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Odds and return in demo mode
Two jurisdictions require the free version to match the real one on the odds and the payout percentage. Everywhere else nobody requires it, and almost nobody publishes it.
The question that decides whether the hour was worth anything
A free version can resemble the paid game in every visible respect and still be a different machine underneath, and nothing on the screen would give that away. The reels, the symbols and the paytable are presentation; what makes a slot the game it is sits in the generator of random numbers and in the "return to player" (the share of every stake a title is built to pay back across a very long run).
Two possibilities follow, and a reader is entitled to know which of them he is looking at. Either the trial runs the mathematics of the paid title, in which case an hour on it teaches something transferable about how often the features arrive and how deep the dry spells go, or it runs a friendlier set of numbers, in which case the hour teaches the layout of the buttons and nothing else.
Nobody in this trade advertises the second possibility, and almost nobody rules it out either (which is the whole reason this question needs a page). Four regulators have addressed the point in writing, two of them demanding identity outright, and across the rest of the twenty-one markets read for this site the question is not put to anybody at all.
The two that wrote identity into the text of the law
Germany is the stricter of the pair, and its wording leaves little room for argument about what it wants (the verb it uses is "entsprechen", to correspond). The free entertainment offering must correspond to the licensed game as a whole, and the statute names the two quantities that have to match: the probability of winning, "Gewinnwahrscheinlichkeit", and the payout ratio, "Auszahlungsquote" (the 2021 treaty between the German states, § 6j, second paragraph).
The same paragraph adds a detail nobody else thought of. Where a fee or a comparable charge attaches to the paid game, the free version has to reproduce that cost and state it to the player, so that a trial cannot quietly omit a charge which the real product imposes.
Sweden reaches the same destination by describing an outcome instead of a percentage. A licensee there may not provide "gratisspel" (free games), "provspel" (trial games) or anything similar whose random result differs from that of the matching game played for money (the Swedish act, chapter 14, at section 5, in the wording of 2025), which forbids the friendlier generator without naming a figure.
That sentence sits immediately beside another one, and the two were written together. In the same section a licensee is forbidden to shape or to code a game so that it suggests a win was nearly reached when it was not, an effect the trade calls a "near miss"; the pairing says what the legislator was worried about, namely a free version used to teach a false expectation.
A lobby that invites the trial first, on the titles that carry one
The operator suggests checking a title in demo play before committing to it, and the engine decides which titles qualify.
Malta Gaming Authority MGA/CRP/171/2009/01, Skill On Net Limited
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The two that come close without going quite that far
Ontario put the requirement into a regulator's standard rather than a statute, and narrowed it to the odds. Its "free-to-play" games must not misrepresent the chance of winning or the way prizes are distributed, and they "shall have the same odds of winning as games played for money" (standard 2.15, requirement 5), which is identity of outcome with nothing said about the return.
The companion requirement is subtler than it looks, and we would like to see it copied everywhere. "The denomination of each credit shall be clearly displayed on game screens" (requirement 6 of the same standard), because a trial balance of ten thousand credits means nothing until a reader knows whether a credit is a penny or a pound.
Spain treated the whole thing as a problem about expectations. Its "aplicaciones de juego gratuito" may not create a false expectation of the paid games, and the decree lists the ways one might: different rules of play, a random number generator built on different software or different programming, or any other substantial variation from the game actually sold (article 14, first paragraph, letter b).
Everywhere else, and the short list of people who publish a figure
Outside those four markets the question has no answer, because nobody has posed it. Denmark and Australia put a game without a stake outside the definition of gambling altogether (no stake, therefore no gambling, therefore no standard), Italy puts a game of pure amusement without a money prize outside the object of its advertising ban, and a rule that does not reach a product cannot impose arithmetic on it.
What fills the gap is the commercial self-interest of the studios, and it fills it unevenly. One studio of the forty-four we read states that every title in its portfolio has a playable trial, and invites a licensee to check the return, the "volatility" and the "max win" multiplier before taking the game, which is a promise made to businesses rather than to players, and it is still the clearest sentence on the subject that we found anywhere.
Another studio prints the figure beside the trial itself, and on one title that declared return read 96.50 per cent next to the game. Those are the exceptions. Across a hundred and four lobbies we found no brand publishing the return of a free version next to that free version, and most of them publish no "return" figure anywhere at all, whether the game is free or paid.
One technical hint survives in the plumbing, and it points in the opposite direction. A launcher address usually carries a jurisdiction alongside the mode ("jurisdiction=99" at one studio, "jurisdiction=MT" at a second), which means the configuration a studio serves is at least capable of changing with the market, although nothing we read says what changes with it (what the parameters do).
The affiliate sector does better than the operators and worse than it appears. Several of the larger catalogues print a return (labelled "RTP"), a volatility band and a maximum win on every card, taken from the studio rather than measured, which is useful as a label and proves nothing whatever about the trial sitting behind the card!
Our own limit on this, stated before anybody asks
We publish no return figures of our own, and we have measured no game. Establishing the return of a free version from outside would take hundreds of thousands of recorded spins on every title, which is a laboratory exercise rather than a reading exercise; reading is what this site does, and the boundary matters more than the compliment it costs us.
So our boxes say whether a free version exists, and under which condition it opens, never how generous it is and never a "theoretical" figure of our own. Where a figure appears anywhere near these pages it came from the studio that built the game, with the studio named, and a number we read is kept visibly apart from a number we would have had to produce (how each answer was reached).
Two windows, and the comparison they make possible
Open the information panel inside the free version, find the return it declares, then open the studio's own page for the same title and set the two figures side by side. Where they agree, the trial is at least claiming to be the same machine; where the free version declares nothing whatever, you have learned something about that lobby instead of about the game.
Then ask what a credit is worth, because that one question converts an hour of habit into a figure you can look at. If the trial will not tell you, treat the stake you grew comfortable with as a quantity invented by a machine that could not take your money, and fix your own before the cashier opens!
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Must a free version return the same percentage as the paid game?
In two markets, yes. Germany requires the free offering to match the paid game on the probability of winning and the payout ratio, and Sweden forbids a trial whose random result differs from the game played for money.
Where can the return of a title be found?
On the studio's own page more often than in a lobby. Across a hundred and four lobbies we found none publishing the figure beside the free version, while some studios print it next to the trial itself.
Do you measure these figures yourselves?
No. Establishing a return from outside would take hundreds of thousands of recorded spins per title, so every figure near these pages comes from the studio that built the game, named as such.
Why does the value of a credit matter?
Because an hour spent betting fifty credits a spin teaches a habit whose price a player has never seen. Ontario requires the denomination of each credit to be displayed clearly on the game screens, and we would like that copied.
