Both return money to you after you play — but they're calculated differently, pay out on different schedules, and suit different playstyles. Here's exactly how each one works.
Cashback returns a percentage of your net losses over a set period. If you deposit $500 and finish the week down $200, a 15% cashback deal pays you back $30 — 15% of what you actually lost. If you finish the week up, there's usually nothing to claim, because cashback exists to soften losing sessions, not to reward winning ones.
Most cashback offers run on a recurring schedule — daily, weekly, or tied to a specific game category like live casino. Winz, for example, runs both a 7-day crypto cashback cycle and a separate 14-day live casino cycle. You can estimate your own payout with our cashback calculator.
Rakeback is calculated differently: it's a percentage of your total theoretical wagering volume, regardless of whether you won or lost. The "theoretical" part matters — it's usually based on the house edge of the games you played, not your literal win/loss total. That means rakeback pays out consistently, session after session, whether you're up or down.
This is why rakeback appeals to high-volume players: it's predictable. If you know your average bet size, game selection and hours played, you can estimate your rakeback with reasonable accuracy before you even sit down. Run your own numbers with our rakeback calculator.
A third term, rebate, gets used almost interchangeably with rakeback at some casinos, but the two aren't always identical. Rebate is typically a flat percentage of total wagering volume paid unconditionally — no house-edge adjustment, no theoretical-loss calculation, just a straight cut of turnover. It tends to be a smaller percentage than rakeback for that reason, but it's simpler to verify: multiply your total wagered amount by the rebate rate, and that's your payout. Try it with our rebate calculator.
It depends entirely on your win rate over the period being measured. A player on a losing streak gets more absolute value from cashback, because it's calculated directly on the loss. A player who's roughly break-even or ahead gets more value from rakeback or rebate, because those pay out regardless of outcome — cashback on a winning week is usually $0.
Over a long enough sample, house edge means most players trend toward a net loss, which is part of why rakeback is marketed as the more "reliable" return — it's paying out on turnover that's happening anyway, win or lose. Neither is objectively better; they're compensating for different scenarios.
Some casinos let you stack cashback and rakeback simultaneously rather than forcing a choice between them. Winz's WinzUp program is a good example: daily rakeback of up to 10% runs alongside a separate weekly cashback layer of up to 15%, for a combined theoretical return of up to 35% — see the full breakdown in our Winz review.
If your casino offers multiple deal types at once, don't evaluate them in isolation. Use our combo calculator to see your total effective return rate across cashback, rakeback and rebate in a single number — most players underestimate their combined return because they check each deal separately.