Calculate Level-Profit Back and Lay Stakes

Back/Lay Betting Calculator Instructions

1. Select Same Exchange or Cross Exchange, depending on where you're placing both bets. Same Exchange is more lucrative because commission is only payable on the market profit from both bets, instead of on the profit from each individual bet.


2. Enter the Price and Stake of your first bet:


• Lay Price and Stake for trading on a price rise
• Back Price and Stake for trading on a price fall
• Total Stake for arbing between 2 sites subject to a fixed budget


3. Enter your target exit Price:


• Back Price for trading on a price rise
• Lay Price for trading on a price fall


4. Enter your applicable Commission value(s) and press Calculate.

The calculator will display the correct stake for the specified exit Price in order to generate the same Net Profit after commission, whether the selection wins or loses.

Same-exchange Trading

Like financial traders, you can make immediate profits by betting on the direction of price movements on betting exchanges. All you have to remember is to lay first and back later at the higher price if you expect a price rise. Likewise, if you expect a price to fall or shorten, you'd back first and then lay off later at the lower price.

1. Select Same Exchange.
2. Enter the Stake and Price of the bet that you've placed.
3. Enter your target exit Price.
4. Enter your Commission rate (default value is 5.00%) and press Calculate.

The calculator displays the stake you should use to exit the trade for an immediate level profit.

Same-exchange trading example
The example below assumes that you had originally layed at 1.10 for £150 in anticipation of a price rise. You now want to place an order to back the same selection at 1.20, but don't know what stake to use to ensure the same profit whatever the result.


The calculator shows that if you can back it with a stake of £137.50 at 1.20, you'd earn a net profit of £11.87, providing you with a healthy yield of 79.13% on your Total Stake of just £15.

Cross-exchange Arbitrage

Whereas trading profits from price movements, arbitrage exploits current price discrepancies. Arbitrage opportunities occur when you can lay a selection in one place site at a lower price than it can be backed elsewhere. If you're placing both bets on different exchanges, Commission will be deducted from their respective profits, making it difficult to calculate the correct level-profit stakes.

1. Select Cross-Exchange.
2. Enter the Price of both the Back and Lay bets.
3. Enter the value of one stake constraint, caused by available liquidity, a bookmaker's maximum stake limit or just your budget for the arbitrage.
4. Enter your Commission rates and press Calculate.

If you enter your desired Total Stake as the stake constraint, the calculator will show the correct Back Stake and Lay Stake to ensure a guaranteed level profit, subject to your specified budget.
If you enter the Back Stake or Lay Stake as the stake constraint, the calculator will display the correct level-profit stake for the other bet.

Cross-exchange arbitrage example
Let's assume that a selection that's available to back at 2.50 on Smarkets can also be layed at 2.20 on Betfair. The problem is that there's only £287 available at 2.50 on Smarkets, so you want to know what stake to use on Betfair to ensure a guaranteed level profit, based on the assumption that you'll mop up all the available Smarkets liquidity at 2.50.


The calculator shows you that you should lay £329.72 at 2.20 on Betfair to guarantee a profit of £26.23. Of course, if you're going to be backing the selection with a fixed odds bookmaker, you'd need to change the Commission for the Back Stake to 0.00%.