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 silent winrate killer that nobody talks about until it is too late
A 5BB/100 winrate sounds great until you do the math on what the room is taking. Most players obsess over their bb/100 number, post graphs in Discord, debate variance with strangers, and never once add up how much rake they paid that month. The amount is usually larger than they expect and explains why their bankroll never seems to grow despite the wins.
Online cash games typically take 5% of the pot up to a cap. The cap matters more than the percentage because most pots at micro and small stakes 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% effectively. Across 25,000 hands a month, this adds up fast. We are talking real money — sometimes more than your monthly winnings.
Tournament players think they have it easier because there is no rake on individual pots. Wrong. The rake is baked into the buy-in. A "$22 tournament" is really $20 going to the prize pool plus $2 to the room. That is roughly 9% gone before the cards are even dealt. Play 100 of those a month, you have donated $200 to the room regardless of how you ran. Across a year, that is more than most players spend on rent for a single week.
The calculator shows you the per-year number on purpose. It is supposed to be uncomfortable. Most players have never seen the total written out, and seeing it tends to change behavior. Suddenly the rakeback offer that seemed like a small bonus looks like a meaningful chunk of money. The "free" tournaments hosted by your room are actually paid for by your accumulated fees. The decision to play at one room over another stops being about software preferences and starts being about which one returns more of what they take.
Crypto poker rooms vary widely in rake structure. Some take aggressive 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" without disclosing their tournament fee structure, which is often where they make up for it. Reading the rake page on a poker room before you deposit is the single most undervalued piece of due diligence in online poker.
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. The annual figure is the wake-up call.
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.