Gates of Olympus is the most played slot Pragmatic Play has ever released, and the one I had the hardest time getting straight numbers out of. The return is published and it is good. Almost everything else about how the game behaves is not published at all.
So I opened the demo on this site and read what the game tells a player itself. Two numbers came off that screen, and one of them contradicts what every other site writes about this slot. I will come to that in a moment, because it decides the score.
| What it is | The figure |
|---|---|
| Return to player | 96.50%, published by Pragmatic Play |
| Volatility | Medium, shown on the game’s own intro screen |
| Maximum win | 5,000x your bet, shown on the game’s own intro screen |
| Studio and date | Pragmatic Play, announced 24 February 2021 |
| Grid | Six reels, five rows, symbols pay anywhere with no paylines |
| How a win forms | Eight or more matching symbols anywhere on screen |
| Multipliers | Random symbols worth 2x to 500x |
| Free spins | Four or more scatters award 15 spins, multipliers add into one running total |
| Bonus buy | 100x your bet, measured in the demo at €200 on a €2 stake |
| Double Chance | Raises the stake 25%, from €2.00 to €2.50, for a better scatter chance |
| Stake range | €0.20 to €125 |
| Hit frequency | 28.82%, on Pragmatic Play’s own demo site |
| Free spins frequency | Not published |
| My score | 6 / 10 |
The return, the grid, the multipliers and the free spins rules come from Pragmatic Play. The volatility label, the maximum win and the buy price I read off the game itself, in the free demo on this site.
Casinos on this site are scored on four published criteria and so are games. I score what the studio publishes, not how the game felt over twenty spins, and where a studio publishes nothing a criterion can be built from I leave that criterion unscored and say so.
| What I scored | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Return to player | 9 / 10 | 96.50 percent, which sits in the 96.50 to 96.99 band. Clearly above the average for a modern slot, published clearly, and identical on the sequel |
| Cost of reaching the feature | 6 / 10 | The buy is 100 times the stake, the bottom of the 100x to 199x band. Twenty euros at the minimum stake, which a small balance can reach, though it is a hundred base spins for one feature |
| Volatility honesty | 4 / 10 | One of the three figures is published, the hit frequency at 28.82 percent, on the studio’s own demo site rather than in the game. The other two are not, and the volatility rating inside the game is contradicted by the badge on the sequel |
| Session survivability | Unscored | This band is built from the number of spins between features. Pragmatic publishes no such figure for this game, so I will not invent one |
| Overall | 6 / 10 | Average of the three that could be scored, rounded |
The bands behind each number are set out on my method page, including the change I made to the volatility band on 20 October 2026 while scoring this game.
Six out of ten is a good game held back by its paperwork. The return is among the best I have scored, the buy is affordable at the minimum stake, and the feature is genuinely well built. What costs it four points is that Pragmatic tells you the prize and makes you hunt for the odds. I scored volatility honesty at three when this review first went up, because I had looked only at the game and the corporate game page. On 21 October 2026 I found the hit frequency on pragmaticplay.fun, the studio’s own demo site, and raised that criterion to four. The overall score does not move: nine, six and four average to 6.33, which still rounds to six. You can read the whole method on the page where I set the rules out.
Every review of this slot you will read calls it high volatility. That is the reputation it has, and it fits the way the game plays, with long flat stretches broken by one enormous multiplier round. I believed it too until I read the intro screen.
The screen that loads before your first spin carries a badge. On Gates of Olympus that badge says Medium Volatility. It is Pragmatic’s own disclosure, shown to the player, and it is the only statement about volatility the studio makes anywhere I could find.
I did not want to trust a single screenshot, so I opened the sequel. Gates of Olympus 1000 uses the same six by five grid, the same scatter rule and the same engine. Its badge says High Volatility, in a different color, on the same template.
So the label is set per game, not a default. Pragmatic looked at these two games, decided they belong in different volatility classes, and put the original in the gentler one. A game with a 5,000 times ceiling and multipliers reaching 500 times is being described to new players as a medium ride.
I can test half of that claim. Pragmatic publishes a hit frequency for this game, 28.82 percent, on its own demo site, which means roughly one spin in three and a half returns something. It publishes no feature frequency for either game, so how often you actually reach the multipliers stays hidden. The studio makes a claim about how the game behaves and publishes one of the numbers that would let you check it.
| The figure | Published | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Return to player | Yes | The game page on the studio website |
| Multiplier range | Yes | The game page, 2x to 500x |
| Free spins rules | Yes | The game page, four scatters for 15 spins |
| Maximum win | In the game only | The intro screen, 5,000x your bet |
| Volatility | In the game only | The intro screen, as a single word |
| Bonus buy price | In the game only | The buy button, 100x your bet |
| Hit frequency | Yes | 28.82 percent, on pragmaticplay.fun, the studio’s own demo site. Not inside the game |
| Free spins frequency | No | Nowhere I could find |
| Odds of the 5,000x win | No | Nowhere I could find |
| Returns for other builds | No | One figure only, 96.50 percent |
Three of these ten exist only inside the game, and the hit frequency only on a separate studio website most players never see. If you stay on the corporate game page, Pragmatic has told you the return and the prize, and nothing about the odds of reaching either.
Compare that with Relax Gaming on Money Train 5, which prints the hit frequency to two decimal places and tells you one free spins round arrives every 463.56 spins. Same industry, same year, and a completely different idea of what a player is entitled to know.
The sequel arrived three years later and most players treat the two as the same game with a bigger number on the logo. They are not. Three things change, and all three change in the same direction.
| What changes | Gates of Olympus | Gates of Olympus 1000 |
|---|---|---|
| Return to player | 96.50% | 96.50% |
| Volatility badge | Medium | High |
| Maximum win | 5,000x | 15,000x, three times the ceiling |
| Multiplier range | 2x to 500x | 2x to 1,000x |
| Free spins trigger | Four scatters for 15 spins | Four scatters for 15 spins |
| Retrigger | Not stated | Three scatters add 5 more spins |
| Bonus buy | 100x, read off the buy button | 100x, printed on the studio game page |
| Stake range | €0.20 to €125 | €0.20 to €125 |
The return is identical on both. Everything that moved, moved toward a bigger swing for the same price.
That is the honest way to choose between them. You are not buying a better return by playing the 1000, because the return is the same 96.50 percent. You are buying a wider distribution. The big wins get bigger and the quiet stretches get longer, and Pragmatic says as much with the badge.
If you want the softer of the two, the original is the one the studio itself calls medium. If you want the ceiling, the 1000 triples it. What you should not do is assume the 1000 pays more over time, because it does not.
The minimum stake is twenty cents, which is where this calculation starts. I use fifty euros because it is the deposit most welcome offers are built around, and because it is a sum a normal person can lose without it mattering.
| How you play €50 | What it buys | What is left |
|---|---|---|
| All base spins at €0.20 | 250 spins | Nothing, and no way to know if the bonus arrives |
| One bonus buy at €20, rest in spins | 1 guaranteed feature plus 150 spins | €0 after the spins run out |
| Two bonus buys at €20 each | 2 guaranteed features | €10, which is 50 more spins |
| All base spins with Double Chance at €0.25 | 200 spins at a better scatter chance | Fifty fewer spins for an unstated improvement |
The buy costs 100 times the stake, so at the twenty cent minimum one feature is twenty euros. At the two euro stake I used in the demo, the same button asks for two hundred.
Here is what I cannot tell you, and it is the single most useful thing a player would want. I do not know whether 250 base spins is usually enough to trigger the bonus once, because Pragmatic does not publish how often it arrives. On Money Train 5 I could answer that question in one line. Here I cannot answer it at all.
While I was checking the grid I found a second problem, smaller but just as careless. Pragmatic announced this slot on 24 February 2021 and that announcement is still on their website.
It describes a five by six grid with 20 paylines. The game has six reels and five rows, and it has no paylines at all, because symbols pay anywhere on the screen. Pragmatic’s own game page says exactly that, in the same words I am using.
So the studio publishes two descriptions of its most successful slot and they disagree about the most basic thing in it. Neither has been corrected in five years. It is a small error, but it tells you how much attention the published material gets once the game is earning.
The game is the same everywhere. The terms wrapped around it are not, and that is where a session quietly gets more expensive. Four things are worth thirty seconds each.
First, the return printed in the game information panel, every time you open the game at a casino you have not used before. Plenty of slots ship in more than one build, and that panel is the only place the figure you are actually playing is shown.
Second, how the game counts toward wagering, and whether buying a feature voids an active bonus. Slots usually count in full, but feature purchases are excluded under most terms and some casinos cancel the bonus outright for one. The wagering terms are where both of those live.
Third, the maximum stake allowed while a bonus is running. It is commonly five euros a spin, and going over it once is enough for a casino to void everything the bonus produced.
Fourth, the cap on what you may withdraw from bonus winnings. A large maximum win means nothing if the terms stop your payout well below it, and that ceiling is printed in the bonus terms rather than in the game.
The return figure on its own tells you nothing about what a session costs. What costs you money is the return multiplied by how much you push across the table, and a slot pushes a great deal. Six hundred spins in an hour is an ordinary pace once autoplay is running.
At 96.5 percent the house keeps 3.5 percent of everything staked. Here is what that is worth at three ordinary stakes, using the same model as my cost per hour table.
| Stake per spin | Wagered in an hour | House edge | Cost of the hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| €0.20 | €120 | 3.5% | €4.20 |
| €0.50 | €300 | 3.5% | €10.50 |
| €1.00 | €600 | 3.5% | €21.00 |
Six hundred spins an hour, the house edge applied to everything wagered in that hour. These are averages over a very long run, not a prediction for one session, and the swings in either direction are far larger than the edge.
The demo runs on a play money balance that resets when you reload it, with no account and no deposit. Open it and let the intro screen load before you press anything. That screen carries two of the numbers in the table above, and they are the two Pragmatic does not print anywhere on its website.
Twenty seven of the 36 casinos I have reviewed list Pragmatic Play among their suppliers, which makes this one of the easiest games on the site to find. Seven of those twenty seven reach seven out of ten, the highest score any casino holds here.
| Casino | Score | Terms fairness | Full review |
|---|---|---|---|
| Playfina Casino | 7 / 10 | 6 / 10 | Read the review |
| National Casino | 7 / 10 | 6 / 10 | Read the review |
| HellSpin Casino | 7 / 10 | 6 / 10 | Read the review |
| CasinoChan Casino | 7 / 10 | 5 / 10 | Read the review |
| SlotsGem Casino | 7 / 10 | 5 / 10 | Read the review |
| 22Casino | 7 / 10 | 4 / 10 | Read the review |
| Asino Casino | 7 / 10 | 4 / 10 | Read the review |
| Bizzo Casino | 6 / 10 | 4 / 10 | Read the review |
| VeloBet Casino | 6 / 10 | 5 / 10 | Read the review |
Nine of the twenty seven are shown here. Each casino score is the average of four criteria, and the full working is inside every review.
When several casinos tie on the overall score I separate them the same way every time. First on terms fairness, because that is the clause set that decides whether a win actually reaches you. Then on payouts and support, then on bonus value.
Three casinos tie at seven out of ten with terms fairness of six, and all three also score eight for payouts and support. Bonus value separates them, and Playfina takes it with seven against six and five. That is why the button below points there and not somewhere else.
What is the RTP of Gates of Olympus?
Pragmatic Play publishes 96.50 percent, and the same figure applies to Gates of Olympus 1000. That is clearly above the average for a modern slot. I found no second build published by the studio, though the only place a return is guaranteed to be current is the information screen inside the game you have opened.
Is Gates of Olympus high or medium volatility?
The game itself says medium. That badge appears on the intro screen before your first spin and it is the only volatility statement Pragmatic makes. The sequel, built on the same grid and the same scatter rule, says high, so the studio clearly treats the two differently even though almost every review calls the original high.
What is the maximum win on Gates of Olympus?
Five thousand times your bet, which the game displays on its intro screen. At the twenty cent minimum that is one thousand euros, and at the hundred and twenty five euro maximum it is six hundred and twenty five thousand. Pragmatic does not publish the odds of reaching it.
How much does the bonus buy cost?
One hundred times your stake. I measured it in the demo on this site, where a two euro stake priced the buy at two hundred. At the twenty cent minimum one feature costs twenty euros, so fifty euros buys two of them with ten left over.
What does the Double Chance button actually do?
It raises your stake by twenty five percent, from two euros to two euros fifty in the demo, and improves your chance of landing the scatters that start the free spins. Pragmatic does not publish by how much, so you are paying a known price for an unstated improvement.
Should I play Gates of Olympus or Gates of Olympus 1000?
Both return 96.50 percent, so neither pays more over time. The 1000 raises the ceiling from 5,000x to 15,000x and the multipliers from 500x to 1,000x, and its own badge says high volatility. Pick the original for a steadier session and the sequel for the bigger swing.
How many spins does it take to reach the free spins?
Pragmatic publishes a hit frequency of 28.82 percent on its own demo site, which is roughly one paying spin in every three and a half. It publishes no free spins frequency, so how often the feature itself arrives is not something either of us can tell you. That is why one of my four scoring criteria is left unscored, and it is the main thing holding the overall score at six.
Can I play Gates of Olympus for free?
Yes. The demo on this site runs the same certified game on a play money balance, with no account and no deposit. The buy button works in demo mode too, so you can see what a hundred times your stake buys before you ever pay for it.
Which casino is best for Gates of Olympus?
Twenty seven of the thirty six casinos I have reviewed stock Pragmatic Play. Seven of them reach seven out of ten. Among those, Playfina Casino has the best combination of terms fairness, payout handling and bonus value, which is why it is the one I point to.
Is the game rigged if I keep losing?
No, and the math explains the feeling without any need for a conspiracy. A 96.50 percent return means the game keeps 3.50 percent of everything staked over the long run, and it collects that unevenly, in long quiet stretches broken by rare large rounds. Losing sessions are the normal shape of it.

I came to this from finance, which is probably why I read a casino the way I read a contract. The marketing sits on the homepage, and the clause that decides whether you get paid sits twelve pages down.
I am responsible for everything published here. The return, the grid and the feature rules on this page come from Pragmatic Play. The volatility badge, the maximum win and the buy price I read off the game myself, in the demo on this site, on 20 October 2026. If you find a figure that no longer holds, write to me.
18+. Gambling can be addictive. A 96.50 percent return is a long run average across millions of spins and it describes no single session, including yours. The bonus buy is not a shortcut to profit, because the return is the same whether you buy the feature or wait for it. If gambling has stopped being entertainment, free and confidential help is available in Slovenia through NIJZ.