Bet badges explained
Finding bets · Web & iOS · Last updated August 28, 2026
Quick answer
Every bet we can price carries one of five badges — Must Bet, Strong Bet, Good Bet, Fan Bet or Caution Bet — and the badge is decided by one thing only: the bet’s expected value, the gap between the price a sportsbook is offering and what the bet is actually worth. A badge rates the price, never the outcome.
What a badge measures
A badge is a one-word summary of exactly one number: the bet’s expected value, or EV. EV is the gap between the price a sportsbook is showing you and the price the bet is really worth — the arithmetic is in Expected value and fair price. Nothing else feeds the badge. Not injuries, not recent form, not how many people are backing it.
Because the rating comes from EV alone, the ladder is fixed, and the same rungs colour the bare EV numbers everywhere else in the app — so a badge and a percentage sitting on the same screen always agree with each other.
What each badge means in practice
| Badge | What it means | Wager shown |
|---|---|---|
| Must Bet | The largest measured pricing edge on the board. Rare, and usually short-lived. | Yes |
| Strong Bet | An everyday edge — the bulk of most +EV betting. | Yes |
| Good Bet | Priced in your favour, but modestly. Useful for volume. | Yes |
| Fan Bet | Roughly fair — a small cost to have action on a game you were watching anyway. | No |
| Caution Bet | The book has a real edge here. Usually worth skipping. | No |
That last column is deliberate. Kelly sizing recommends no stake at all on a bet that is not priced in your favour, so those cards hide the wager and to-win row entirely rather than print a minimum stake the maths never recommended. See How we size your wager.
Why a bet can carry no badge
Some prices show no badge at all, and that is routine rather than an error. We carry a lot of quotes purely so you can compare books against each other; where we could not build a fair line for one, we never scored it, and we show nothing instead of guessing. Bet Check does the same thing from the other direction — a bet we cannot price against a fair line comes back as Not enough data, with no badge attached.
No badge is not a bad badge
An empty space means we never priced the bet. The lowest rung means we did price it and the number came back against you. They are different statements, and the app no longer renders them the same way.
Why negative badges appear in a +EV feed
A paid feed asks for every bet it can price and ranks them by edge, highest first, with no cut-off at zero. Scroll far enough down, past the positive ones, and you reach bets priced against you. They are there so the ranking is honest end to end, not as suggestions. Free and signed-out feeds are built from positive-edge bets only, so a Caution Bet never appears on one.
To cut them out, set a Min expected value % in Filters — see Bet Feed filters and saved presets for how those thresholds work and which plan unlocks them.
Badges move while you are looking at them
A badge describes the price as of the last refresh, and books move lines constantly. When a bet changes, the values that moved flash green or red and the card prints a single label — an EV move, a badge move (Good Bet → Strong Bet), or a price move (+150 → +135), in that order of preference. A bet that drops out of the feed has usually been repriced at the book, or its game has started, since the feed shows upcoming games by default.
Heads up
The sportsbook’s own price is the only one that counts. A line can move between our last refresh and your tap, so check the price on the slip before you confirm — if it is worse than the fair price shown here, the edge that earned the badge is gone.
Seeing today’s spread of badges
Open Tips and choose What do bet badges mean?. The drawer shows a live count of how many bets on today’s board sit in each tier, a worked example of your price against the fair price, and a shortcut straight into the feed filtered to the strongest edges. The lowest rung is left off that chart on purpose — it is mostly noise, and it skews everything beside it.
On iOS: In the iPhone app the same guide lives in Settings → Tips & Tricks, where the bet-badges row is pinned above the rest of the list. It opens a screen titled Bet Badges with the same live distribution. Nothing on that screen is locked behind a plan.
What a badge is not
- Not a prediction. Nobody here is forecasting a winner. Even the top rung loses regularly — it just loses less often than the price you got implies.
- Not a probability of winning. A heavy favourite and a long shot can carry exactly the same badge, because the badge is about mispricing, not likelihood.
- Not a measure of safety. A better badge means a bigger measured edge, not a lower chance of losing that particular bet.
- Not advice. A badge rates the price in front of you. It says nothing about whether you should be betting at all.
Bet responsibly
Sports betting is 21+ and legal only in some states. An edge shows up over hundreds of bets, never in one afternoon, and it is not income — never stake money you need. If betting has stopped being fun, read our responsible-gambling resources.
Common questions
Is a Must Bet guaranteed to win?
No. It sits in the top expected-value band, meaning the biggest measured pricing edge we found — and it loses plenty of the time. The badge describes the price you are being offered, not the result of the game.
What is the difference between a Strong Bet and a Good Bet?
Only the size of the edge. Both are priced in your favour and both are scored the same way; one simply sits in a higher expected-value band than the other. The exact bands are in the ladder near the top of this article.
Why does this bet have no badge?
We only rate bets we were able to price against a fair line. A quote we carry for cross-book comparison but never scored has no rating, so we show nothing rather than inventing one. It is not a warning.
What is a Caution Bet doing in my feed?
A paid feed ranks every bet it can price, without a cut-off at zero, so bets priced against you sit at the bottom of the list. Set a minimum expected value in Filters to stop them appearing. Free and signed-out feeds never carry one — they are built from positive-edge bets only.
Should I ever take a Fan Bet?
It is priced close to fair, so it costs you very little edge. It exists for the game you were going to watch anyway — not as a way to build a long-run return. No wager size is suggested on one.
Related help
Expected value and fair price
Plain-English EV: what a fair price is, how we strip the vig out of a benchmark line, and what an EV percentage actually promises.
Reading a bet card
Every number on a bet card explained: the badge, the EV edge, the fair price, the book price and the suggested wager.
How we size your wager
Kelly staking in DawBets: what Risk Tolerance changes, why player props are halved, and why some cards show no stake at all.
How the Bet Feed works
What the Bet Feed shows, how bets are ranked, how often prices refresh, and what an empty or short feed is telling you.
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