Best Horse Racing Tips
By the MyHorseBets team · Updated · 4 min read
Everyone wants the best horse racing tips, and there is no shortage of people offering them: newspaper tipsters, racing websites, social media accounts and paid subscription services. The hard part is not finding tips. It is working out which ones are worth following.
We don’t publish daily tips at MyHorseBets. What we do is explain where good tips are found, how to judge the people giving them, and how to check what a tip would actually have paid with our free calculators. This page is the starting point, and each section links to a guide that goes deeper.
Where horse racing tips come from
Most tips you will see fall into one of four groups.
- Newspaper tipsters. Every national paper has a racing tipster who picks a horse in the main races each day and marks one selection as the nap, their best bet of the day. The Racing Post runs a Press Challenge that tracks the newspaper tipsters’ records at £1 level stakes, which makes it one of the few places where you can compare tipsters on a public, independent record.
- Racing media websites. The Racing Post, Sporting Life, Timeform and At The Races all publish free tips and race previews for British and Irish racing.
- Community tipping sites. Sites such as OLBG and Punters Lounge collect tips from many members and show how each one has performed.
- Paid tipping services. Subscriptions that email selections, often with a staking plan and a published results record. They range from honest small operations to services that sell on unrealistic claims.
Our guides split these up by what you are looking for:
- Horse racing tips for today: what to check on race day before you follow a morning tip.
- Horse racing tips for tomorrow: planning bets the evening before, declarations and early prices.
- Free horse racing tips: the best free sources and how to use them without paying for anything.
- Professional horse racing tips: what a paid service gives you and whether the subscription can pay for itself.
- The best horse racing tipsters: how to judge any tipster on their record.
What makes a tip worth following
A good tip is not the same as a winner. A tipster can pick plenty of winners and still lose you money if the prices are short, and a tipster with a low strike rate can be profitable if the winners come at big odds. Four things matter more than any single result.
- A long, public record. Hundreds of bets, recorded before the races were run, somewhere you can check. A screenshot of a good week tells you nothing.
- Profit at the prices you can actually get. Results quoted at early prices that vanish within minutes, or at the best price across every bookmaker, will flatter a record.
- Return on investment, not strike rate. ROI is profit divided by the total staked. It tells you how much a tipster makes per pound bet, which is what you care about.
- Honest losing runs. Every tipster has them. A record that shows them, and a tipster who talks about them, is a better sign than one that never seems to lose.
Our guide to judging horse racing tipsters works through each of these with examples.
Check the numbers yourself
Before you follow anyone, work out what their bets would have paid at your stakes. Our calculators settle any bet the way a bookmaker would:
- Each way calculator for each way singles and multiples, with 1/4 or 1/5 place terms.
- Bet calculator for every bet type, from a single to a Lucky 15 or a Yankee, with Rule 4 and dead heats.
- Odds calculator to turn a price into an implied probability, so you can see the strike rate a tipster needs to break even.
- Rule 4 calculator for what a late non-runner does to your winnings.
A useful habit is to take a tipster’s last month of selections, settle them in the bet calculator at your own stake, and compare the result with what the tipster claims.
Paid tipping services we link to
Some readers prefer a paid service that does the form study for them. The table below lists the paid services we currently link to, using only what each seller says on its own sales page. We haven’t verified their results, and none of them can promise a profit.
Advertisement | Paid partner | 18+
| Service | What you get | Racing | Price | The seller's own figures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beat the FavouritePaid tipping service | Email tips that never back the favourite. Most selections are each way, with occasional win bets. | UK and Irish | £14.95 a month, or a one-off yearly plan. 30-day money-back guarantee. | 460 tips with a 12% ROI and a 43% strike rate |
| Each Way PetePaid tipping service | Up to three each way value picks a day and no favourites, staked as each way singles and a double, or an each way patent on three-selection days. | UK | Shown at checkout on the seller's site. Sold through ClickBank, whose refund policy applies. | over £18,000 profit in the last 12 months to £10 each way stakes |
| ValueTipsValue betting software and email tips | A web app that compares forecast odds with the live market to flag horses it rates as value, plus emailed tips. | UK and Irish | One-off payments: £19 for 3 months or £39 for a year. 30-day money-back guarantee. | 1,274 email tips with a 41% win rate and £11,600 profit |
| Pro Betting Club (Maximum Bets)Paid tipping service | Win-only selections from the Maximum Bets service, sent only when a horse passes the tipster's selection rules, so not every day. | UK and Irish | US$39 a month or US$89 a quarter. Sold through ClickBank, whose refund policy applies. | 2,497 tips, 1,213 winners and 875 placed |
If you would rather learn a method than follow someone else’s selections, our guides to horse racing systems and horse racing handicapping cover the main approaches.
Betting always carries a risk of loss and no tipster, system or staking plan can guarantee a profit. Only stake what you can afford to lose, and set a budget before you start. Gambling responsibly.
Frequently asked questions
No single tipster is best every year. Compare tipsters on a long public record and on profit at the prices you could actually get. The Racing Post Press Challenge is a free, independent way to compare the newspaper tipsters.
Some are. Free tips from established racing media come with reasoning you can check, and community sites show each tipster's record. Treat them as a second opinion, not a shortcut. Our free tips guide lists the main sources.
A nap is a tipster's strongest selection of the day. Newspaper tipsters each nominate one, and the Racing Post Press Challenge tracks how the newspaper tipsters' selections perform.