed.
| House edge | 4.00% |
|---|---|
| Total turnover | $1,200.00 |
| Expected cost per hour | $24.00 |
| Expected cost over the session | $48.00 |
| Turnover per unit of expected loss | 25.0 |
Why percentage is the wrong unit
A four percent house edge sounds small and a 96 percent RTP sounds generous. Neither conveys cost, because both omit the two variables that determine it: how much you bet and how fast the game runs.
At one unit per spin and 600 spins an hour, a 96 percent slot costs 24 units an hour in expectation. The same edge on blackjack at 70 hands an hour costs under three. Same percentage, an order of magnitude apart in money, and the difference is entirely game speed.
This is why cost per hour is the honest unit. It makes a slot and a table game comparable, it makes two stakes comparable, and it converts an abstraction into a number you can set against what you would otherwise spend on an evening out.
RTP is a long-run average, not a session forecast
A 96 percent RTP does not mean you get 96 percent of your money back tonight. It means that across millions of spins the game returns 96 percent of everything wagered. Any individual session sits somewhere on a wide distribution around that, and high-variance games have very wide distributions indeed.
It is also computed across total wagering, not total deposits. Money won and re-wagered counts again, which is why a player can lose a full deposit at a 96 percent game without anything being wrong. Turnover and deposits are different quantities, and RTP applies to the first.
Published RTP figures are normally supplier figures for a game in its default configuration. Some games ship with multiple RTP settings and the operator chooses which to deploy, so the same title can run at different RTPs at different casinos without either party saying so.
What this means when choosing where to play
Between two operators running the same game, RTP configuration is a real and largely invisible difference. Operators who publish the configured RTP per title are doing something useful and rare. Most do not.
Between two games, the edge difference is often far larger than players assume. Optimal blackjack runs near half a percent, European roulette 2.7, American roulette 5.26, and many slots between 3 and 8. Choosing a game is a bigger decision than choosing a bonus.
None of this makes a negative-edge game a good investment. It makes the cost knowable in advance, which is the only thing arithmetic can offer here. What that cost is worth to you is a separate question and not one a calculator can answer.