Methodology

Two official sources feed the site. The licensee list defines which establishments are currently licensed and supplies their official name and address. The monthly statewide detail report supplies each establishment's amount played, amount won and terminal count for a given month.

Every file we download is archived with a checksum before it is parsed, so any published figure can be traced back to the exact source file it came from. We currently hold data through July 2026 covering 9,233 licensed establishments.

For a selected period we add up every dollar played and every dollar won across the establishment's terminals, then divide:

observed payout % = SUM(amount won) / SUM(amount played) × 100

Monthly percentages are never averaged. Averaging would let a quiet month with a few thousand dollars played count as much as a month with two million, which produces figures that look precise and are wrong.

Confidence describes how much evidence sits behind a figure. It is not a rating of the venue.

• High — at least 6 reported months and at least $1,000,000 played.
• Medium — at least 3 reported months and at least $250,000 played.
• Low — anything below that. Excluded from highest-payout ranking by default, but never hidden from ordinary distance searches.
• Insufficient — no usable reported play.

Historical observed payout is a record of what already happened at one establishment over a stated period. It is not the theoretical return of any individual game or machine, and it does not predict future results.

We do not publish “best odds,” “loosest slots,” or any claim about your chance of winning, because establishment-level aggregates cannot support those claims.

Every currently licensed Illinois establishment appears on SlotCafes, not only businesses that pay us. Sponsorship and paid profiles never affect observed payout, confidence, organic sort order, distance or license status. Sponsored placements are always labelled as such.

SlotCafes is an independent local-discovery and public-data analysis service. It is not a gambling operator and is not affiliated with the Illinois Gaming Board.