Timeform has been rating racehorses since 1948, which makes it older than most of the racecourses still standing. Phil Bull started it in Halifax to work out how fast horses actually were rather than how fast everyone said they were, and the thing he built is still the product today.

So let me explain what you are actually buying, because the number is the whole point. A Timeform rating is a horse’s ability expressed in pounds of weight. If one horse is rated 95 and another 85, Timeform reckons the first would beat the second by that ten pound margin on level terms, and that giving the second horse ten pounds off would make it a coin flip. That is it. One number, one scale, and the same scale from one season to the next, so you can compare this year’s novice to one from 1983 if you fancy.

In practice you use it by lining their order up against the betting. If Timeform’s top rated horse is third or fourth favourite in the market, that is a race worth a proper look, because somebody is wrong. If the ratings and the prices agree all the way down the card, there is usually nothing in it for you and you are better off leaving it alone.

Two things to know. Flat, hurdles and chases run on separate scales, so a 150 chaser and a 150 flat horse are not the same animal. And ratings get revised backwards as later results come in, so a horse’s figure can change without it running, which catches people out.

For your thirty quid you get all that for every runner in Britain and Ireland, plus the flags, the analysis, the full form archive and the replays. It is horse racing and nothing else, so football punters can stop reading.

The irritation is that the subscription is PayPal only, which in 2026 is a bit odd.

Worth saying clearly, a rating is not a tip. It tells you how good a horse is, not whether the price is wrong. Working that second bit out is still your job.

Using Timeform? Worth the thirty a month? Leave a review below.