Cruise casino comps
Cruise casinos give away cabins. Almost none of them publish what earning one actually takes, so we worked it out: eight loyalty programs, what a point costs on each, and calculators that price a free cruise before you book rather than after.
Everything here is free and nothing is gated. Where a line publishes a figure we say so; where we are relying on player reports we say that too, on the number itself.
The finding that matters most
Your expected loss does not change with the cruise line. Coin-in is your bet times your speed times your hours, and theoretical loss is that times the house edge. Neither mentions the ship. What changes is how many points that identical play earns you, and it changes by 2.5× between the fastest and slowest lines.
That is not a small booking detail. It is the difference between play that earns a free cruise and identical play that does not.
Price your sailing on every line →The eight programs, by who owns them
Ownership predicts the earn rate almost perfectly, which is why the programs are grouped this way rather than alphabetically.
Royal Caribbean Group
The slower earn, and the only two lines that publish a certificate ladder you can price in advance.
Carnival Corporation
2.5× the points for identical play. What those points redeem for is far less clear.
Independent lines
Norwegian and Virgin sit with Royal Caribbean Group on rate. MSC publishes nothing at all.
Price it before you sail
Every calculator runs on the same verified engine and shows its working. None of them needs an account.
Price one sailing on every line
Enter a sailing once. Your expected loss is identical everywhere; the points are not. Start here if you have not booked.
Royal Caribbean: every certificate rung
Thirteen instant-certificate offers, the play each one takes, and what it costs on average.
Celebrity: Instant Cruise Rewards
All twelve rungs from Celebrity's own monthly chart, including the FreePlay bonus its website no longer shows.
Royal Caribbean: project your year
Plan a cruise year across several sailings and see whether you land Prime, Signature or Masters.
Celebrity: project your year
Six tiers from Pearl to Ruby, on an August-to-July year that does not line up with Royal Caribbean's.
Carnival: status in coin-in
From 1 September 2026 casino points convert to Status Qualifying Stars 1:1. This prices each tier.
Holland America: what play costs
The fastest published rate at sea, and nothing published to earn toward. This prices the play anyway.
Princess: the Sea You Soon chart
Published only as untagged images. Here as text — nine rungs, four voyage lengths, and why two short cruises beat one long one.
Where the numbers come from
The reason to trust any of this is that you can check it. Every figure carries its source and how well evidenced it is.
Every figure, graded and sourced
What we hold, how well each number is evidenced, which lines publish nothing, and how to cite any of it.
Photographed RTP evidence
No line publishes slot payback. We read it off the machines' own lifetime meters — one had returned 87.1%.
Documented casino floors
Which machines are actually on board, from photographs rather than press releases. One ship so far.
The full line-by-line comparison
All eight programs in depth — tier costs, FreePlay, expiry, and what genuinely separates them.
Once you are on board
What we still do not know
Being straight about the gaps is the point of the section, so they get their own heading rather than a footnote.
- No cruise line publishes slot RTP. Not one. Everything on this site about cruise payback comes from photographing machine meters, and the same game title measured 6.8 points apart on two ships.
- Table game rating is never a formula. Every line rates tables on average bet and time at the supervisor's discretion. Any site giving you a tables points formula is guessing.
- MSC publishes neither an earn rate nor thresholds, so no honest calculator can exist for it. Its page says so plainly, and names what would fix it.
- Two of our earn rates are player-reported, not published: Virgin Voyages and Princess. They are labelled that way everywhere they appear.
If you have sailed recently and can fill one of these in, the brand pages each carry a short list of exactly what would help. Send it over and we will credit the correction.