There is a wide range of payout percentages available with online slots just as there is in the real world brick and mortar casinos. The astute gambler will utilize a little research in order to insure that gaming is done at the online slot house with the best potential to return the investment and hopefully then some.
The house edge is the critical piece of profit that keeps all casinos in business and so it is unrealistic to expect a casino to have a positive one except perhaps during certain promotions and other short-lived periods of time. How it works is that the percentage is based on a $100 investment so that if the list says that there is a 98% payback then dropping a hundred dollars into one of these online machines should only result in a $2 dent in the wallet on average. For that reason, casinos will often try and get customers playing multiple machines and high denomination machines in order to insure that they can make a decent income.
Online casinos have to list the payouts somewhere within their website, and so that can be the best place to look for reliable information. It may not be in bold large print on the home page, but somewhere within the terms of service and such a customer has to have the ability to find that information. The range will generally be anything from 92% to 97% payback. However, anything at the lower end of that range is going to end up grabbing money too quick to be of any real entertainment value to the online gambler. It is best to find something like Mummy’s Gold Casino and other Microgaming casinos which have an accompanying eCOGRA seal which ensures that they issue periodic reports and keep things honest.