Sites Like Stake US – Top Stake Alternatives in The USA

Last Updated on September 20, 2023

What would you do next if you created one of the most popular international online casinos, beloved by several gambling communities worldwide? Create a beloved social casino in the USA, of course. Stake US is a social casino inspired by the highly successful UK site of the same name. The look and feel are incredibly similar. It makes sense. Given the prosperity of the original, why reinvent the wheel? But can a high-rolling crypto site like Stake be just as popular when reborn as a free play and sweepstakes site branded for North American players?

Let’s find out!

List of Sites Like Stake US

Stake Sister Sites

Would you like a side of Stake with your Stake? That’s right, Stake US has one sister site: The original UK brand, known as Stake.com. Well, in reality, there are dozens of these sister sites, but they are regional clones of one another that barely change the site’s logo. SportsPesa TLCBet and SportsBetIO are essentially all the same site. Essentially, it’s all Stake.com in the end.

Because it’s neither a social casino nor available to US players, let’s quickly cover the original Stake site so that you understand the pedigree of where Stake US came from. Then we’ll move on to some Stake alternatives available in the US and Canada!

Stake.com – Stake Sister Sites

This is where the legacy started. People were looking for a casino that accepted cryptocurrency, put transparency first, and had a good game selection. TGP Europe took up the challenge, and the original Stake was born.

They quickly became licensed in the UK and worked hard to improve transparency. They don’t hide that the house has an advantage. Stake use terms that both techies and non-techies can understand, all to provide an online experience that is as close to a real casino floor as possible but far more transparent.

Their efforts worked. Stake is one of the UK’s best-reviewed real money online casinos, with a 4.4 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot. Even for a UK-licensed casino, that’s nearly unheard of. Only the giants with almost a century in betting history, like Bet Victor, achieve high trust scores. Most casinos are happy to break a 3 out of 5, frankly.

Stake.com Features

Stake.com offers sportsbook, virtual sports, live casino, slots, table games, and a few miscellaneous things like scratch cards.

Their sports betting system is one of the most comprehensive in the world, offering thousands of events and live Esports wagering. Round this out with entire virtual sports leagues; the average punter will have plenty to wager on.

As far as Stake.com’s live casino, it has a decent selection. They’ve got all the classics like blackjack, roulette, and baccarat. But they also have a few rare games, like Andar Bahar, Dragon Tiger, and Sic Bo!

Their slot and table game providers are diverse, including offerings from Stake Originals, Pocket Games, Pragmatic Play, NoLimit City, Evolution, and Hacksaw Gaming. All of their games are up from about their RTP percentages. They even have an RTP page for things like their virtual sporting events.

Regarding payment methods, they accept all major cryptocurrencies: Visa, Skrill, Neteller, MoonPay, and Remik.

Stake doesn’t do signup bonuses, at least not usually. They know most are designed to lose the entire reward (and then some) via rollover requirements, so why bother? Instead, they encourage you to play the games you enjoy the most and often offer nice reload perks such as free bets or spins. These can vary from week to week or even day to day.

They don’t accept US players, of course. Hence, this information is primarily to provide you with some of the company’s history and philosophy or to give you a Stake alternative if you’re moving to the UK or Europe.

Stake Alternatives for the US and Canada

Three Stake alternatives for the US and Canada are excellent. One has a similar model to most social casinos, with play money and a sweepstakes currency. The second has both a casino and a bingo site as options. The third only has play currency options, an exciting change to the standard social casino formula.

We’re talking about Fortune Coins, Pulsz, and Wow Vegas. These three giants of the social casino industry are on all of our top 2023 North American casino lists, and for good reason. We ensured that all these sites reached a certain standard so our readers could compare them fairly. To see some places that didn’t make this list, check out our Chumba Casino sister site’s comprehensive review.

As for these top contenders, Let’s check them out one at a time, and you can see if they measure up to Stake US.

Fortune Coins – Stake Alternative Sites

Fortune Coins has established itself at the top of the food chain regarding North American social casinos. And we aren’t the only ones who think so. Their Trustpilot rating is through the roof, 4.7 out of 5, and climbing in early September 2023. There are only a few other sites to compare this to. Almost no real-money online casinos hit that high mark, and most of the beloved social casinos top out at around 4.5 out of 5.

Software Providers

One of the reasons why Fortune Coins is so popular is their game selection. They don’t screw around with home brews, instead opting to license some of the most famous names from providers like Pragmatic, Blazesoft Booming Games, and KA Gaming.

On the transparency side of the coin, we know the RTP of these games because we can easily read the statistics from the manufacturers’ websites. As for any variable RTP games, exact RTP settings are available in the help files for the game itself, generally under the Info tab.

Bonuses

Most sites like Stake US use two kinds of virtual currency, and Fortune Coins is no exception. In their case, they use both Gold Coins and Fortune Coins.

Gold Coins are the site’s play money option, and when in this mode, you aren’t risking anything that can be exchanged for anything in the real world. On the other hand, playing for Fortune Coins means that you’re wagering the Sweepstakes currency. And because you can exchange the sweepstakes currency for real money, it’s gambling with extra steps.

New players at Fortune Coins Casino get 360k Gold Coins and 1k Fortune Coins. You can pick up additional coins of both types from social media interactions and contests, weekly and monthly promotions, loyalty programs that reward you if you log in for a short period at least once a day, and microtransactions. The last option is how the casino ultimately stays in business.

Most US and Canadian-marketed social casinos have a particular rule for their Sweepstakes that keeps them on the right side of the law: They must include a free entry method. For complete information on getting a bunch of free Fortune Coins, check out their Sweeps Rules. There, you’ll find the sometimes complex, sometimes silly requirements. Because they want everyone to automate the process, they include requirements like handwritten letters, country-specific addresses, specific envelope sizes, etc. But if you follow the rules, you can get 500 Fortune Coins into your account.

Fortune Coins has that nice mix of simple functions but a complex gaming experience that sits just underneath the surface. There are also EV considerations to consider, not the least of which is whether or not it’s worth your time to write in for free Fortune Coins. It comes down to a simple question: What’s your time worth? For some people, spending an hour of their time and a stamp to create and send off the free sweepstakes entry request is worthwhile. For others, it would be a waste of time.

Whatever your situation, Fortune Coins is likely the best site like Stake US, at least at the moment. When you combine factors like great support, generous microtransactions, good loyalty bonuses, and the use of real slots with established RTP percentages, Fortune Coins is the total package.

Pulsz – Stake Alternative Sites

Pulsz is another excellent option when looking at Stake alternative sites and apps. Consider them a ‘two for one’. That’s because Pulsz has a social casino to look at and a social bingo parlor!

Pulsz is another sweepstakes site with two kinds of currency: Gold Coins and Sweepstakes Coins. As usual, Gold Coins are the play money, and Sweepstakes Coins can be redeemed for real money prizes.

One slightly annoying thing about Pulsz Casino is their ‘buyback’ mechanic after you bust your entire Gold Coin balance. Any time you go below 50 Gold Coins, you can play on one of the two slots considered ‘infinity machines’: Fish Reef and Legends Of Ra. Playing these penny slots will eventually get your balance back above 50 Gold Coins. But this can take quite a while, grinding away at the very lowest end of the spectrum as you try to work your Stake up to something reasonable. Is it far simpler to award your account 500 Gold Coins after you bust out of Gold Coins? What is the point of annoying your players? And believe us. It can be quite a time waster after spending too many times grinding upward from around 30 coins.

Software Providers

At least the licensed games are good. They use providers such as Evoplay, 3 Oaks, Playson, and Pragmatic Play, and many others. Their RTPs can be looked up on each website. We E-mailed them in early September 2023 to see if they would add those RTP percentages to the game descriptions. They responded a while later, saying that they would be adding those to each title as quickly as possible:

‘We sincerely apologize for any delay in response. We received quite an influx of e-mails recently, and rest assured that we are working hard to get in touch with our members as soon as possible.

Our team responded with an update and was informed that you will find your RTP by clicking the “i” icon once on a game.’

It’s nice they’re happy to take constructive feedback and act on it! A sign of class.

Like many other Sweepstakes sites, Pulsz offers free entry if you can write a handwritten letter according to their parameters. Consult the Official Pulsz Sweepstakes Rules for complete details.

You may remember that we mentioned an associated bingo site. That sister site is called Pulszbingo. Unlike most other social casinos, it only uses Gold Coins. They do not offer their players any sweepstakes.

Multiple bingo rooms represent several levels of ‘high roller’ status. They also have the full slot suite of their sister site. Their free bingo rooms are available whenever your balance gets low or you want to goof around. Pulszbingo is all about fun. It only uses microtransactions to boost your play money progress, like Wow Vegas, which we’re about to cover. People love them. They hold a 4.1 out of 5-star rating on Trustpilot.

As far as the original is concerned, Pulsz is well above average for social casinos. The public agrees, giving them an impressive 4.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot as of September 2023.

Wow Vegas – Stake Alternative Sites

Wow, Vegas is another social casino with licensed games and no sweepstakes or secondary currency. They only use a play money currency called Wow Coins. That means their microtransactions are just for people who want to play the highest-stakes money games.

Their licensed games include Pragmatic Play, 3 Oaks, Betsoft, Booming, Bgaming, Habanero, and Playnova created titles. In total, that’s over 450 games as of September 2023. You can search for your favorite slots by using the search bar at the top of the menu after you log in.

Wow Vegas has a generous bust-out policy. Just play lower-stakes games until you get to a low enough balance, and Wow Vegas will automatically give you 15,000 Wow Coins! This will keep you playing for ages unless you go right to the high-stakes games, of course.

Wow, Vegas has a Trustpilot score of 4.2 out of 5 as of September 2023. We consider it one of the best sites like Stake US.

An Honest Review of Stake US

The first thing that you notice about Stake US is its hyper-minimalist design. There are no bells or whistles just for the sake of appearance. Everything is clean, crisp, and linear. On a desktop display, even the menu is hidden, sitting along the left side of your screen, a dull gray bar that is functional but not flashy. On smaller displays, the options appear along the bottom, somewhat larger but no less colorful.

Stake US Games

Because Stake US is a social casino, the features differ somewhat from its big brother from the UK. The US site doesn’t have a sportsbook and doesn’t have virtual or E-sports betting. But it does have an extensive suite of live games, slots, and table games. Those are what the vast majority of users are looking for anyway. Offering live dealers is a step above and beyond the vast majority of social casinos out there.

Speaking of the social casino aspects, Stake US offers Gold Coins and Stake Cash as virtual currencies you can play with. Gold Coins are the ‘play money’ option, allowing you to use all the games and collect more via the daily loyalty bonus if you log in regularly. Stake Cash is ‘sweepstakes’ currency and can be turned in for real cash via their ‘promotional play’ options that let you tap into their sweepstakes offerings.

Of course, with a sweepstakes for US and Canadian residents, there’s usually a free entry method. Sites like Stake US normally opt for handwritten entry forms, and that’s precisely what’s listed in the Terms and Conditions. Make sure you follow all of the rules strictly. To prevent anyone from automating the process (with an autopen, for example), Stake now has you generate a code that needs to be handwritten into each request. So make sure you follow all the steps!

Slots and RTP

Let’s take a moment to talk about transparency by looking at the site’s slot games. Most sites like Stake US will have some way to look up a slot machine’s Return To Player (RTP) percentage, either by reading through all of the game’s rules or going to the game manufacturer’s website.

Stake US has the most accessible RTP lookup system of any online casino that we’ve ever seen. We aren’t exaggerating. A ‘ Description ‘ window is right below the game when you open any slots, such as Chaos Crew from Hacksaw Gaming. The first thing listed is the house edge, in this case, 3.7%. Subtract that from 100; you instantly know this is a 96.3% RTP machine. But even if you didn’t know what RTP meant, you would know how much the house takes on average! They spell it out right on the default info tab. That’s transparency.

Software Providers

In addition to the Stake Originals, which we’ll get to in a moment, Stake US features games from makers such as Pragmatic Play, Hacksaw Gaming, Beter Live, Kalamba, and Onetouch. This covers many of the most popular games that real money online casinos have. Most RTPs are in the 96% range, but you can find even better if you sleuth around.

You can search the Slot Games page by either provider or game name. Blue Samurai is a good bet for one of the better RTP slots. It has an RTP of 97.26%. And for you numbers geeks, you can even reseed the random number generator under the ‘Fairness’ option if you’re on an unlucky streak.

Blue Samurai is an example of the many Stake Originals present on the site. These are games developed in-house or exclusively for Stake by third parties. Some of these games have an RTP based on the game mode you select, with a slightly lower RTP for a shot at much bigger multipliers. Others have a set house edge, like Dragon Tower’s 98% RTP. Games range from slots to Plinko, to keno, to minesweeper clones.

Live Games

The Live Games section is all provided by Better Live. Stake US uses its core package: a dozen games, including blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and sic bo. It isn’t a huge section, but with optimal play, some games have an RTP between 98% and 99.4%. For example, the optimal blackjack strategy only gives the house a 0.6% edge. So look up playing and betting methods before you lay your coins down.

Table Games

Table Games is the most minor section at Stake US, but it covers the basics. There’s a 99% RTP Video Poker game, a 99.4% RTP Blackjack game, and a 99% RTP Hi-Lo game (assuming optimal strategy on all of these), among other offerings. So, if you dislike live dealers, you can still get your fix here.

Promotions on the site include a weekly raffle for Gold Coins and Stake Cash and Gold Coin races that give away 50 million extra Gold Coins daily.

Of course, all sites like Stake US survive off of microtransactions. Like most social casinos, you can buy Gold Coins and get Stake Cash as a ‘bonus.’ This lets you play for real money, using the Sweepstakes to get around the customary US laws that prevent real money gambling. Crypto casinos like Stake and Stake US have a cryptocurrency bias, so most wallet options are available for Gold Coin purchases.

How successful are they at bringing in paying customers? Well, they’re official partners of Alpha Romeo’s F1 team, the UFC, and Everton football club, to name a few. So, they’re doing reasonably well!

Customer Support

They still have top-notch customer support and a great social media team. This is evidenced by their impressive 4.6 out of 5 star Trustpilot score. And they get a lot of feedback. A brand new site with over 1,100 Trustpilot reviews in a steady flow like this is almost unheard of. But they have one of the most popular real money online casinos on the planet as their sister site, so that’s to be expected. Some of these reviews are pretty raw, but they do encourage honesty and straight shooting, so a little foul language isn’t going to phase them.

In short, if you were looking for sites like Stake.com that you can play in North America, you’ve found it. Stake US has many of the popular features of the EU version of the site, with the social aspects found in Canadian and American online casinos these days. We recommend Stake US, but it will likely make our top social casino lists in 2024. This one is going to give the competition a run for their money.

Who Owns Stake US?

Stake US has a different direct parent company than their UK cousins. In this case, Stake US is owned by a Cyprus-based company called Sweepstakes Limited. Their company registration number is HE436222, with a registered address of 28 Oktovriou, 313 Omrania BLD, Limassol, CY-3105, Cyprus.

The Cypriot registration records mentioned above confirm that this is an accurate Stake sister site, not just a knockoff. The director is noted to be Mladin Vuckovic, the billionaire CEO of the original Stake website and app.

Vuckovic joined Stake in August 2017, shortly after the company went live. Under his leadership and consistently following his crypto-friendly philosophy, Stake became one of the most prominent online gambling destinations.

So, it was no shock when the rise of social casinos hit North America. Mladin would be close behind. He launched the US version of Stake as a sweepstakes site in 2022 and picked up some of the most high-profile sponsorships in the world to get Stake US on the map quickly.

Is Stake US Safe and Legit?

You may have noticed that Stake US should be mentioned in our recent social casino articles. We’re still heralding Fortune Coins as North America’s number one social casino.

There are a couple of reasons for that, both related to safety. But before we get into that, rest assured that we believe Stake US is 100% legit. In addition to the highly public and traceable Cyprus registration mentioned above, we feel that their support team is excellent at promoting transparency and safe gambling practices.

So why aren’t they on our lists? The first reason is rather mundane: They’re new. For the first year or so, Sister Casinos likes to monitor new sites before they get put on our ‘top in genre’ lists. That way, we can be confident that nothing fishy is being slipped past us.

But the second reason is an event that happened right at the start of September 2023: Stake US had their hot cryptocurrency wallet hacked.

That means their temporary holding place for crypto, which allows them to make near-immediate deposits and withdrawals, had over $40 million stolen from it. Generally speaking, that’s the casino’s money, not belonging to any individual player. So, nobody should be out of pocket, as far as their players are concerned.

But we’d like to monitor the situation for a few more weeks to ensure that player funds remain safe and that this isn’t some extended inside job. So far, player funds have been secured.

Assuming nothing more comes of it, the 2024 best US social casino list will likely have Stake US near the top.

A Final Comparison of Four Great Options

Fortune Coins barely edges out Wow Vegas and Stake US for sheer quality. But this could be flip-flopped if you like any given site’s particular games.

For no hassle, Wow Vegas is king. Giant bust-out rebuys for free, combined with no sweepstakes pressure, make this one of the most accessible and fun sites to play.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Pulsz and Pulszbingo, and if you enjoy the games they offer, you should check them out. Much like Wow Vegas, Pulsz Bingo doesn’t have the sweepstakes temptation either!

But Stake US, particularly for a new site, is stellar. We currently rank it number two, just above Wow Vegas. It could quickly become the number one contender with some enhancements, knocking Fortune Coins off the list.

This is the level of competition we love to see in North American social casinos. They’re competing for quality, transparency, and customer satisfaction. It’s great that we have a lot of top-rated casinos that understand that putting out high-quality, fair games is the key to capturing and retaining a loyal audience.

We’ll keep our eyes on Stake US. Rest assured. It could easily be the future champion of US and Canadian social casinos.