Peer to peer betting: how a betting exchange works

Lay betting is the half of peer to peer betting that a bookmaker never offers you. When you lay a selection, you accept another user's back bet: if the selection loses you keep their stake, and if it wins you pay their profit. Your risk is called liability, and it is the backer's stake multiplied by the odds minus one.

• Laying $10 at 2.0 risks $10 to win $10.
• Laying $10 at 5.0 risks $40 to win $10.
• Laying $10 at 11.0 risks $100 to win $10.

The exchange reserves your liability from your balance as soon as the bet is matched, so a lay at long odds ties up far more money than the stake shown on the slip. That is the most common surprise for new layers. Laying the favourite in a football match is a small-liability bet; laying an outsider is a large one.

Every market has two price ladders: the best odds available to back and the best available to lay. The gap between them is the spread, and in busy markets it is a single tick. In thin markets, such as lower-league football or minor tennis, the spread widens and posted orders can sit unmatched for hours. Liquidity in the markets you actually bet on matters more than the headline commission rate.

Exchanges charge on net winnings per market, not on each bet. If you back two horses in the same race and one wins, commission applies only to the market's overall profit. The table shows each operator's published charges as of October 2026.

Sources: Smarkets terms, Matchbook offers page, SX Bet fee docs (last modified 26 August 2026) and the conflicting SX Bet help article. Betfair's live help pages blocked our checks, so its figures come from its charges page as archived in July 2025. For master and sub-accounts and Australasian events Betfair uses net winnings × Market Base Rate × (100% - discount rate), and its worked example uses a 5% base rate.

Smarkets' Pro Tier is cheaper on winning bets and dearer on losing ones, because it charges 1% either way. On a $100 stake at evens it costs $1 whether you win or lose, against $2 or nothing on the standard rate.

Betdaq has closed

Betdaq stopped taking bets on 21 October 2026, and withdrawals stay open until 4 November 2026. Triplebet, the company behind Matchbook, bought the Betdaq brand but not the customer accounts, so Betdaq users have to register with Matchbook and pass its verification. Older comparison pages that still list Betdaq are out of date.

A crypto betting exchange works like a fiat one, with the order book and settlement on a blockchain. SX Bet is the clearest example: makers post odds as limit orders, takers fill them, and bets settle in USDC. Its docs say SX Bet pays the network gas on bets, while bridging funds in through Glide, MoonPay or PayTrie carries those providers' fees. It also runs peer-to-peer parlays.

SX Bet is named here but not listed. Its terms name Nextgen Blockchain Technologies LTD as owner, state no gambling licence, and exclude the US, UK, Ontario, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and others. Funds sit in your own wallet, so a transaction sent to the wrong address or network cannot be reversed.

Peer-to-pool is not peer to peer

Some crypto sportsbooks use exchange language without matching users. Azuro, the protocol behind bookmaker.xyz, prices bets with an automated market maker over a single concentrated liquidity pool: you bet against money supplied by liquidity providers, not against another bettor. Bookmaker.xyz currently shows betting as paused. The test is simple. If you cannot post your own odds and wait for another user to accept them, the site is not an exchange.

Prediction markets on sport are the other on-chain route, with yes or no shares instead of back and lay. Our prediction markets guide covers their fees and legal status, and the P2P crypto casino guide covers the casino side of crypto P2P.

Yes, where the exchange holds a licence for the country you are in. In Great Britain an exchange needs a Gambling Commission betting intermediary licence: the Gambling Act's definition includes betting exchanges, and the exchange is not a party to the bets between its customers. Betfair, Smarkets and Matchbook all appear on the register with that activity. The full picture for Britain is in our UK legality guide.

To check an exchange yourself:

1. Find the account number in the site footer and search it on the Gambling Commission public register, or the Malta Gaming Authority register for non-UK customers.
2. Confirm the licence is active and lists betting intermediary activity, not only general betting.
3. Open the domain names tab and make sure the exact web address you use is listed.

Outside Britain the answer changes. Ontario's iGaming Ontario directory has a Betting Exchange category. The US has no state-licensed sports exchange in our sources, and sports event contracts on CFTC-regulated venues are tied up in court; the nearest P2P formats on sport there are paid head to head fantasy contests, sold state by state as skill contests. An offshore licence from Curaçao or Anjouan lets a company operate from there; it does not make the site legal where you live. The country table below has the detail, and the P2P gambling laws guide covers every format.