Poker Rake Calculator
Calculate how much rake you pay per pot at any cash game or tournament. See your hourly, monthly, and yearly rake bill at your current volume.
Poker rake calculator quick answer
Poker rake is the fee a room takes from cash-game pots or tournament buy-ins. In cash games, the usual formula is pot size x rake percentage, capped at the room maximum. In tournaments, rake is the fee part of the buy-in, such as $2 on a $20+$2 event.
- Cash game rake usually has two numbers: a percentage and a cap.
- A low rake cap matters more as pots get larger.
- Tournament rake is paid before the event starts, so it directly raises the ROI you need.
- Rakeback only helps after you know how much rake you are paying first.
Cash game rake cap examples
The cap decides how much the room can take from a pot. These examples use common online cash-game structures so you can see when the cap starts to matter.
| Pot size | 5% uncapped rake | $1 cap | $3 cap | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | $0.50 | $0.50 | $0.50 | The cap does not matter yet. |
| $25 | $1.25 | $1.00 | $1.25 | A $1 cap saves money in medium pots. |
| $50 | $2.50 | $1.00 | $2.50 | Low caps become a major edge for regulars. |
| $100 | $5.00 | $1.00 | $3.00 | The advertised percentage stops being the real cost. |
| $200 | $10.00 | $1.00 | $3.00 | Deep-stack games depend heavily on the cap. |
Tournament rake and break-even ROI
Tournament fees are paid up front. A higher fee means you need a higher long-term ROI before the games are actually profitable.
| Listed buy-in | Prize pool entry | Fee | Fee rate | Break-even ROI needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5.50 | $5.00 | $0.50 | 10.0% | Win 10.0% over prize-pool entries to break even. |
| $11 | $10.00 | $1.00 | 10.0% | Standard low-stakes online fee structure. |
| $22 | $20.00 | $2.00 | 10.0% | A $2 fee is $200 per 100 events. |
| $55 | $50.00 | $5.00 | 10.0% | High volume makes the fee hard to ignore. |
| $109 | $100.00 | $9.00 | 9.0% | Slightly better, but still a real hurdle. |
The fee that changes your real winrate
A 5BB/100 winrate can look solid until you add the room's fee back into the session. Most players track the bb/100 number, debate variance, and rarely add up how much rake they paid that month. The total is often large enough to explain why a graph looks flat even when the player is beating the games before fees.
Online cash games typically take 5% of the pot up to a cap. The cap matters more than the headline percentage because many micro and small-stakes pots are small enough that the full 5% is taken. A $5 pot at NL10 with a $0.50 cap means the room is taking 10% of that pot. Across 25,000 hands a month, that can be more than the player's actual profit.
Tournament players pay the fee before the first hand. A "$22 tournament" is usually $20 going to the prize pool plus $2 to the room. That is roughly 9% gone before the cards are dealt. Play 100 of those a month and the fee alone is $200. Across a year, that is $2,400 in entry fees before results.
The yearly number matters because small per-hand fees are easy to ignore. Once you see the total, rakeback stops looking like a small perk and starts looking like part of the room's real price. Comparing rooms should come down to net cost: rake paid, reliable rakeback returned, and the softness of the games you can actually play.
Crypto poker rooms vary widely in rake structure. Some take 5% with low caps. Others use a weighted contributed model where you only pay rake proportional to how much you put in the pot. A few advertise "low rake" while charging more through tournament fees. Read the rake page before you deposit, especially if you plan to play volume.
The fix is not necessarily playing less. It is playing where the rake structure favors your style. Cash game grinders should look for low cap, high cap relative to stake, or weighted contributed rake. Tournament players should hunt for sites with lower fee percentages — anything under 8% is good, under 6% is excellent. Multi-table grinders should chase rakeback aggressively because it scales linearly with volume.
Run your own numbers before you choose a room.
Rake Calc questions
How is poker rake calculated?
Cash-game rake is usually calculated as pot size multiplied by the rake percentage, then limited by the rake cap. If a $50 pot has 5% rake with a $3 cap, the room takes $2.50. If a $100 pot has the same structure, the room takes $3 because the cap applies.
What is a rake cap in poker?
A rake cap is the maximum amount the room can take from one cash-game pot. A 5% rake with a $1 cap is much cheaper than 5% rake with a $5 cap once pots get large enough to hit the cap.
How much rake is too much?
For cash games, high percentage rake with a low cap can be playable, but high percentage rake with a high cap can erase small winrates. For tournaments, fees above about 10% make the game much harder to beat unless the player pool is very soft.
Should rakeback be included when comparing poker rooms?
Yes, but calculate rake first. A 30% rakeback deal on an expensive room can still be worse than a lower-rake room with less cashback. Compare net cost: rake paid minus reliable rakeback returned.