What 9 different sportsbooks actually charge on parlays, measured from 149,277 markets
Single bets are cheap, parlays stack the cost, and same-game parlays cost far more than the books' own math says.
By Jacob · October 9, 2026 · 9 min read
Every bet with two sides has a built-in charge for the book, called the vig (also called juice). You can read it straight off the prices: turn both prices into a percentage, add the two percentages up, and whatever is over 100% is the vig. Prices of -110 on both sides give 4.8%. (Counted against all the money bet instead, the book keeps 4.5% of each dollar. This post uses the first way. The two are close on a single bet and drift apart on parlays, so part 4 also shows what you get back for each fair dollar.)
I ran that on every two-way bet that 9 books were showing a few nights ago. A total of 149,277 markets. Seven of the nine are regular sportsbooks (Pinnacle, Fanatics, FanDuel, BetMGM, Bet365, DraftKings and BallyBet). Underdog and Sleeper are pick'em apps, so those two are marked per leg. Then I asked 6 of the books, and PrizePicks (also a pick'em app, and not one of the nine), to price same-game parlays live. The short version: single bets are cheap, parlays stack the cost, and same-game parlays cost far more than the books' own math says.
1. On a single bet, sportsbooks typically charge a vig of 6.0% to 8.6%.
| Book | Typical vig | Markets |
|---|---|---|
| Underdog (per leg) | 5.0% | 6,400 |
| Pinnacle | 6.0% | 51,276 |
| Fanatics | 6.2% | 24,281 |
| FanDuel | 6.5% | 8,122 |
| BetMGM | 6.8% | 10,194 |
| Bet365 | 7.3% | 2,091 |
| DraftKings | 7.5% | 2,798 |
| BallyBet | 8.6% | 42,975 |
| Sleeper (per leg) | 12.4% | 1,140 |
The cheapest sportsbook is Pinnacle and the most expensive is BallyBet. "Typical" is the middle market: half of a book's bets cost less and half cost more. Underdog's 5.0% looks cheap, but you cannot bet one leg alone, so its real charge is the payout table in part 4.
Player props cost more than main lines at every sportsbook I could test. DraftKings is the sharpest example: 9.3% on props against 7.0% on game lines.
2. On the exact same bet, Pinnacle is typically the cheapest. The other sportsbooks charge 0.2 to 2.4 points more vig.
I took bets that Pinnacle and another book both priced (same game, same market, same line) and compared the two vigs. A point here is a percentage point: 7.5% against 6.0% is 1.5 points more.
| Book | Extra vig vs Pinnacle (points) | Shared bets | More Expensive than Pinnacle on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bet365 | +0.2 | 102 | 62.7% of them |
| FanDuel | +0.9 | 544 | 77.9% |
| Fanatics | +0.9 | 978 | 69.1% |
| DraftKings | +1.5 | 258 | 81.4% |
| BallyBet | +2.3 | 2,208 | 89.8% |
| BetMGM | +2.4 | 346 | 92.5% |
BetMGM is more expensive than Pinnacle on 92.5% of the bets they share and BallyBet on 89.8%, the most of any sportsbook. Bet365 is within a quarter of a point of Pinnacle.
3. The same book charges different prices in different sports.
On game lines, Pinnacle's vig is 3.8% on NFL, 3.6% on NBA and 5.1% on NHL. BallyBet's is 4.7% on NBA and 7.9% on MLS.
Pinnacle is cheapest in 11 of the 14 leagues where it has enough markets. It loses on college football, WNBA and the Champions League. In college football Bet365 (4.7%), FanDuel (4.7%) and BallyBet (4.8%) are cheaper than Pinnacle (4.9%).
4. Parlays: sportsbooks multiply the vig, and the pick'em apps cost more from 3 picks on.
A sportsbook parlay multiplies the single prices, so the vig compounds: multiply (1 + vig) once per leg, then subtract 1. Pinnacle's vig is 5.6% on game lines, so two legs is 1.056 x 1.056 - 1, an 11.6% vig. The pick'em apps pay a fixed multiplier whatever you pick, so their vig comes from the payout. A fair 2-pick (two coin flips) pays 4x and PrizePicks pays 3x, so the fair payout is a third bigger than what is paid (4 divided by 3, minus 1) and the vig is 33%. A vig over 100% only means the fair payout is more than double what is paid.
This table is about parlays across different games, not same-game parlays (those are in part 5). The sportsbook column is a calculation: each book's single-bet vig multiplied once per leg. The app columns are what PrizePicks and Underdog pay for standard picks from different games, from live quotes.
| Legs | Sportsbooks (cheapest to most expensive) | PrizePicks Power | Underdog |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 11.6% to 14.4% | 33% (3x) | 14% (3.5x) |
| 3 | 17.9% to 22.4% | 33% (6x) | 23% (6.5x) |
| 4 | 24.6% to 30.9% | 60% (10x) | 33% (12x) |
| 5 | 31.6% to 40.0% | 60% (20x) | 60% (20x) |
| 6 | 39.1% to 49.8% | 71% (37.5x) | 83% (35x) |
| 7 | 46.9% to 60.2% | not allowed | 97% (65x) |
| 8 | 55.2% to 71.3% | not allowed | 113% (120x) |
The same table counted as cents you get back for each fair dollar (100 divided by 1 + the vig):
| Legs | Sportsbooks (cheapest to most expensive) | PrizePicks Power | Underdog |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 89.6 to 87.4 | 75.0 | 87.5 |
| 3 | 84.8 to 81.7 | 75.0 | 81.3 |
| 4 | 80.3 to 76.4 | 62.5 | 75.0 |
| 5 | 76.0 to 71.4 | 62.5 | 62.5 |
| 6 | 71.9 to 66.8 | 58.6 | 54.7 |
| 7 | 68.1 to 62.4 | not allowed | 50.8 |
| 8 | 64.4 to 58.4 | not allowed | 46.9 |
PrizePicks' 2-pick has a vig of 33%, two to three times a 2-leg sportsbook parlay. Underdog's 2-pick (14%) is in line with the more expensive sportsbooks. From 3 picks both apps cost more than every sportsbook. At 5 picks both are at 60%, which pays back 62.5 cents on each fair dollar, against 32% to 40% at the sportsbooks. PrizePicks stops at 6 picks, and Underdog's vig passes 100% at 8.
5. Same-game parlays cost far more than the sportsbook's own math says.
A same-game parlay puts several bets from one game on one ticket. To see what the books really charge, I asked each one to price every over/under combination of the same legs (4 combinations for 2 legs, 256 for 8), twice, and added up the chances. A set of legs counts only if every combination priced both times and the two rounds matched exactly. That gives 187 complete sets from 7 books and 22,635 quotes, and nothing was bought or placed.
Typical vig I measured, by number of legs:
| Legs | DraftKings | FanDuel | Fanatics | BetMGM | BallyBet | Underdog | PrizePicks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 17.7% | 17.8% | 18.6% | 16.7% | 20.0% | 26.6% | 38.1% |
| 3 | 28.2% | 32.7% | 32.6% | 26.7% | 25.0% | 36.2% | 34.8% |
| 4 | 41.0% | 47.2% | 39.5% | 36.2% | 31.1% | 55.9% | 71.3% |
| 5 | 52.1% | 60.8% | 55.6% | 59.1% | 42.4% | 84.4% | 60.8% |
| 6 | 63.7% | 76.2% | 76.0% | 80.5% | 62.9% | 125.8% | 80.2% |
| 7 | 91.2% | 98.7% | 98.2% | 184.7% | 99.0% | 149.8% | not allowed |
| 8 | 109.4% | 136.6% | 146.3% | 168.3% | none | 182.1% | not allowed |
- At the six books with single prices to compare (all but PrizePicks), the typical set cost more than multiplying the book's own single prices at every leg count. At 2 legs the extra is +3.5 points (Fanatics) to +14.5 (Underdog). At 6 or more legs it is 24 points or more.
- The extra generally grows as legs are added. The exceptions are BallyBet (its extra shrinks from 2 to 4 legs) and BetMGM (it shrinks at 8 legs).
- The scale is large. At 8 legs the typical vig runs from 109.4% (DraftKings) to 182.1% (Underdog). At 182.1% you get back about 35 cents on each fair dollar.
- Only one of the 168 sets with a single-price baseline came in below multiplying: a Fanatics MLB set of 4 legs, a quarter of a point under.
- Neither pick'em app ever charged less than its own payout table on same-game picks. PrizePicks was above its table in 13 of its 19 sets (the other 6 matched it exactly), and Underdog was above its table at every pick count.
6. Live betting costs more, at the books I could measure.
Same book, same league, full-game lines, live against pregame. A game counts as live if it started in the last 6 hours and had not finished.
| Book | Extra vig when live (points) | Live markets compared | Leagues |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pinnacle | +0.6 | 209 | tennis (ATP and WTA), MLB, NHL, WNBA |
| BetMGM | +1.4 | 52 | MLB, NBA |
| Fanatics | +2.0 | 92 | tennis (ATP and WTA), MLB, NBA |
This is a thin answer. At this hour (after 11:41 pm Eastern) few games were live, and the live markets were mostly tennis and basketball, so only 3 books had enough to compare.
What I'd take from this
- Bet singles where you can. At the cheapest sportsbook, a 2-leg parlay already costs about twice a single (11.6% against 5.6%).
- A parlay of game lines across different games at a sportsbook is usually the cheapest way to stack bets: 11.6% to 14.4% at 2 legs and 31.6% to 40.0% at 5. PrizePicks and Underdog cost more from 3 picks on.
- Same-game parlays cost far more than multiplying the prices says, and the gap generally widens as legs are added. At 6 or more legs the extra is 24 points or more.
- Pick the book per sport. Pinnacle wins 11 of 14 leagues on game lines, but college football has five books inside 0.3 points of the cheapest.
- Props cost more than game lines, and so does live play. DraftKings' vig is 9.3% on props against 7.0% on game lines, and at the 3 books I could measure, live costs about 0.6 to 2.0 points more than pregame.
How we measured
Single bets. The prices we recorded at 9 books. A market counts only if it has exactly two sides that are true opposites (over and under, yes and no, home and away, two teams on a moneyline), both sides are priced, and the vig falls between -3% and 30%. Of 159,371 markets with two fresh priced sides at the 9 books, 149,277 pass. Vig is 1/odds_a + 1/odds_b - 1 using decimal odds, and "typical" is the median. Game lines are full-game moneylines, spreads and totals. Props are player markets with both an over and an under. A league is named from the book's own label or, if that is missing, from the label other books give the same game.
Same-game parlays. Every request was a read-only price request with a stake of zero. Legs were over and under lines ending in .5, or two-team lines, so no combination can push, with one leg per player. Each cell below is complete sets over sets tried, with the number of quotes asked in brackets. 7 and 8 legs rest on a few sets per book, so treat those cells as small samples, and compare a book with itself because the legs differ by book, sport and leg count. BetMGM's 7-leg sets are NFL and its 8-leg sets are MLB.
| Book | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DraftKings | 7/7 (56) | 9/9 (144) | 9/16 (512) | 9/13 (832) | 6/11 (1,408) | 3/3 (768) | 3/3 (1,536) |
| FanDuel | 3/3 (24) | 3/3 (48) | 3/3 (96) | 3/3 (192) | 3/3 (384) | 2/2 (512) | 2/4 (2,048) |
| Fanatics | 3/4 (32) | 3/4 (64) | 3/3 (96) | 3/3 (192) | 3/5 (640) | 2/2 (512) | 2/2 (1,024) |
| BetMGM | 3/3 (60) | 3/3 (84) | 3/3 (132) | 2/4 (229) | 2/4 (315) | 2/2 (542) | 2/2 (1,134) |
| BallyBet | 3/3 (36) | 3/3 (60) | 3/3 (108) | 2/2 (136) | 2/4 (528) | 1/1 (265) | 0/56 (3,003) |
| Underdog | 12/12 (96) | 11/12 (192) | 12/12 (384) | 7/8 (512) | 7/8 (1,024) | 2/2 (512) | 2/2 (1,024) |
| PrizePicks | 3/3 (27) | 3/3 (49) | 3/3 (97) | 5/5 (321) | 5/5 (641) | 0/1 (2) | 0/1 (2) |
What the legs were. DraftKings: mostly player props, plus some game lines, in NFL, MLB, college football and NHL. FanDuel: game lines and inning or period markets only, with no player props, and every set of 5 or more legs is MLB innings. Fanatics: a mix of game lines and props in NFL, college football and MLB. BetMGM: NFL game-level lines (totals, spreads, halves, quarters, sometimes one team or player market) from one game for 2 to 7 legs, and MLB player props for 8. BallyBet: game-level legs only, all from one NFL game. Underdog and PrizePicks: player props.
The same-game table covers the seven books where every combination of a set could be priced: DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics, BetMGM, BallyBet, Underdog and PrizePicks. A few cells are empty or thin, mostly for simple reasons:
- PrizePicks stops at 6 picks, so 7 and 8 leg cells do not exist.
- Some books turn certain combinations away. DraftKings would not price football sets with a 2nd quarter bet in them. BallyBet priced most 8-leg combinations but refused at least one in every set, so no 8-leg set is complete.
- Some games were not available. BetMGM's college football games were suspended when checked, so its numbers come from NFL and MLB games.
- Some sets did not hold together. If a player was pulled or a price moved mid set, the set was thrown out and replaced.
- Three books are not in the table. Sleeper adjusts payouts on same-game picks inside its app, so there is no fixed price to measure. Bet365 and Pinnacle are left out as well.
- Prices move, so this is one snapshot.
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