Most comparisons of betting automation argue about strategies and features. The question that actually decides what a product can and cannot do is duller and comes first: where does the software run. There are two answers. It runs on the customer's own machine and bets from there, or it runs on the vendor's machines and bets from there.
Nearly everything people complain about in betting automation follows from that one choice, in both directions. A local bot cannot place a bet while your laptop is shut. A hosted bot can, and the price of that is that your bookmaker logins and your bets now live somewhere you cannot see. Neither is the obviously correct answer, so this page sets out the trade honestly and leaves the choice where it belongs.
The two models, stated plainly
A local bot is software you install. It signs in to your bookmaker accounts from your machine, over your connection, and the bet leaves the computer in front of you. You can see the process running, you can watch what it does, and you can end it by closing the lid.
A hosted bot is software the vendor runs. You configure a strategy in a web dashboard, the vendor's machines hold a signed-in session for your account, and bets go out from their infrastructure. Nothing is installed, nothing has to be left running, and you can change a setting from a phone on a train.
Both place real bets into accounts held in your name, with money that stays with your bookmaker. The difference is custody: whose machine, whose connection, whose signed-in session, and whose problem it is when something breaks.
What a hosted bot genuinely buys you
It is worth being fair here, because the hosted model answers real complaints rather than imaginary ones.
- Nothing to install and nothing to maintain. No operating system floor, no spare laptop, no uninstall and reinstall when a build changes.
- No overnight gap. Your part of the system is a browser tab, so a strategy that needs to act at 3am does not need you to leave a computer awake at 3am.
- No home connection in the path. A dropped internet service, a router reboot or an update restart does not stop anything, because none of them sits between the strategy and the bookmaker.
- One place to change a setting, reachable from any device, with no version of the software to keep in step.
Those are genuine advantages, and a reader whose session has died because a laptop slept will feel every one of them. The question is what they cost.
What a hosted bot costs you
Three things, and only the first gets talked about.
The logins sit with the vendor, and so does the session. A hosted bot has to hold a usable set of credentials and keep a signed-in session alive on its own machines. You cannot inspect that machine, you cannot read its logs, and you are relying on an operator's word about how the credentials are held and which staff can reach them. The OAIC's guidance on securing personal information sets out what is expected of an operator holding that data; it does not let you verify any particular one.
The bet may arrive from shared infrastructure. If a vendor serves its customers from one pipeline, then when a price moves the work is queued, and a queue has a back. How any one product is built is not something you can check from outside, which is itself part of the trade.
Example: illustrative arithmetic, not a measurement of any product. Say 50 customers are queued behind one price move and each submission takes half a second. 50 multiplied by 0.5 is 25 seconds, so the last bet in that queue is sent 25 seconds after the price was spotted. If the price that triggered it was $2.10 against a fair $2.00, the edge was 2.10 / 2.00 minus 1, which is 5.0%. Reach the bookmaker at $2.02 and the edge is 2.02 / 2.00 minus 1, which is 1.0%. Same selection, one fifth of the edge.
You cannot see the failure. When a local bot does nothing you can look at the screen. When a hosted bot does nothing you have a dashboard saying nothing happened, and no way to tell a strategy that correctly declined from a pipeline that was stuck. If the vendor has an outage your automation has an outage, and if the vendor stops trading your automation stops with it.
What a local bot genuinely buys you
The bet leaves the computer you are sitting at, from a session signed in to your own account. That is the whole of it, and the advantages are consequences.
- You can watch it. The process is on your screen, its logs are on your disk, and a bet that was not placed is something you can look into yourself.
- You get a hard stop. Closing the software, sleeping the machine or cutting the power ends new betting at once, with no dependency on a command reaching anyone's server.
- The submission is yours alone. Your machine sends your bet, so no other customer's bet is queued in front of it.
- Nothing runs while the machine is off, so a strategy you forgot you left on cannot build exposure overnight.
That last point reads as a limit and works as a safety property. Automation makes it possible to bet far more, far faster, than by hand, so a model where betting stops when you walk away is not purely a disadvantage. A deposit limit set with each bookmaker is still the firmer cap, and responsible gambling sets out the limits and the support available.
What a local bot costs you
You are now running a computer, and a computer is a thing that fails.
The sleeping laptop is the real failure mode, and it is worse than it sounds because of the second half: a machine that is asleep places nothing and tells you nothing. There is no error, no alert and no row in a log. The session was simply not there, and you find out when you look.
Note: the honest version of unattended is "unattended while it runs". The machine has to be on, awake, online and running the software for a bet to be placed, so lid-closed sleep, a scheduled restart and a power cut are all stops.
The arithmetic is unkind. Australian racing runs across most of the day, so take an illustrative card spanning 14 hours. A machine on for 8 of those hours covers 8 / 14, which is 57.1% of it, and a machine on for 16 hours of a 24 hour day covers 16 / 24, which is 66.7%. Neither figure is a defect in the software. They are what happens when the thing that places bets is also the thing you take to work.
The rest of the bill is ordinary computer ownership: a supported operating system, a machine you do not use for anything likely to restart it, a connection that stays up, and the patience to update software now and then.
The failure modes side by side
The useful comparison is not features. It is what breaks, and who can see it.
| Question | Local | Hosted |
|---|---|---|
| Whose machine sends the bet | Yours | The vendor's |
| Where the signed-in session lives | On your computer | On vendor infrastructure |
| Your machine off or asleep | Nothing placed, nothing reported | No effect |
| Vendor outage | The machine that bets is still yours, though a vendor dashboard you rely on can be down | Nothing is placed |
| Home internet drops out | Betting stops | No effect |
| Shared queue in front of your bet | No, your machine sends only your bets | Depends how the vendor built it, and you cannot see it |
| Can you watch it work | Yes, on your own screen | Only what the dashboard shows |
| How you stop it now | Close it, or cut the power | Ask the vendor's system to stop |
| Who you trust with credentials | The vendor, for what it stores | The vendor, for storage and the live session |
Read the last row carefully, because the usual framing of this choice is wrong. Local does not mean nobody else holds your details. It means the live session is yours.
Neither model changes the bookmaker's terms
Whichever way the software runs, the account is governed by the bookmaker's own terms, and those terms are where automation is permitted or not. Many bookmakers restrict automated betting and third-party access in their terms, and a bookmaker may restrict or close an account, void a bet or apply a minimum bet rule under them. No software prevents that, and B337 makes no claim that it avoids limits.
So the architecture question is one about custody, visibility and uptime. It is not a way to change what a bookmaker allows, and it must never be used to get around a limit, an account closure or a self-exclusion. Use accounts in your own name only. Why bookmakers restrict accounts covers what sits behind those decisions.
How to decide between them
Five questions, in the order that usually settles it.
Can you keep a machine awake when your strategy needs to act? If the answer is no and cannot be made yes, a local bot will miss a share of the bets it was bought for, and the arithmetic above says how large that share is.
How much does seeing it matter to you? If "it did nothing and I do not know why" would end your confidence in the product, run it where you can watch it.
How do you feel about a live signed-in session on someone else's machine? That is a judgement rather than a calculation, and it is the core of the hosted trade.
What happens to you if the vendor has a bad day? Hosted concentrates that risk, because the machine that bets is theirs. Local does not remove it, since a dashboard or a price screen can still be the vendor's, but the thing that places the bet is yours.
What does the strategy actually need? A racing strategy acting in the minutes before a jump needs to be awake at those times and no others, so its uptime demand is far smaller than a strategy with no particular window.
Where B337 sits
B337 is local, and the trade above applies to it in full. The bot runs on your own computer and can run unattended while it runs. It places nothing while that computer is off, asleep or offline. Sessions log in to bookmaker and exchange accounts held in your own name, with the login details you supply, and every placement, price and settlement is recorded in your dashboard as it happens, so you can check it against the account. You can stop any session from the dashboard at any time, or stop them all at once, and bets already placed stay with the bookmaker and settle as normal.
The requirements are the price of the model: a supported desktop operating system, a little memory and disk space, and an internet connection, each one listed on automated betting. B337 never holds your betting funds, which stay in your own accounts under the bookmaker's terms.
One caveat belongs here rather than in a footnote. Running on your own computer does not mean everything about it is confined to that computer: login details and betting records are also held by B337, so the dashboard can show them and the bot can work. No online system is perfectly secure, and B337 does not claim otherwise.
Risk: Betting involves risk. Bookmakers can restrict or close accounts and void bets, automation can fail, prices move, and a positive expected value bet can still lose. There is no guarantee of profit. See responsible gambling for limits and support. Many bookmakers restrict automated betting in their terms, and in the local model a computer that is off, asleep or offline places nothing and reports nothing, which is a failure mode to plan for rather than a feature.
For the credential and account-safety half of this question, see betting bot security. For what the different kinds of bot do in the first place, see how betting bots work.