Best Free Horse Racing Tips
By the MyHorseBets team · Updated · 4 min read
You don’t have to pay for horse racing tips. Some of the best-researched selections in British racing are free, published every day by racing media with full reasoning behind them. The catch is that free tips are only useful if you know where they come from and keep track of how they do. This page lists the free sources worth reading and shows how to get the most from them.
We don’t publish daily tips ourselves. Every source below is run by someone else, and none of these links are affiliate links.
Free tips for British and Irish racing
Racing media
- Racing Post: free race-by-race tips with confidence ratings, a play of the day and Tote and Placepot guides, alongside subscriber-only content.
- Timeform: best bets for each meeting and selections from Timeform’s ratings, flags and statistics.
- Sporting Life: a daily nap, race previews and free Timeform selections for every British and Irish race.
- At The Races: race-by-race guides for British and Irish meetings, with some overseas racing.
- MyRacing: daily free tips from its team of tipsters.
These are the best free starting point because each tip comes with reasoning you can read and disagree with.
Newspaper tipsters
Every national paper has a racing tipster, and each names a nap, their best bet of the day. The Racing Post Press Challenge records every newspaper tipster’s selections at £1 level stakes through the year, so you can see who is actually in profit before you follow anyone.
Community tipping sites
- OLBG: tips from many members on each race, with each tipster’s profile and record.
- Punters Lounge: free daily tips with written analysis, and a forum.
On community sites, look at a tipster’s record over hundreds of tips, not the last few days. Many members tip a lot of races and the leaderboard at any moment will include some who have simply had a lucky run.
Free picks for racing outside Britain and Ireland
- US racing: Racing Dudes publishes free picks for American tracks. Our handicapping guides explain how US form and bet types work.
- Australian racing: Racenet publishes free tips and form guides for Australian meetings.
How to use free tips well
- Pick two or three sources and stick with them. Reading ten tipsters on the same race will usually leave you with ten different horses.
- Check the price. A free tip is only as good as the odds you get. If the price has collapsed since the tip was written, most of the value has gone.
- Keep a record. Write down every tip you follow, the price you took and the result. After a few months you’ll know whether a source is making you money.
- Settle each bet properly. Our bet calculator and each way calculator work out exactly what each bet returned, including Rule 4 deductions and non-runners, so your record is accurate.
- Judge the tipster, not the tip. Our guide to judging horse racing tipsters explains strike rate, ROI and losing runs.
Free trials and free bets
Some paid services offer free trials or free tip mailings. Treat a free trial as a chance to check the service against its claims, not as evidence that it works: a week or two of results tells you very little.
Bookmaker free bets are a different kind of free. Matched betting uses a bookmaker’s free bet offer and a lay bet at a betting exchange to lock in most of the offer’s value whatever the result. Our matched betting calculator works out the lay stakes. If you want a guided membership, this is the one we link to, described in the seller’s own words:
For paid racing tips, see our guide to professional horse racing tips, or compare every source on the best horse racing tips page.
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
The Racing Post, Timeform, Sporting Life, At The Races and MyRacing all publish free tips for British and Irish racing every racing day. Newspaper tipsters' naps are free too, and OLBG and Punters Lounge collect tips from many members.
The best free tips come from established racing media and give reasoning you can check. Judge any source on a long record at the prices you can get. The Racing Post Press Challenge is a free way to compare newspaper tipsters.
Racing Dudes publishes free picks for American tracks. Our free picks guide for handicappers covers more US sources.