Racing Post v Oddschecker: We’re Paying for the Tips, But Who’s Actually Worth It?

Paying for horse racing tips is easy. Working out whether those tips are actually worth paying for is considerably harder.

Racing Post and Oddschecker are two of the biggest names in British horse racing and both offer premium tipping content behind paid subscriptions. Subscribers are paying for expertise that they hope will give them an advantage, but we wanted to answer a very simple question: which service actually performs better when real money is theoretically on the line?

The ten day test is now complete.

From Thursday 8 October until the conclusion of racing on Saturday 17 October, Betting.bet tracked the qualifying paid horse racing tips from Racing Post and Oddschecker every single day.

There will be no selections quietly removed because they lost, no changing the rules halfway through and no choosing the period after we've seen the results. Both services started on the same footing, before the results were known.

The final numbers below include all supplied selections and the confirmed results for the ten days.

The Final Score

Final winner: Oddschecker. Its ROI was −26.42%, compared with −51.93% for Racing Post. Both finished with a loss before subscription costs.

Strike rate uses settled bets and excludes non runners. Tips supplied count every tipster selection, including separate bets on the same horse. Placed bets are returns, not winners. Currency is rounded to pennies per bet before aggregation.

Final audit note. The confirmed staking rule is £10 per point for each leg, so a 1pt each way tip costs £20 total. Earlier cash stakes and returns have been recalculated consistently. Same day 11am prices replace publication prices where a saved snapshot is available. No same day 11am snapshot is saved for 20 settled selections on Friday 9 October. Those retain their previously recorded prices and are marked in the tables. The final score includes them, so the ten day price comparison is not fully verified at the 11am benchmark. Previously recorded void selections remain void.

A note on each way terms. Some tipsters advise placing their selections with a specific bookmaker because that bookmaker is paying extra places on the race. We ignore these instructions and settle every each way bet on the standard place terms for that race. Bettors should not be forced to open accounts with affiliated bookmakers just to follow a tip, and the extra place offers quoted alongside tips are often from bookmakers paying for that promotion. Our results reflect what any bettor could achieve at any bookmaker.

Day 10: Saturday 17 October

Racing Post

Paul Kealy

Tom Segal

Conor Fennelly

Oddschecker

Aidan O'Hara

Liam Firkin

Andy Holding

Saturday included three tipsters for each service. Neither had a winner. Paborus, Believed and Ebt's Guard placed for Racing Post; Division and Ten Bob Tony placed for Oddschecker. Barleybrown finished fourth in a 14 runner handicap and did not qualify for the standard three places. Power Blue ran in the 2.05 Ascot race, despite the supplied Firkin screenshot showing 4.05.

Day 9: Friday 16 October

Racing Post

Paul Kealy

Adrian Wall

Tom Segal

Oddschecker

Andy Holding

Liam Firkin

Day 8: Thursday 15 October

Racing Post

Paul Kealy

Adrian Wall

Oddschecker

Andy Holding

Day 7: Wednesday 14 October

Racing Post

Graeme Rodway

Adrian Wall

Oddschecker

Liam Firkin

Andy Holding

Day 6: Tuesday 13 October

Racing Post

Paul Kealy

Robbie Wilders

Alan Sweetman

Oddschecker

Liam Firkin

Tuesday's two Liam Firkin selections were already saved in the tip records but missing from the article. Fenlander placed third at the 11am price of 10/1. Winston's Oath finished third, losing the 2pt win stake. Both are now included.

Day 5: Monday 12 October

Racing Post

Richard Birch

Alan Sweetman

Harry Wilson

Oddschecker

Andy Holding

Liam Firkin

Day 4: Sunday 11 October

Racing Post

Harry Wilson

Tom Segal

Alan Sweetman

Oddschecker

Andy Holding

Liam Firkin

Day 3: Saturday 10 October

Racing Post

Paul Kealy

Adrian Wall

Tom Segal

Oddschecker

Andy Holding

Aidan O'Hara

Day 2: Friday 9 October

Racing Post

Paul Kealy

Adrian Wall

Tom Segal

Oddschecker

Andy Holding

Liam Firkin

The previously recorded prices are retained for the 20 settled selections without a saved same day 11am snapshot. No price has been inferred from SP or from the previous day.

Day 1: Thursday 8 October

Racing Post

Paul Kealy

Maddy Playle

Adrian Wall

Oddschecker

Liam Firkin

What Are We Trying to Find Out?

This isn't an attempt to determine the greatest horse racing tipster in Britain from ten days of racing. Horse racing doesn't work like that and a short run of winners or losers can dramatically affect any relatively small sample.

What we can determine is something much more practical.

What would actually happen if a punter followed the paid Racing Post and Oddschecker selections for the same ten day period?

We're interested in more than simply counting winners. We'll be looking at how many selections each service provides, their average odds, strike rate, returns, losing sequences and, most importantly, whether following those selections produces a profit or loss.

By starting on a Thursday and finishing on the following Saturday, the test also includes two Thursdays, two Fridays and two Saturdays, giving both services two full end of week racing periods within the test.

What the Subscriptions Cost

To follow every paid tip in this test you would need two subscriptions, and neither comes cheap.

That is £79.98 a month for the pair, or around £2.67 a day across the ten day test.

Prices are the headline monthly rates at the time of writing. Both services run introductory offers, so new subscribers can often pay less for the first few months. Oddschecker also sells a cheaper Essential tier at £9.99 a month, but that unlocks the odds grids without the full tipster content, so it does not qualify for this test.

The Rules

The methodology for this test has been established before the first selection is recorded and will not be changed during the test.

1. The Test Runs for 10 Consecutive Days

The test begins with racing on Thursday 8 October 2026 and concludes after racing on Saturday 17 October 2026.

Every qualifying day during that period counts, regardless of whether the results are good, bad or downright ugly.

2. Every Qualifying Paid Tip Counts

We will record every horse racing selection that qualifies as an official paid tip from the Racing Post and Oddschecker services included in our test.

We aren't cherry picking the selections we like and we won't remove losing selections afterwards.

Once a qualifying tip enters the test, it stays in the test.

3. Prices Are Recorded at 11am

Tip publication times vary. Some selections can be available the evening before racing while others are published the following morning.

Comparing prices at publication would therefore give selections released earlier a completely different market benchmark from those released later.

To make the comparison as consistent as possible, Betting.bet will record the best available bookmaker odds for every selection at 11am on the day of the race.

That means both services are judged against exactly the same daily market snapshot.

4. Level Stakes At £10 A Point

Every qualifying selection is staked at £10 a point.

Where a tipster advises a number of points, we stake that number at £10 a point, so a 2pt win costs £20 and a ½pt each way bet costs £10 in total. Where no stake is advised, the selection is staked at 1pt, £10 for a win bet or £20 total for an each way bet.

Using level stakes prevents staking strategies from distorting the underlying performance of the selections and makes the results considerably easier to compare.

For an advised each way selection, each leg is staked at £10 per point. A 1pt each way bet is £10 win and £10 place, costing £20 total. A 0.5pt each way bet costs £10 total.

5. Normal Racing Settlement Rules Apply

Non runners will be treated as void and won't count towards the amount staked.

Dead heats, Rule 4 deductions and each way returns will be calculated using the normal settlement rules applicable to the recorded bet.

6. Starting Price Will Also Be Recorded

Our official profit and loss calculation will use the best available price recorded at 11am.

However, we'll also record the eventual Starting Price.

This gives us another interesting question to investigate: are the paid tipsters consistently identifying horses before the market moves?

If one service regularly recommends horses at significantly bigger prices than their eventual SP, that could tell us something that simply looking at winners and losers would miss.

What We're Measuring

The headline number will be return on investment (ROI), but we're going considerably further than that.

Throughout the ten days we'll track the total number of selections, winners, strike rate, average odds, total amount theoretically staked, total returns, overall profit or loss and ROI for each service.

We'll also be watching how the selections move in the market, the length of losing sequences and whether either service's performance is being driven by one exceptional winner rather than consistent results.

This matters because two tipping services could theoretically finish with identical profits while delivering completely different experiences to the person actually following them.

The Final Result

Oddschecker finished ahead, but neither subscription produced a betting profit over this ten day sample. Oddschecker returned £515.05 from £700.00 staked. Racing Post returned £649.00 from £1,350.00 staked.

Both recorded five winning bets. Racing Post supplied more selections and required more money to follow. The comparison is based on ROI, not merely the size of the cash loss.

These are betting results before subscription costs. Ten days is a short sample, not evidence of permanent superiority. The missing 11am verification for Friday 9 October remains a limitation of the recorded comparison.

Status: COMPLETE

Final day: Saturday 17 October 2026

Final winner: Oddschecker