Carnival Citi offers one of the best social gaming experiences of any sweepstakes casino, thanks to its outstanding games, game variety, and unbeatable bonuses, but what other sites like Carnival Citi are just as good?
I set out to find an answer, and I came across three excellent sweepstakes casinos: Stake.us, High 5 Casino, and RealPrize. With top-tier games, excellent user interfaces, and generous bonuses, they’re objectively the best sites to use instead of Carnival Citi, and in this guide, you’ll learn all about them and how to get started.
Top Rated
Up to 125 SC FREE + 625K Golden Coins + 1250 VIP Points
Claim a welcome bonus of 100,000 Gold Coins and 2 Sweeps Coins
350+ unique slots and social casino games
Generous on-going promotions
T&Cs apply, 18+
2.
150% Purchase Offer: 25 SC FREE and 50K GC
Excellent Megaways slots
Superior jackpot games
Acclaimed games developers
T&Cs apply, 18+
3.
35 SC FREE and 1.75M WOW Coins
Over 1,200 slots
Major gaming studios
Lots of Megaways slots
T&Cs apply, 18+
4.
$55 Stake Cash + 260K Gold Coins + 5% Rakeback
Exclusive Stake Originals
Stunning live casino
Over 700 slot games
T&Cs apply, 18+
5.
27.5 SC FREE and 57.5K Gold Coins
Welcome bonus of 7,500 Gold Coins and 2.5 Sweeps Coins
700+ social casino games
Top-rated casino software suppliers
T&Cs apply, 18+
6.
27.5 SC FREE and 57.5K Gold Coins
Over 1,200 slot games
Excellent live casino
Major game studios
T&Cs apply, 18+
7.
Up to 100K Crown Coins + 2 Sweeps Coin
Many themed slots
Major games developers
Play from your browser
T&Cs apply, 18+
8.
33 SC FREE and 90K Gold Coins
Top software providers
No purchase necessary
Huge casino-style gaming lobby
T&Cs apply, 18+
9.
3 SC FREE + 15K Gold Coins
Welcome bonus that includes 15,000 Gold Coins and 3 SC
High-quality slot software
Plenty of on-going promotions for free GC and SC
T&Cs apply, 18+
10.
Get 5 SC FREE+ 250 Gold Coins and 600 Diamonds!
Over 1,900 slot games
Quality live casino
High 5 exclusive slots
T&Cs apply, 18+
11.
Get up to 33 Free SC + 7K Gold Coins
Social casino and sports picking games
Mobile app for iOS devices
1,000 Gold Coins and 3 Sweepstakes Coins available at sign-up
T&Cs apply, 18+
12.
150% Purchase Offer: 25 SC FREE + 2500 Gold Coins
Top software developers
Busy casino-style gaming lobby
No purchase necessary
T&Cs apply, 18+
13.
250,000 Gold Coins + 1000 FREE Sweeps Coins
Slot games
Scratch cards
Signup bonus
T&Cs apply, 18+
14.
27.5 SC FREE and 65K Gold Coins
Slots and live dealer table games
18+ premium software providers
Gold Coins and Sweepstakes Coins
T&Cs apply, 18+
15.
38 SC FREE and 2.6M Gold Coins
Exclusive slot games
Bingo games available
Unique Pet Farm feature
T&Cs apply, 18+
16.
3,600 SC FREE + 1.225 Million Gold Coins
Major games developers
Unique fishing games
100+ themed slots
T&Cs apply, 18+
17.
100% Purchase Bonus, Spend $20 get a 200k GC and 40 SC Bonus
Huge selection of social games
Play for free
New releases
T&Cs apply, 18+
18.
32.5 SC FREE and 1.03M Gold Coins
Welcome bonus: 1,000,000 GC and 2.5 SC
Live dealer games
Top-rated software providers
T&Cs apply, 18+
19.
Get up to 10 SC FREE + 220,000 Gold Coins
Over 500 games
Major games developers
Top jackpot slots
T&Cs apply, 18+
20.
10 SC + 120K Gold Coins
700+ casino games
Unique fishing games
Major games developers
T&Cs apply, 18+
Carnival Citi is one of the best social casinos I’ve used this year. It features excellent bonuses, an intuitive interface, and responsive customer support, but the site is not flawless. Here’s a breakdown of the benefits and drawbacks of using Carnival Citi from my experience:
Carnival Citi: Pros & Cons
Carnival Citi isn’t a terrible social casino by any stretch of the imagination. Here are four solid reasons why the site is great for new and experienced social casino users alike:
Carnival Citi’s welcome bonus always turns heads; all new users get 10 million Coins and 5,000 Sweeps Chips immediately after signing up for the sweepstakes casino. Compared to other similar sites to Carnival Citi like RealPrize, the bonus sounds too good to be true, but it becomes more believable when you look at the bonus terms and sweepstakes rules a bit closer.
The Sweeps Chips, for example, is Carnival Citi’s equivalent of Sweepstakes Coins, which you can redeem for real prizes after completing specified playthrough requirements. However, while most competitors like Real Prize and MegaBonanza redeem Sweepstakes Coins at the rate of 1 SC per dollar, Carnival Citi’s Sweeps Chips exchanges at 1,000 per dollar, essentially explaining why the bonus seems so generous. Still, the bonus is mighty impressive and is one of the best things about Carnival Citi.
Carnival Citi has a video poker section with a handful of games you can play using your Coins and Sweeps Chips, which is a big deal for a social casino. The section currently features nine games, ranging from Jack’s or Better to Sevens & Joker Wild. If you play a bit of poker, you’ll enjoy playing at Carnival Citi, thanks to its dedicated poker section and growing video poker offerings.
One particularly impressive aspect of Carnival Citi is its customer support channels: it offers three, as well as a physical location in Florida–you don’t get that every day with a social casino. The site accepts user queries via email, a 24/7 live chat, and a dedicated phone line, and unlike some new sweeps casinos that limit the phone support to payment queries, Carnival Citi doesn’t; you can call to ask about anything.
It’s unarguably one of the best customer support services I’ve seen at any sweepstakes casino, and competitors have plenty of work to do to change my mind.
💳 Excellent Payment Options
While Carnival Citi doesn’t require an initial Coin purchase to let you play its games, it offers Coin bundles for sale if you ever need one. In my experience, many social casinos only accept credit and debit cards for Gold Coin purchases. In addition, Carnival Citi accepts e-wallets like PayPal, Venmo, and Trustly, making it one of the better sweepstakes casinos for payment flexibility.
I found a few sticking points with Carnival Citi, making it fall behind top competitors like Stake.us and RealPrize. Here are the biggest improvements Carnival Citi needs to compete properly with other industry players:
While Carnival Citi isn’t particularly unusable, I don’t think the site’s current design is winning any design awards anytime soon. For one, I couldn’t find any “Sign Up” or “Log In” buttons when I opened the site for the first time as a guest; it took me a while to discover that the “Returning User” and “New User” buttons on the top right are meant to be for registering and logging into an existing account.
Beyond that, the general interface feels clunkier than I expected from a sweepstakes casino. Carnival Citi wastes a lot of space listing slots in an unspecified order, leaving no space for a proper modern sidebar. The site’s live chat is buried deep inside the Contact page, which is in turn hidden within the hamburger menu you must open manually, even on the desktop site. Carnival Citi’s interface is good enough to play games for fun, but it’s nowhere near the experience of competing sites like Stake.us and MegaBonanza.
I don’t mind playing on Carnival Citi’s website, but functional mobile apps on Android and iOS should be standard for sweepstakes casino apps like Carnival Citi. A mobile app makes it easier to access the site from a phone, as users wouldn’t need to go through a browser like Safari or Google Chrome. Moreover, mobile apps are typically faster and support proper push notifications, making the experience objectively superior to what’s possible from a web-based app.
On the bright side, Carnival Citi’s mobile site works well enough that I barely had any complaints throughout my review of the sweepstakes casino. When I signed up on the site, I played Secrets of the Desert and Deuces & Jokers, and both slots worked perfectly on my iPhone. The mobile (and even desktop) interface is surely overdue for an upgrade, but it’s far from unusable.
It’s natural for sweepstakes casinos like Carnival Citi to be excluded in a handful of states, but this site’s list of excluded states is particularly long. With sites like Real Prize and Stake.us only excluded in four or five states at most, it was pretty surprising that Carnival Citi’s list of excluded areas was 13 states long, spanning Florida, Georgia, New York, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Missouri, Michigan, Kentucky, and Washington.
Regardless of how great the social casino’s offerings are, you’ll need to consider alternatives if you’re moving to any of these 13 states. If that’s your situation, the following section will highlight my three top alternative sweepstakes casinos to use instead of Carnival Citi without losing essential features.
The sweepstakes casino market in the US is quickly getting saturated, so there are so many sites that can fill Carnival Citi’s shoes. From my testing and observation, however, here are the best Carnival Citi sister sites for the best social gaming experience:
Real Prize: Pros & Cons
RealPrize is one of the best Carnival Citi alternatives, especially if you’re after the same kind of generous bonuses you get on Carnival Citi. When I signed up for the first time, I got a welcome bonus of 100,000 Gold Coins + 2 Sweepstakes Coins, allowing me to play RealPrize exclusives like 20,000 Waves and RealPrize Jackpot Hold and Win. Like on Carnival Citi, I found a few video poker titles on RealPrize, although it didn’t feature a dedicated poker section.
RealPrize’s game library isn’t composed only of exclusive slots; you also get top-tier slots from respected casino game providers like Pragmatic Play, Slotmill, and Booming Games. Moreover, there’s a table games section with three decent poker games: Video Poker, Oasis Poker Classic, and Texas Hold’em. Outside that, you get a few bingo and instant win games, completing the social casino’s library.
Like Carnival Citi, RealPrize doesn’t have mobile apps for Android or iOS, so you have to stick to the mobile site, which is pretty capable and works perfectly on all mobile devices. Customer support could be better, as users can only submit support tickets—there’s no live chat or phone-based support on the website yet. Nonetheless, I’d recommend it as an alternative to Carnival Citi, as it does many things right.
Stake.us: Pros & Cons
Stake.us fixed everything broken about Carnival Citi while throwing in a few free extras just for fun. The welcome bonus here is solid: $55 Stake Cash + 260K Gold Coins + 5% Rakeback when you sign up with the bonus code DEADSPIN, making it one of my favorite free Sweeps Cash casinos. Unlike Carnival Citi, there are no VIP exclusives—you can play any slot, table game, or live dealer game on Stake.us if you have Gold Coins and Stake Cash in your balance.
Speaking of games, Stake.us has them in an abundant variety. There’s also a Stake Poker section, but it only features a single game instead of the variety you get on Carnival Citi. The site has over 1,000 slots from respected social casino slot providers like Pragmatic Play, Hacksaw Gaming, and Habanero. As part of my review, I played the Sweet Bonanza 1000 and Duel at Dawn slots, and the experience was generally outstanding.
Stake.us’s user interface is miles ahead of Carnival Citi’s, but there are also no mobile apps for now. In summary, this social casino stands tall among the best Carnival Citi sister sites, and only a few competitors come close.
High 5 Casino: Pros & Cons
High 5 Casino has over 1,500 slots in its library, significantly more than Carnival Citi or any of its alternatives on this list. Its welcome bonus of 250 Gold Coins, 5 Sweeps Coins, and 600 Diamonds sounds pretty low for a social casino, but it makes up for that with a daily bonus of free Gold Coins and Sweeps Coins.
The social casino claims to feature more games than any other competitor, offering slots from virtually all top social casino game providers, from Pragmatic Play down to Relax Gaming. After claiming my welcome bonus, I played Gates of Olympus 1000 and Joker’s Jewels, but I also found several High 5 Casino exclusives like Da Vinci Deluxeways and Money Mayhem.
Unlike Carnival Citi, High 5 Casino has apps for Android and iOS that let you access your account and play all 1,500+ games without having to access the site from a browser.
| Social Casino | Bonus Offer |
|---|---|
| RealPrize | 100,000 Gold Coins (GC) and 2 Sweeps Coins (SC) |
| Stake.us | $55 Stake Cash, 260,000 Gold Coins, and 5% rakeback (use code DEADSPIN) |
| High 5 Casino | 250 Game Coins, 5 Sweeps Coins, and 600 Diamonds |
Carnival Citi is a pretty impressive sweepstakes casino, so finding the ideal alternative can be challenging. If you’re looking for sites like Carnival Citi for an excellent social gaming experience, try Stake.us, RealPrize, or High 5 Casino. They don’t just offer generous bonuses and plenty of enjoyable games, but you also get unexpected extras, like the poker section on RealPrize and High 5 Casino’s Android and iOS apps.
Carnival Citi and other social casinos offer games for free, allowing users like you and me to play using free Gold Coins and Sweepstakes Coins from bonuses and giveaways. You can buy Gold Coin bundles if you want, but you can generally play without an initial purchase using your free bonus coins.
Yes, Carnival Citi and similar sites operate the sweepstakes model, which is perfectly legal in the United States. Sweepstakes casinos don’t need licenses to operate, but they do need to adhere to relevant sweepstakes laws, which all of our recommended alternatives to Carnival Citi do.
The answer depends on your requirements in a social casino, but we’ve found RealPrize, High 5 Casino, and Stake.us to be pretty good. In addition to featuring the best games on any social casino, they also have incredible bonuses, great user interfaces, and in some cases, Android and iOS apps.
Players must be 21 years of age or older or reach the minimum age for gambling in their respective state and located in jurisdictions where online gambling is legal. Please play responsibly. Bet with your head, not over it. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, and wants help, call or visit: (a) the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey at 1-800-Gambler or www.800gambler.org; or (b) Gamblers Anonymous at 855-2-CALL-GA or www.gamblersanonymous.org.
