Guides

How to Enter Competitions by Post: Site-by-Site Rules

A postcard and a stamp buy you the same chance as someone who paid for a ticket. That's not a loophole or a technicality — it's the reason most competition sites are allowed to operate the way they do. The catch is that the rules are fussy, they're different on every site, and an entry that gets the details wrong is simply binned.

Free Entry Competitions UK: How to Enter Car Competitions Without Paying

Most UK car competitions can be entered for free. That surprises a lot of people, because the sites are built around selling tickets, but the free route is written into almost every set of terms and it exists for a legal reason rather than a charitable one. This guide explains what free entry competitions are, why operators are obliged to offer them, how the postal route works in practice, how to word an entry that actually counts, and how free entries compare with paid ones when it comes to your odds. We don't run competitions ourselves — we compare and review the operators that do — so this is the entrant's version, not the operator's.

Car Competition Cash Alternatives Explained: How Much You'd Actually Get

Almost every UK car competition offers a cash alternative — a lump sum you can take instead of the car if you win. It's one of the most-read lines in any set of terms and one of the least understood: the figure is rarely the full value of the car, operators calculate it differently, and on some sites it's the only thing you'll receive if the competition doesn't sell out. This guide explains what a cash alternative is, how the amount is set, when the money is a better outcome than the keys, whether it's taxed, and the small print that catches winners out. We don't run competitions ourselves — we compare and review the sites that do — so this is written from the entrant's side.

Car Competitions in Northern Ireland: What's Different?

Northern Ireland has its own gambling legislation, and for decades that made UK-wide prize draws awkward enough that many promoters simply excluded NI. The law changed in 2022. A lot of terms and conditions haven't caught up.

Car Competitions in Scotland: Delivery, Islands and the Fine Print

The law is identical to England's — there's no separate Scottish competition regime and nothing extra to worry about legally. What catches Scottish entrants out is buried in the delivery clause, and it's worth reading before you buy a ticket rather than after you win.

How to Win a Car: The Complete UK Guide

Winning a car isn't purely luck. Odds, entry caps, closing dates and free entry routes vary enormously between competitions — and knowing how they work is the difference between throwing money at a draw and entering the ones actually worth your time.

How to Enter Car Competitions: A Beginner's Guide

Entering a car competition takes about two minutes, but the two minutes before that — picking the right competition, checking the odds, reading the terms — are what separate people who enter well from people who just spend money. This guide walks through the whole process from the entrant's side: choosing a site, understanding the listing, buying tickets, answering the skill question, entering for free by post, and what to do once the draw is done. It's written for someone who's never entered before, though regulars will find a few things worth checking too. We don't run competitions ourselves — we compare and review the operators that do — so there's no ticket to sell you at the end of it.

Competition Age Limits and Eligibility Rules in the UK

Nearly every UK car competition is 18+ and restricted to UK residents — but those limits come from the operator's terms rather than from statute, which is why they vary more than people expect.

Insurance After Winning a Car: What It Really Costs

The prize is free. Insuring it isn't. For a lot of winners the first year's premium is the single largest cost of winning, and for some it's the reason the car is sold before it's ever driven.

Car Competition Odds Explained

Ticket price tells you almost nothing about value. A 50p ticket can be a poor buy and a £20 ticket can be an excellent one — the number that decides it is the ticket cap, and it's the figure most entrants scroll straight past.

Do You Pay Tax on Competition Prizes in the UK?

Win a car in a UK competition and one of the first things people ask is whether HMRC wants a slice. The short answer is no — competition prizes aren't taxed as income in the UK, whether you take the car or the cash alternative. But that's not quite the end of the story. There are a handful of situations where tax does come into play: interest on cash you bank, means-tested benefits, inheritance tax further down the line, and the rare case where a prize is really employment income in disguise. This guide covers what's taxed, what isn't, and what to do with the paperwork when you win. We don't run competitions ourselves — we compare and review the operators that do — so this is written for the person holding the winning ticket, not the one selling it.

How Do Car Competitions Work? A Complete UK Guide

Car competitions are run by dozens of UK operators — sites like BOTB, Rev Comps and Dream Car Giveaway — where you buy a low-cost ticket, usually £1 to £5, answer a skill question, and go into a draw for a car. They're not raffles or lotteries, and understanding how they stay legal under the Gambling Act 2005 explains almost everything about how they work. This guide covers the full process: how tickets and skill questions work, how odds are set by the number of tickets sold, what a live draw actually involves, and what happens when you win — from cash alternatives to delivery and paperwork. We also explain the free postal entry route most operators are required to offer, and the red flags that separate a trustworthy site from one to avoid. Although we don't run competitions ourselves — we compare and review the sites that do — so this is an independent look at how the whole thing works.

6 min read

Live Draw Competitions Explained: How UK Car Competition Winners Are Picked

Nearly every serious UK car competition now ends with a live draw — a stream on Facebook or YouTube where a winning ticket number is picked in front of whoever's watching. It's become the industry's main answer to the obvious question: how do I know this is real? This guide explains what actually happens in a live draw, the different methods operators use to pick a number, why some are more trustworthy than others, what to look for when you're watching one, and what happens if you're the number on the screen. We don't run competitions ourselves — we compare and review the operators that do — so we've spent a lot of hours watching draws for exactly this purpose.

Guaranteed Draws vs Extended Draws: The Clause That Decides Your Odds

Two competitions can advertise the same car, the same ticket price and the same cap, and be completely different propositions. The difference is a single clause buried in the terms, covering what happens if the tickets don't all sell — and it's the one that decides whether your odds end up better than advertised, identical to advertised, or whether you win a share of the money instead of the car.

Are Car Competitions Legal in the UK?

Yes — and the reason why is more interesting than the answer. A paid draw for a car would be an illegal lottery if run in the obvious way, so operators build them to fall outside the definition entirely. Everything odd about the format traces back to that.

What Happens When You Win a Car Competition?

Everyone who enters a car competition has imagined the phone call. Fewer people have thought about what happens in the fortnight after it — the choice between the car and the cash, the insurance quote, the V5C, the delivery van turning up outside a house that doesn't have a driveway. This guide walks through the whole process from the moment your ticket number comes up to the moment the car is yours (or the money's in your account): how you're contacted, how long you get to decide, what the operator sorts and what you sort, and the handful of things winners regularly get caught out by. We don't run competitions ourselves — we compare and review the operators that do — so this is written from the winner's side.

Best Time to Enter a Car Competition

In most competitions your odds aren't fixed — they change as tickets sell, and they're at their best in the final hours of a draw that hasn't sold out. Knowing when to click buy is the only lever you have that costs nothing.

Can You Sell a Car You Won in a Competition?

Yes. Once the car is registered to you it's yours, and you can do what you like with it — including selling it the same week. The more useful questions are what it's actually worth, which route to sell through, and whether you need to insure it first. Those answers are less obvious than the first one.

Are Car Competitions Legit?

Most UK car competitions are legal, and the well-run ones do hand over the keys. But "legal" and "trustworthy" aren't the same thing, and the sector is only lightly regulated — which means the checking is largely down to you.

7 min read

How to Spot Competition Scams in the UK

There's a difference between a competition run badly and a competition that was never real. This is about the second kind — the fake giveaways, the cloned sites and the messages telling you you've won something you never entered.