Best Online Poker Sites in France 2025 – French Poker Sites

The best online poker sites in France bring you soft games, solid traffic, and high rakeback.

Discover the best deposit bonuses for French poker sites, along with the lowest rake, and other important information to help you with choosing the right poker room.

Best Online Poker Sites in France Reviewed 2025

Before you learn about the best online poker sites in France and how they work, consider reading about our best offshore poker sites. On some of them, you can play from France, and for others, you will need a VPN.

French Poker Sites Ranked by Traffic

France was one of the first countries to regulate real money online poker in Europe — but sadly, lawmakers went with a semi-fenced market. That means you can only play on locally licensed sites in France, missing out on some of the best online poker sites.

This kind of approach benefits the French government and certain French businesses. But, it is also harmful to international businesses, who are put in a lose-lose situation as soon as they decide to enter the local market.

Either they allow players from abroad to join their French site, creating additional competition for their international platform, or they box French players in, cutting them off from the rest of Europe.

Goodbye PokerStars.fr – Hello PokerStars Europe

In January 2018, the French online poker market suddenly became significantly more attractive due to a rather sudden announcement made by Stars Group, which declared that it had begun pooling online poker liquidity between its locally regulated sites in both France and Spain.

The most surprising part of this announcement was that the new platform would be accessible to players from outside those two countries, who would be allowed to sign up via PokerStars.es and start playing with their French and Spanish colleagues

We aren’t really sure what this means for the European poker scene, but one thing’s for certain: Winamax’s owners are not going to be pleased.

Online Poker Sites Available in France

PokerStars Europe Overview

PokerStars Europe is the largest France-regulated real money online poker room. It’s also quite unique in terms of traffic, as the site has been allowed to share its player pool with Spain and other European countries.

To sum up PokerStars Europe in one sentence, we’d say that it’s the largest small poker platform in the world.

PokerStars Europe Game Variants

If you’re looking for cash games, multi-table tournaments, or exciting S&Gs, PokerStars Europe has you covered. The action won’t be as fierce as on the international network, but the overall experience is still fairly impressive.

Most of the action takes place at the Hold’em tables, although there’s a fair amount of Omaha action if you aren’t too picky about your opponents.

PokerStars Europe Related Sites

PokerStars also operates internationally and has daughter sites in Italy, Portugal, and New Jersey.

Winamax Overview

At one point, Winamax was the largest France-licensed poker room, but the recent merger between PokerStars.fr and PokerStars.es knocked it down a notch. Still, it’s a decent alternative for recreational players simply looking for fun.

Winamax Game Variants

No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, low buy-in tournaments, low buy-in Sit&Go’s, and Espresso STTs with randomized prize pools. Winamax’s game selection is a micro-stakes player’s dream come true if you’re willing to overlook a few empty lobbies.

Winamax Related Sites

At this time, Winamax does not have any sister sites.

iPoker.fr Overview

iPoker has never been a huge network, so scaling it down to fit a ring-fenced market doesn’t seem like a good idea. And yet, somehow, it just works. Expect about 500 players online during peak traffic hours.

iPoker Game Variants

iPoker.fr is all about low-stakes Hold’em and low buy-in MTTs. If that’s your thing, go for it. If you’re expecting something more, you’d be better served to join PokerStars.

iPoker.fr Related Sites

iPoker is also available internationally. Some of its skins have sister sites in Italy and Spain.

Partypoker.fr Overview

With only 350 players online during peak traffic hours, partypoker.fr simply fails to impress. We wouldn’t recommend this site to anyone aside from the most hardcore fans of PartyPoker’s software.

Game Variants at Partypoker.fr

Low-stakes Hold’em, low buy-in multi-table tournaments, and low buy-in Sit & Go’s. Standard low-traffic site fare. No active Omaha games to speak of.

partypoker.fr Related Sites

Partypoker.fr is an offshoot of the international partypoker network, which also has sister sites in New Jersey and Spain.

Taxes for Online Poker in France

French poker-related taxes are among the highest in Europe, if not the world. On top of the standard rake taken by poker operators, all poker pots are taxed at two percent. Consequently, people playing on French sites often have to deal with a seven-percent rake.

To put this information in some context, the average rake in the industry is 3-5 percent. The purpose of this tax was to curb problem gambling, but all it really achieved was to turn winning or break-even players into long-term losers.

For many players, micro-stakes poker has effectively become as profitable as online slots. Yes, you can get lucky and score a few big wins, but in the end, the grind will likely wear you down.

This is particularly reprehensible because those games are very popular among poker newbies and recreational players, who may lack the knowledge necessary to realize that there is no winning move in the game.

All in all, if you want to play poker on a French site and stay profitable, avoid micros entirely and focus on low/medium stakes cash games, STTs, or MTTs instead.

History of Online Poker in France

Regulations about online gambling for real money in France used to be very prohibitive. The government had a monopoly on all forms of gambling. Accordingly, private companies from abroad were prohibited from offering their services on the French market. This put France under significant pressure from the European Union, which rightfully demanded the French government should introduce more liberal policies.

In 2010, the French government finally caved in and passed Law number 2010-476, also known as the Gambling Act, which created ARJEL and gave foreign iGaming companies a way to enter the French market. In the end, 35 businesses applied for an ARJEL license, becoming the first non-government entities to offer online poker, horse race betting, and sports betting. Casino games were pretty much thrown under the bus, as French politicians concluded that they were too addictive.

Real Money Online Poker Laws

French gambling laws have a certain Byzantine quality to them. Every form of real-money gaming is regulated separately.

Land-based poker regulations have very little to do with online poker regulations. Both are completely separate from casino-related laws and sports betting laws that govern betting sites such as those listed on ParisSportif.

There is no consistency to speak of, which is pretty confusing since these regulations go as far as to dictate which poker variants are allowed and which are banned.

On a brighter note, the situation isn’t as ambiguous as in most other Western countries, such as Canada and Germany. French law may be complicated, but at least it’s very specific and stable.

Is Online Poker Legal in France?

French poker operators have to obtain a “club game” license from ARJEL (Autorité de régulation des jeux en ligne – Regulatory Authority for online games). These licenses are issued exclusively to businesses based in France.

As briefly touched on above, the rules that govern online poker are separate from those that govern land-based poker (Decree 2010-723 on the categories of club games mentioned in Article 14 of the Online Gaming Law and the principles governing their technical rules).

Only four poker variants are authorized for online play

All of the above poker variants can be offered as either cash games or tournaments.