LAS VEGAS Comps in 2026 Explained | Free Rooms | Free Meals | Free Slot Play

Hey everybody, I'm Josh.

And I'm Rachael.

And if you've ever wanted to go to Las Vegas multiple times a year like us and not pay for your rooms, this video is for you.

We've been going to Las Vegas for over 2 decades and we've been able to bring you along with us over 35 times to some of the nicest hotels and restaurants during our time on YouTube.

One of the biggest factors to us returning to Las Vegas as often as we do is by taking advantage of casino loyalty programs and comps, which are complimentary items and services given out by casinos to encourage players to gamble and stay at their properties.

In this video, we're going to show you how we've been able to do it.

We've tallied our comps over the past year and it equals over $10,000 in free rooms, slot play, and dining credit.

This year was an interesting year as we decided to make a move to a new casino program, and so far it's paying off with free rooms for multiple trips.

Stick around to find out what comps we've received, what tips we've learned along the way, and how much gambling it really cost us, including how much money we lost.

Let's go!

This video will focus on the casino programs we utilized most in Las Vegas over the past year, including MGM and Venetian Rewards, but can be applied to many other programs in a similar manner since all Las Vegas casinos have their own rewards program. To get started, you will need to sign up for a player's card during your next visit if you haven't done so already. You should be prepared to lose, but by taking advantage of these programs, you may be able to come out on top or close to even. I'm going to show you how to find and utilize comps that we got in 2025. Several easy tips to maximize comps earned, and a breakdown of my gambling wins and losses to see what level of play is needed to attain them. Also, this year, unlike others, we did start with a brand new program where we had zero offers at the beginning of the year, and we now have multiple stays there with room nights costing upwards of $800. All right, real quick, I want to be able to show you how easy it is to use some of these programs. I think MGM Rewards is probably the easiest system to look at your comps and be able to utilize them. This is the home screen once you log into MGM Rewards. You can see my name up top. You can see over here I've got it hidden, but it's my account number. You can see how many points I've got already because it is now 2026. Uh, you can see I've got some comp dollars built up, slot dollars, holiday gift points, blah blah blah. Up at the top you can see because I am gold status It shows that resort fees are waived. I can earn $100 tier celebration credit and get an annual cruise. What I like the most about this is that you can see your win-loss easier than anywhere else. So let's take a look at that. All right, so one of the nice things with MGM, you can really break down all your numbers easier than any other program. This shows all of 2025. You can see I lost some and we'll dive deeper into that later to see what we got out of that. But you can do it by month. So I can look back on May and see— you can see where I played, how much I played, how much I lost, how much I won, and you can see where all of it came from. So obviously no table games in that month, but it's the easiest program to be able to see and track your wins and losses. All right, and right here you can see this is where on MGM You just click on offers, you can find a room. So let's say right now you can see how much we're getting. We're getting 4 nights at every property, $225 in free play, $100 in resort credit at the top tier ones. And then when you start going down here to like some of the lower tier ones, you're $225 in free play, $250 in resort credit. You can pull this up, take a look at it a little bit more. So let's just say that we wanna book a room. So it's very simple. I'll go ahead and show— let's, let's say we want to stay at Mandalay Bay. Let's book this offer. You can scroll through on the left-hand side and see, like, so obviously there's some things going on during times when I'm not able to get a free room, or whenever it's— whenever you're at a MGM property, it's not gonna, but I could go ahead and book. Let's just book like say May 6th to the 10th. So that should be 4 nights. I should be able to get it for free. Mandalay Bay, you can see it's comped. Let's select our room. This is just now like any random hotel where you can book your room and see how much you're saving though. So you can see we got a lot of different room types that we can get for free. Also, we can get a discount of some sort. I mean, that's a really expensive room right there. But if we just wanted like, say, any— a Resort King Strip View, let's go ahead and grab that. And now that it's in our shopping cart, you can see you can pay for early check-in, late checkout. But with our status, we're probably going to be able to get that. You can look at your pricing details. So this is showing that it would be $1,341 to book this. And then with our MGM offer, we've get— we're getting 4 nights free, $225 in free play, and $100 in resort credit. So let's check out. And that's how simple it is. You can see how much value you're getting from it. You can see that you can cancel right before you go. So I think it's what, 72 hours it looks like. But that's how you just book a room. It's very simple. I think MGM does the best at it. And what I love about it is MGM has, what, 10, 11 properties that you can stay at and have a different experience each time. Free hotel rooms is how you can expect to get the majority of value from the casino loyalty programs. Some of them will require you to pay a resort fee while others will not, depending on your player status, ranging from $30 to $60 per night. We spent 15 nights in Las Vegas hotel rooms based solely on my casino play in 2025. And paid $0 for our hotel rooms. The price of rooms fluctuate based on demand, which is driven by conventions, sporting events, concerts, weekend and holiday rates, and anything else pulling people to Las Vegas. Real quick, I'm going to show you the rooms that we got and the values placed on them, including resort fees, most of which we did not have to pay. In January, we stayed at Fontainebleau for 3 nights in a Blue King room valued at $1,376. In May, we stayed at MGM Grand for 4 nights in an MGM Grand Tower Suite valued at $1,564. In July, I stayed at MGM Grand for 3 nights in an Executive 2 Queen Suite valued at $1,527. Over Labor Day, we double booked and had 3 nights at Aria in a StayWell Deluxe King valued at $1,433. During that trip, we spent 3 nights at the Venetian in a Luxury King Suite that we upgraded, but the base value was $963 for a total room savings of $643. $6,836. Free play is another way casinos try to entice you to stay at their properties that can be used at most slot machines, video poker, keno, and other games for free play. In January at Fontainebleau, we had $30. In May and July, I got $225 at MGM Grand each time. And in August, I got $225 at Aria for a total free play of $480. Resort credit is another way to get comps. And for us, we generally use it at restaurants and bars. In January we had $100 at Fontainebleau. In May and July I got $100 from MGM each time, and in August we got $100 at Aria for a total resort credit of $400. These are not the only comps you can get but are the most obvious. Here are some perks you can see with tier status. No resort fees is one of the biggest tier perks that you can get and can quickly save you $100 to $250 per trip. Complimentary room upgrades with MGM Gold is one that that we were able to utilize to get a better view or to get a suite upgrade. Skip the line at check-in is easily one of my favorite perks. Some even have VIP check-in areas outside the standard check-in line. Some hotels have taxi line skips and buffet line passes. We have also received slot tournament entries, which offer free food and liquor, along with the possibility of much higher free play than normal. Free cruises are offered by multiple casino programs in Las Vegas, And we even got a free cruise voucher for 7 to 10 nights on Princess or Holland America with our stay at the Venetian this past year. In 2025, we utilized a cruise voucher from Wynn earned in 2024 to sail with Holland America to Alaska that was valued at $1,400. Late checkout and early check-in is something that we've been able to get with our status, and it can save you $20 to $50 each time. There are also backend comps that can be added at the end of your stay. if your play qualifies. To do this, you will want to go to the host desk at the end of your trip and see if anything that you charged to your room during your stay can be removed. This does include resort fees like what we did at the Venetian.

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Let's talk tips. Number 1 is very easy but also necessary. You gotta sign up for a casino loyalty program. There should be a desk on every casino floor where all you have to do is be 21 years old and have a valid ID. Once you get one, ensure that you use it at every machine you gamble on and give it to your dealer at table games. If you are married, you will have a decision to make on if you link accounts Or keep you and your partner separate? If you and your partner play at a similar level with a similar budget and bet size, it is likely a good idea to combine accounts since you will likely qualify for better rooms, more free play, and more resort credit per stay. This is if you like shorter stays in Las Vegas, meaning 4 nights or less, since many hotels don't allow you to book more than 4 nights sequentially. If you enjoy more than 4-night trips, it might be better for you to have separate accounts where you can each earn free rooms and then book back-to-back, but you will likely get lower-level rooms and lower free play and resort credit. The other option is for you to play on the same machine and pool all funds on a single card. Tip number 2, make sure you link your player card to your room reservation and charge everything you purchase on property or within the casino program to your room. That way you can ensure all spend is accounted for. Tip number 3, focus your gambling to as few programs as possible Preferably 1 to 2 to get the most out of your comps. We like to stay, play, and dine at MGM Rewards properties primarily, but also stayed and played at Fontainebleau and Venetian this past year. The majority of our gambling budget went to MGM and Venetian this past year, even though one of our trips was Fontainebleau. This is where a bonus tip comes into play. If you're unhappy with one casino program, don't be afraid to check out others. In years past, we had been staying and playing at Wynn, But the rewards felt harder to attain than before. So this year we decided to flip our play that we normally would go to Wynn and started playing at the Venetian. We enjoyed our stay at Fontainebleau, but we realized that it is not likely the property we planned on building future comps at due to its far north location and lack of other properties in its program. Because of this, we quote unquote burned a comp, meaning we booked a room on a casino comp but did not intend to play a large amount. Instead, we stayed at Fontainebleau on Rachael's comp and took my full trip budget to the Venetian and played several hours on one card, earning free nights later in the year. I'll describe this more later. Tip number 4 is to tier match when able. Casinos want your business and are willing to match statuses and sometimes match offers to lure you away from your current casino. In the past, we were able to get an offer match at Fontainebleau in late 2024 and January 2025 to get us free stays without gambling along with free play and resort credit. Each time you're signing up for a new loyalty program, ask them if they tier match to ensure you get the best outcome. They may not, but what does it hurt? Number 5 is to stick to your budget and not chase comps. You generally will pay a lot more money trying to get to the next tier status than the amount you can gain from it. The key focus is figure out what perks matter the most to you and figure out what tier status you need to achieve to get it. At MGM Resorts, each level has a perk that may mean more to a person. At Pearl, you get free parking. At Gold, you get resort fees waived, plus celebration credit and annual cruise benefit. Higher tier statuses, you get everything but more of it and air travel credit. All right, before we get to my actual play, here's something to take into account. The hold percentage over the past 20 years has increasingly gone up, where Downtown and the Las Vegas Strip have gone from 5.87% and 6.52% up to now 8.3%, and 7.9%. That means that for every $100 that you gamble, you should expect to lose $8. Before we start digging into my numbers for 2025, I do wanna remind everybody that when the casino is looking at your comps, they're looking at theoretical loss, not actual loss. This focuses on your coin-in or dollars cycled through games, and many of them take into account hours of play per day, as well as house advantage on the game you are playing, also matters, so don't think that you will gain the same comps from table blackjack versus video poker versus penny slots. Typically, you will earn the most comps from slot machines because it is one of the worst games from the player advantage perspective. They are still very popular because they tend to be more fun and don't rely on perfect play.

All right, here's the part that I think some people find interesting. Some people, this might be going over your head, but this is a spreadsheet that I do like to keep every year, and I have for the past 5 years. You can go back and see my past videos where I show my wins, losses, values for each comp, and you can see how I like to take it into account.

Up here we have the date of the trip, the hotel we stayed at, the number of nights, what type of room it was, if there is anything extra to it.

So like I put in here that this was a 2024 offer match from Rachael, so that's part of the reason why I didn't feel bad not gambling at Fontainebleau. That'll come into play later.

Resort credit, we got $100, $30 in free play.

Here you can track the coin in, coin out, which it was a net of negative $485 in gambling losses. Here you have our room value plus resort fee. Here, when you add in your room, your resort credit, your free play, what your overall comp is, and then what I consider a net value. So that's where you're taking all the freebies, Versus how much money you lost gambling, and so this one I would say it was a net positive $1,021.

Now I do have over here on the side that's kind of a key indi that is a key piece where I gambled at the Venetian. I did not gamble my money at Fountain Blue, so this is mostly Rachel's losses on her own comp.

But I took about $1,000 over to the Venetian and gambled for about. 4 hours. We played, you know, a little bit higher than normal. And that's what I would recommend. If you want to try to get a comp at a new casino, take a little bit more money than what you're normally going to play in that day and play it at a little bit bigger bets. Because later on, you're going to see we got 2 free stays at the Venetian later in the year.

And I'm counting it based on—

it was based on that play. Now, I didn't lose $1,000. I took $1,000. And I do think that I came back probably down about $500 to $700. But the Venetian and Fontainebleau don't have as good of a system like MGM Grand where you can break it down by month. And that's what you're going to see down here later when, when you look at the Venetian wins and losses, coin in, coin out kind of stuff. But yeah, you can, you can see how I break it down. Look at the room type. The Venetian, we did get a cruise voucher, which I don't know what to value that at because we get lots of free cruises already, but that would be a piece where if you aren't into cruising already, that's extra money on top of it, easily $600 to $1,200 worth of money. But you can see with the Venetian, we did not have resort credit, did not have free play. And like I said, with their system, you can only see the overall year. So that's where on the year between my play in January September, it ended up being at 20,000 coin in, 16,000 coin out, and we lost $4,000. Now, because this is my spreadsheet, I get to make the rules. I am adding in the value of what was our New Year's Eve room at the Venetian, which just New Year's Eve night was over $800. So that's where you get this $2,700 in value. And ending up on the year We're only a net negative of $470 at the Venetian. Now, lots of times I consider gambling to be prepaying for rooms, and that's what you'll see a lot of the time here. I did end up doing a net value, which was a net positive $230, which is huge for us because last year— I'm going to show you this— last year I was a negative $5,000. That was $14,000 lost in gambling. That was getting $9,000 in rooms and free play resort credit. And that's where we decided to change it up a little bit. We decided, here you can see the MGM Grand or MGM Rewards. I ended up gambling less and we ended up getting better free play, the same resort credit, and our room value stayed the same. So I think the good news is I tried to learn my lesson from 2024 where I lost my ass. But we were able to cut back and end up doing better. That's the big key to this. You can get some very good value. And over here you can see I've tracked this since 2021. Average comp value per trip hotel, we're at $1,781, which means we got better comp value in 2025 than we did in 2024 or 2023. And I think that's the key. You gotta find that. That sweet spot. But also, I think that things are getting better as far as comps in Las Vegas. And it's probably because everything's down. You know, there are less people going to Las Vegas. So it is getting to be a better time to be a gambler. And you can see right here, this is my overall value of comps gambling losses in the past 4 years. You can see 2022 was an anomaly. I ended up getting a really great offer at Wynn where the value ended up being like ridiculous off of a really big loss in 2021. I think I lost $5,000 in one trip. And so Wynn overcomped me in 2022. That's where you've got this number. But you can see in 2023, we were still doing okay. 2024, no value. The value of comps was terrible. And in 2025, for me, the value of comps was much better. And then you can see payback percentage on my play, which maybe I'm just really bad at picking machines, was 83%, which kind of sucks. And that all is with 20 nights of quote-unquote free hotel nights and all the free play and resort credit. But that's how I like to track it. Some people probably don't believe that this is true, but, but the thing is, you're gonna spend this much money to stay at these hotel rooms. You might as well be able to get it for free if you are gambling because you're going to lose the money. You can see not a single trip of these was a winning trip. But because we were able to use the comp system, we did get enough value that I feel like we came out about even, which in the gambling world is always a winner.

Hopefully this video helps you understand the casino loyalty programs, how to use them to your benefit, and also how much it might cost you. If you're enjoying our videos, don't forget to hit that like and subscribe.

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