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 9,204 licensed establishments.

Why the nearby-search count is lower. 8,352 licensed locations currently have a reliable map point. The remaining 852 are still part of the official record, but their filed address has not produced a map point reliable enough for radius search. They remain available through city pages and the business-name claim finder.

How often we retrieve it. The licensee list is refreshed on a regular schedule so closures and new licenses appear promptly. The monthly detail report is checked for each new reporting month as soon as the IGB is likely to have posted it; a month that has not been published yet is simply not there, and we wait rather than estimating it.

How much history we keep. SlotCafes publishes a rolling five years of monthly reporting. Windows described as “all available history” mean the five years we retain, not the full history of the Illinois program. Older months are pruned from the live database; the archived source files and their checksums are kept, so a pruned month can always be re-imported and any published figure stays traceable.

What search metering stores. Guest search uses one strictly necessary cookie. The allowance ledger stores only its digest, the week, a use count and a digest of the most recent normalized place and radius — not your raw cookie, search text, IP address or browser fingerprint. Our privacy policy also explains optional accounts, aggregate listing activity, the request logs our host keeps and the one case — a free-form street address — where a search reaches an outside service.

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.

You choose the available sort and filters, including distance, historical payout, and data confidence. Non-Featured results follow the selected sort logic.

Featured promotional placements may be inserted into search results and are always clearly labeled. Promotional placement never changes the underlying official data, confidence indicators, or historical payout calculation.

Historical payout describes reported past performance. It is not a forecast of future play or your chance of winning during a future visit.

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 a highest-payout sort 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. Featured placements are always labeled. Historical payout figures are calculated from official Illinois Gaming Board reports using the same formula for every location and are never altered by payment.

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.