Our verdict
6.8/10MGM Grand gives mid-stakes players the most choice on the Strip, with a 171,500 sq ft floor and minimums that reach down to $10 on quiet weekdays. The cost is outside the casino: a $50 resort fee ($56.69 after tax) every night, plus $20 to $25 self-parking. A short trip works. A long one costs more than the tables reward.
Best for: Mid-stakes table and slot players on a short Strip trip
What we liked
- 171,500 sq ft casino, with Time Out counting about 3,700 slots
- Blackjack minimums from $10 on quiet weekdays, $25 in the pit
- Free casino entry; the resort has Topgolf and a 2025 room refit
- Large sportsbook and a poker room, listed at 13 tables by Wikipedia
What held it back
- Resort fee of $50 per night, $56.69 after tax, on top of the room rate
- Self-parking $20 weekdays and $25 weekends; valet $40
- Weekend table minimums rise, with roulette reported at $50 to $100
- We could not confirm the blackjack payout; check for 6:5 before sitting
Key facts
- Operator
- MGM Resorts International
- Casino size
- 171,500 sq ft (Wikipedia)
- Rooms
- 4,762 after the 2025 renovation, including 752 suites
- Slots
- About 3,700, nickel to $500 (Time Out, 2014)
- Blackjack minimums
- $10 to $25 depending on day; FeelingVegas lists $5 to $10 (2023)
- Baccarat minimum
- $25 (FeelingVegas, 2023)
- Resort fee
- $50 a night before tax, $56.69 after tax
- Self-parking
- $20 Monday to Thursday, $25 weekends (Dec 2024 report)
- Valet
- $40 across MGM resorts
- Extras
- Topgolf, Wet Republic dayclub, Ka and David Copperfield shows
Start with the bill, not the floor. Three nights at MGM Grand carry $170.07 in resort fees alone, at the $56.69 nightly figure that ResortFeeChecker lists after tax, plus roughly $60 for weekday self-parking. That is about $230 before you pay for a room, a meal or a single chip. The casino is large and the minimums are reasonable, but the fees decide whether the trip is good value, and we score the resort 6.8.
As always, a casino trip is paid entertainment. Every table and machine here has a house edge, and nothing below is a way to make money. Another disclosure: the resort's own site would not load for our tools, so we worked from Wikipedia, fee trackers and the published guides listed at the end. Their dates differ, and we flag the old ones.
What you are buying with the fee
Wikipedia puts the casino at 171,500 sq ft, the largest in the world when the resort opened in 1993, and says the property now has 4,762 rooms after a renovation that finished in 2025 and added 111 suites for a total of 752. It remains the largest single-building hotel in the United States. The lead photograph above, by Bobak Ha'Er (CC BY 3.0, 2008), shows the exterior as it looked then.
Size is the first thing you get. The second is a lot of non-gambling entertainment: a Topgolf bay, the Wet Republic dayclub, the long-running Cirque show Ka and a David Copperfield residency since 2000. If you play two hours a night and want something to do with the rest of the day, the fee has something to spend itself on.
The fee, line by line
MGM raised the resort fee at its Strip properties on December 4, 2024, and Casinos.com reports MGM Grand moved from $45 to $50 a day. Self-parking went up by $2 to $20 Monday to Thursday and $25 on weekends, with valet set at $40 across MGM resorts. Add the 13.38% combined lodging tax that ResortFeeChecker applies and the nightly fee becomes $56.69.
Casino entry costs nothing. Players who arrive for an evening and do not book a room avoid the fee, and only pay for parking. That is the cheapest way to use this property.
The floor for mid-stakes players
Prices on the tables are where sources disagree, and they are old, so treat them as a guide. Time Out in 2014 listed about 3,700 slots from a nickel to $500, blackjack from $10 to $10,000 and pit minimums of $25. It says weekday minimums can drop to $10 but most are higher. FeelingVegas, updated in May 2023, lists blackjack at $5 to $10, baccarat at $25 and roulette at $25, rising to $50 or $100 at busy times.
What we could not confirm is the blackjack payout. Many Strip pits deal 6:5 blackjack on lower-limit tables, and we found no source for MGM Grand either way. Check the felt before you sit. The gap matters: widely quoted figures put basic-strategy house edge near 0.5% at 3:2 and near 1.9% at 6:5.
Run it for a $25 bettor playing about 60 hands an hour, which is $1,500 of action:
At 3:2, the expected loss is about $7.50 an hour.
At 6:5, it is about $28 an hour.
The $230 in fees from our three-night example therefore equals roughly 30 hours of play at 3:2, or 8 hours at 6:5.
Those are averages. Real sessions swing far wider.
Poker, sports and the rest
Wikipedia lists a poker room with 13 tables running cash games and tournaments, and a large sportsbook sits on one of the four historical casino areas. Time Out's 2014 figure of 22 poker tables is clearly out of date, which is a fair example of how much of the public information on this floor has aged.
Verdict: who should book it
Book MGM Grand for a short stay, ideally two nights, if you want a very large floor, several table limits and plenty to do off the floor. Skip the room and visit for the evening if you mostly want to play. Choose somewhere else if you want a quieter, small-stakes atmosphere or to avoid a nightly fee. A score of 6.8 reflects a good floor that is expensive to sleep next to. Set a loss limit before you walk in.