How long do I have to cash a VLT ticket?

It depends on the province, and the clock starts from the date printed on the ticket: 30 days in Alberta , 120 in Saskatchewan and 180 in Manitoba . In Alberta and Manitoba the machine prints a cash-out ticket on its own once your balance reaches $1,250. If an Alberta bar can't pay a ticket over $1,250, it will give you a list of designated sites that can.

Is there a limit on how much cash a VLT will take?

Yes. A VLT stops accepting cash once your balance passes a set amount: $250 in Alberta, $100 in Manitoba and $60 on Atlantic Lottery's machines . In Alberta and Manitoba you also pick a session time limit before you play, and the machine cashes you out when your second session runs out.

Can I use a credit card to play a VLT?

Not at the machine, and the bar can't lend you the money either. Alberta's rules bar VLT retailers from giving credit or credit card cash advances to play, Manitoba's extend that to debit cards and cashing cheques, and Atlantic Lottery keeps ATMs off the gaming floor. Taking cash from an ATM on a credit card is a cash advance, with interest from the first day, which we cover in does gambling affect your credit score .

Are VLT and slot machine winnings taxable in Canada?

Not for a casual player. The Canada Revenue Agency treats a gambling win as a windfall rather than income, so you generally owe nothing on it. The exception is someone gambling as a business, and the courts set that bar high. We go through the rule and the cases behind it in are lottery winnings taxable in Canada .

VLT and Slot Payout Percentages in Canada: What an Hour Costs

Every Canadian province that publishes a VLT payout percentage sets it at 90% or more: 92% in Alberta and Quebec, 93% in Manitoba, 90% to 93% in Saskatchewan and over 90% in Atlantic Canada. Casino slot machines pay back about the same.

That leaves the machine 7 to 10 cents of every dollar bet on it, on every spin. It doesn’t sound like much until you count the spins. At a dollar a spin and 12 spins a minute, a 92% VLT costs about $58 an hour on average.

What do VLTs and slot machines pay out in Canada?

Each province sets its machines to pay back a fixed share of everything bet on them, averaged over millions of plays. For VLTs, every province that publishes the figure lands at 90% or a little above, and casino slots come in at about the same level. Here’s each province’s own number, and what it leaves the machine.

Province	Machine	Pays back	Kept per $100 bet
Alberta	VLTs	92%	$8
Saskatchewan	VLTs	90% to 93%	$7 to $10
Manitoba	VLTs	93%	$7
Quebec	VLTs and casino slots	92%	$8
Atlantic Canada	VLTs	Over 90%	Under $10
Ontario	Casino slots	91.5%	$8.50
British Columbia	Casino slots	Over 92%	Under $8

Figures come from AGLC (opens in a new tab), Saskatchewan Video Lottery (opens in a new tab), Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries (opens in a new tab), Loto-Québec for VLTs (opens in a new tab) and casino slots (opens in a new tab), Atlantic Lottery (opens in a new tab), OLG’s annual report (opens in a new tab) for the year to March 2025, and BCLC (opens in a new tab). Atlantic Lottery runs the VLTs in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, and Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan’s figure is a required range rather than an average.

Those are the rates the machines are set to. The legal minimums are lower. Nova Scotia’s regulations (opens in a new tab) require a VLT to pay back at least 80% of the money it takes in, Quebec’s (opens in a new tab) set the floor at 83%, and Ontario’s casino standards (opens in a new tab) at 85%. Saskatchewan’s standards go further and require a range, 90% to 93%.

Online, the rate is higher. OLG’s own website paid out 95.1% on slots over the same year, against 91.5% in its casinos.

What does a 92% payout actually cost you?

It costs 8 cents of every dollar you bet, each time you bet it. That 8 cents is the house edge, and it comes out of money the machine just paid you as well as money you brought. So 92% isn’t the share of your cash you’ll walk out with. It’s the share of each bet that comes back, and the same dollars get bet again and again.

Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries makes this point in its player brochure on slots and VLTs (opens in a new tab): a 92% payout “doesn’t mean that you will leave with 92% of the money you started with.” Atlantic Lottery’s odds brochure adds that players who keep replaying their winnings without cashing out “will eventually lose all of the money that they have wagered.”

How far $100 goes at 92%

Say you sit down with $100, bet a dollar a spin, and keep playing whatever you win. The machine keeps 8 cents a spin on average, so the $100 lasts about 1,250 spins before it’s gone. Some nights end much sooner and some run much longer, but that’s the average.

Over those 1,250 spins you’ll have bet $1,250, twelve and a half times the money you walked in with. That gap between money bet and money lost is why the total bet in a province is so much bigger than what its players actually lose, which we go through in how much Canadians lose gambling.

How much does an hour on a VLT or slot machine cost?

At a dollar a spin on a 92% machine, about $58 an hour. The math is what you bet in an hour times the share the machine keeps. Twelve spins a minute is 720 spins an hour, so a dollar a spin puts $720 through the machine, and 8% of $720 is $57.60.

Machine	Pays back	Spins a minute	Cost per hour, $1 a spin	How long $100 lasts
Manitoba VLT	93%	12	$50	2 hr
Alberta or Quebec VLT	92%	12	$58	1 hr 44 min
Ontario casino slot	91.5%	12	$61	1 hr 38 min
Atlantic VLT	Over 90%	12	Up to $72	1 hr 23 min or more
OLG online slot	95.1%	24	$71	1 hr 25 min

Twelve spins a minute, one every five seconds, is the pace the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba’s cost-of-play calculator (opens in a new tab) treats as typical for a VLT player, and we’ve used it for the casino slot too. Twenty-four is the fastest Ontario allows online, where its internet gaming standards (opens in a new tab) require at least 2.5 seconds between the start of one game and the next, and ban autoplay, turbo and quick-spin features on slots. Atlantic Lottery says only that its games pay over 90%, so read that row as the most an hour costs there.

A better payout doesn’t mean a cheaper hour

OLG’s online slots pay back more per spin than its casino slots, 95.1% against 91.5%, and still cost more an hour, about $71 against $61 at a dollar a spin, because they can be played twice as fast. Your $100 runs out sooner too, in about 1 hr 25 min instead of 1 hr 38 min.

Your bet size multiplies the cost

At 25 cents a spin, a 92% machine costs about $14 an hour. At $2.50, the most Nova Scotia’s regulations let a VLT take on a single play, it’s about $144. Play for an hour twice a week at a dollar a spin, and that’s about $6,000 a year.

Are VLTs and slot machines rigged?

No, not in the way people usually mean. Each result comes from a random number generator inside the machine, the games are tested before they go into service, and regulators watch them after that. What feels rigged is the price. The 7 to 10 cents on every dollar is built into every game on purpose, and over enough spins it’s what you pay.

In Saskatchewan, the testing lab GLI and the Western Canada Lottery Corporation both certify each VLT game before it’s available. Loto-Québec says every possible outcome on its slot machines is recorded in a program certified by an independent laboratory, and AGLC technical staff monitor every VLT in Alberta. Each spin is also independent of every spin before it. Alberta’s regulator says your play pattern, the time of day, where the machine sits and the result of your last game have no bearing on the next spin. A machine is never due for a win.

Why it feels like you win more often than you do

On a multi-line game, a spin can pay back 40 cents on a $1 bet and still play the win sounds and flash the credits. You lost 60 cents. Researchers at the University of Waterloo call these losses disguised as wins. When they measured how 40 new players reacted physically, those spins registered about the same as real wins (opens in a new tab), and more strongly than plain losses. Since 2022, Ontario’s internet gaming standards have banned win sounds and visuals on any online slot spin that pays back no more than the bet. A session full of small celebrations can still be a session where you lose money.

Does it matter which machine you play?

Not much. Payouts vary a little between games, and you can’t tell from the outside which version a machine is running. Alberta says some of its games are set at 92.00% and others at 91.89%. Even a much bigger gap tends to disappear inside a single night.

A 2010 University of Waterloo study (opens in a new tab) found that Ontario’s regulator had approved identical-looking versions of the same slot game at different payback percentages. The researchers got the design documents for the 85% and 98% versions of one game and simulated 2,000 first-time players, each starting with $100 and playing one version or the other until the money ran out. For the typical player, the version made no significant difference. The gap showed up among the lucky few: on the 98% version, 54 simulated players saw their balance peak above $1,000, against 5 on the 85% one.

There’s no system that changes the odds either. As Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries’ brochure says, “There is nothing you can do to improve your odds of winning.”

A weekly cash draw with no house edge

Lodavo is a free Canadian app with a weekly cash draw, and it gives you the part people play for: numbers to pick, a result to wait for on Sunday, and a chance to win up to $10,000. Someone wins at least $100 every week. What’s different is where your tickets come from. Every $25 you’ve set aside earns a free one, so there’s no bet, and nothing for a house to keep.

Every machine in the table above costs money by the hour. Lodavo never charges you anything for a ticket, and the money behind your tickets stays in your own savings or chequing account whether you win or not. You can win cash every week, and there’s no way to lose money doing it.

In short

A VLT or slot machine in Canada pays back about 92 cents on the dollar, and it keeps its 8 cents on every spin, including spins paid for with its own payouts. What you lose over a night depends on your bet, your pace and how long you play.

If it’s the draw you enjoy, Lodavo gives you one every week for free. Download it on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) or Google Play Store (opens in a new tab) and start earning tickets for Sunday.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.