Two Currencies, One That Matters
Gold Coins (GC)
Play money. No redemption value, ever. Buying them is buying entertainment, and that is the entire legal basis of the model. Nothing on this page applies to GC.
Sweeps Coins (SC)
The redeemable currency, typically at 1 SC ≈ $1, with a 100 SC minimum at Chumba. SC must be played through before it becomes redeemable — which is where the math starts.
The Only Formula You Need
Every wager returns, on average, the game's RTP. The complement — the house edge — is what you pay per unit wagered. So:
Expected Cost Of Clearing Playthrough
turnover = balance × playthrough ÷ game weight
expected loss = turnover × (1 − RTP)
expected SC retained = balance − expected loss
Three levers: how many times you must wager the balance, how much of each wager counts, and how much of each wager the game keeps. Nothing else in the process moves the number.
Worked, on a 100 SC balance at 1× playthrough with a 96% RTP slot at full weight: turnover is 100 SC, expected loss is 100 × 0.04 = 4.00 SC, and you expect to redeem about 96 SC. That is the honest price of converting a free-play balance into cash. It is small — and it is not zero.
Chumba Wash Calculator
Defaults are set to Chumba's 100 SC minimum at a single playthrough pass. Set purchase cost to zero for a free balance, or to what you actually paid if the SC arrived attached to a Gold Coin purchase.
Required turnover
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Expected loss
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Expected SC left
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Net vs. cost
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Expected values only. Any single session lands somewhere on a wide distribution — see the variance simulator in Is Chumba Legit? for what that spread actually looks like. Also note this model assumes you can always complete the requirement; a balance that busts mid-rollover stops paying edge on turnover it never wagered, which is a worse outcome despite the smaller loss figure.
Sensitivity: What Actually Moves The Number
Expected SC retained from a 100 SC balance, at full game weight:
| Game RTP | 1× | 3× | 5× | 10× |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 99.5% | 99.50 | 98.50 | 97.50 | 95.00 |
| 98.0% | 98.00 | 94.00 | 90.00 | 80.00 |
| 96.0% | 96.00 | 88.00 | 80.00 | 60.00 |
| 92.0% | 92.00 | 76.00 | 60.00 | 20.00 |
Read the top-left corner: at a single playthrough pass, even a mediocre game costs only a few coins. Read the bottom-right: at ten passes on a high-edge game, the requirement eats most of the balance. Playthrough multiple and house edge multiply. This is why a modest requirement on a bad game and a heavy requirement on a good game can cost identical amounts — and why the multiplier, not the game, is usually the thing worth shopping for.
The Weighting Trap
Here is the mistake experienced gamblers make on sweepstakes platforms. They reason: "blackjack returns 99.5%, slots return 96%, so I will clear my playthrough on blackjack and lose almost nothing." Then they discover table games count for a fraction of each wager — or are excluded from playthrough entirely.
Weighting divides your progress but not your exposure. What matters is not the house edge, but the edge paid per unit of playthrough progress:
effective cost rate = (1 − RTP) ÷ weight
And the game you should pick flips when:
weight* = edge(low-edge game) ÷ edge(full-weight game)
| Choice | Weight | Turnover for 100 SC @ 1× | Expected loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 96% slot | 100% | 100 SC | 4.00 SC |
| 99.5% table game | 100% | 100 SC | 0.50 SC |
| 99.5% table game | 20% | 500 SC | 2.50 SC |
| 99.5% table game | 10% | 1,000 SC | 5.00 SC |
The crossover sits at 0.5% ÷ 4% = 12.5% weight. Above it, the table game wins. Below it, the "safe" 99.5% game costs more than the slot everyone warned you about. Plug both into the calculator above — the weight field does exactly this arithmetic.
Verify Before You Optimise
Weighting tables, excluded titles, and maximum-wager-while-clearing rules are set per platform and change without notice. We do not publish a Chumba weighting table here because a stale one would cost you real coins — read the current terms in-app. The RTP figures above are illustrative industry values, not measured Chumba game data.
The Bank-It Option Nobody Mentions
Every calculation above assumes you keep playing. There is a strictly better option once your redeemable balance clears the 100 SC minimum: stop. A balance that has satisfied playthrough and is sitting eligible loses nothing to house edge, because it is not being wagered. Continued play from that point is entertainment, not strategy, and its expected value is negative by exactly the edge on every additional coin you put through.
The discipline that separates people who cash out from people who do not is boring: claim daily, clear the requirement once, request the redemption, and treat the rest as a different decision entirely.
Next Steps
Compare requirements across platforms with the Playthrough Comparison tool, see how long the redemption itself takes in the Chumba payout times guide, or work out how to build the balance in the first place in free Sweeps Coins.