We checked the five biggest sites in this market before writing this
(21–22.07.2026, 122 pages measured). Two of them publish
axis weights. None publishes the rule inside an axis, which means no reader can reproduce a single
score they show. That is the gap this page exists to close.
0. The licence gate — before any points are counted
A casino is scored only if we can find it ourselves in a regulator's public register: the domain, an active licence,
the licence number, and the date we looked. We publish that check on the review page, and anyone can repeat it with our
licence check tool.
- Found, licence active — the operator is scored and can appear in toplists.
- Found, licence lapsed or surrendered — the review stays up with the lapse stated at the top; the operator leaves every toplist.
- Not found — marked Unrated: no verifiable licence. No score, no toplist, no affiliate link. A licence claimed on the operator's own site is not evidence.
We currently mirror the UK Gambling Commission register in full. Malta and Curaçao are checked by hand until their
registers are imported — reviews say which register was used and when.
The 100 points
Six axes. The number beside each axis is its share of the 100; the numbers inside it are the points each criterion can
contribute, and the rule that awards them.
01
Bonuses
20 / 100 pts
Value, wagering & fairness of terms
8 pts
Wagering requirement
8 pts at 20× or lower, applied to the bonus only. Minus 1 pt for every further 5×. 0 pts at 45× and above, and 0 pts whenever wagering is applied to deposit + bonus, whatever the multiplier.
4 pts
Cash-out cap & expiry
4 pts when winnings are uncapped and the offer runs 30 days or longer. Minus 2 pts for a cap below 10× the bonus, minus 2 pts for an expiry under 7 days.
4 pts
Terms you can actually read
4 pts when wagering, max bet, excluded games and cap are one click from the offer, in the currency and language of the offer. 0 pts if any of the four is missing or contradicts the headline.
4 pts
Value at a normal deposit
Scored on a £20 deposit, never on the headline maximum: 4 pts when the realistic deposit earns the full advertised rate, 2 pts when the rate drops, 0 pts when the offer needs £100+ to mean anything.
02
Games
20 / 100 pts
Library, providers & RTP honesty
6 pts
Library & provider mix
6 pts at 1,500+ titles from 15+ studios, 4 pts at 1,500+ titles where fewer studios are named on the pages we captured, 3 pts at 500+ titles from 8+ studios, 2 pts at 500+ with fewer named, 0 pts below that. Title counts are the operator's own published figure; studio counts are the studios we could actually read on its pages, which is a floor rather than the full supply list.
6 pts
RTP transparency
RTP is configurable by the casino, so one number lies. 6 pts when the operator publishes the setting it actually runs per game, 3 pts when only the provider default is stated, 0 pts when nothing is published.
4 pts
Live dealer
4 pts for 30+ tables across 2+ studios with published limits, 2 pts for a single studio, 0 pts for none. Most live lobbies only list their tables to a logged-in account: where we can name the studios but not count the tables ourselves, the criterion is capped at 2 pts and says so.
4 pts
Demo play before deposit
4 pts when slots run in demo mode without an account, 2 pts when an account is required, 0 pts when demo play is unavailable.
03
Payouts
20 / 100 pts
Withdrawal speed we timed ourselves
8 pts
Withdrawal time, measured
Our own withdrawal, timed from request to money received: 8 pts under 12h, 6 pts under 24h, 4 pts under 48h, 2 pts under 72h, 0 pts beyond that or if the withdrawal is refused. Never the operator's own claim: until we have timed it ourselves the criterion is not scored, and its 8 points leave the total the score is calculated out of.
4 pts
Fees & limits
4 pts for no withdrawal fee and no limit that would hold back a £5,000 win for over a month; minus 2 pts for any fee on a standard method, minus 2 pts for such a limit. Read from the operator's own banking pages on a dated capture — this one is scored from what the casino publishes, not from our own account, and the date of the capture is printed with it.
4 pts
Verification
4 pts when documents are requested once, before the first withdrawal, from a list published in advance. 2 pts when the list is published without saying when it is asked for. 0 pts when the site reserves the right to ask for new documents at any time, which is what turns a win into a document queue. Scored from the published list until we have been through verification ourselves, when our own experience replaces it.
4 pts
Method coverage
4 pts when the same methods work for deposit and withdrawal, including at least one instant option; minus 2 pts per method that accepts deposits but is not named for withdrawals on the banking page.
04
Security
20 / 100 pts
Licence, ownership & complaint route
6 pts
Licence found in a public register
All or nothing: 6 pts only when we find the domain in a regulator's public register with an active licence, quoted with its number and the date of our check. A licence claimed on the site but absent from the register scores 0 and stops publication entirely — see the gate below.
4 pts
Regulatory action in the last 5 years
4 pts when the regulator has published no enforcement action against the licensee in five years. 2 pts for a single case older than three years, or one settled below £1m. 0 pts for a case inside three years, a penalty of £1m or more, or a licence suspension. Read from the regulator's own enforcement register, with the date and amount taken from the published case rather than its headline.
4 pts
Ownership transparency
4 pts when the licensee company, its number and registered address are published on the site and match the register; 2 pts when published but incomplete; 0 pts when the site names no legal entity.
3 pts
Complaint route
3 pts for a named ADR body plus the regulator's complaint route in the terms, 2 pts for the ADR body alone, 0 pts for neither.
3 pts
Independent testing
3 pts for a published RNG or RTP audit dated within 12 months, 2 pts when older, 0 pts when only a testing-house logo is shown.
05
Mobile
10 / 100 pts
On a real handset, not an emulator
4 pts
Loading & stability
4 pts when the lobby is interactive within 3s on a mid-range Android over 4G and no crash occurs in a 20-minute session.
3 pts
Doing the job on a phone
3 pts when deposit, withdrawal, live chat and account limits are all reachable in three taps and no table scrolls sideways.
3 pts
App parity
3 pts when the app (or web app) carries the whole library and the same bonus terms; 0 pts when the app is a shell around fewer games.
06
Support
10 / 100 pts
Timed live-chat contacts, three per operator
5 pts
First response, timed
Three chats at three different times of day: 5 pts at a median under 2 min, 3 pts under 5 min, 1 pt under 15 min, 0 pts beyond.
3 pts
Answer quality
3 pts when all three answers are specific and correct against the terms; minus 1 pt per canned or wrong answer.
2 pts
Channels & hours
2 pts for 24/7 live chat plus e-mail, 1 pt for limited hours, 0 pts for a contact form only. Read from the operator's own help pages, so this one is scored before the timed chats below.
The 100 points become the 0–10 score you see on a review by dividing by ten: 84 points is 8.4. Nothing is rounded up
for presentation, and there is no editor's discretionary adjustment on top.
What the number means
| Score | Label | What it means in practice |
|---|
| 9.0+ |
Exceptional |
Nothing material against it, and the payout test was clean. |
| 8.0+ |
Great |
Strong overall, with one axis clearly behind the others. |
| 7.0+ |
Good |
Works, but a known trade-off — usually terms or payout speed. |
| 6.0+ |
Mixed |
Passes the licence gate, fails at least one thing that costs players money. |
| below 6.0 |
Avoid |
Listed so the search result exists; we tell you not to sign up. |
The evidence rule
A criterion we have not measured is not scored at all — and it is not silently counted as a pass either.
It is removed from the total the score is calculated out of, and the review prints how many points that leaves.
A casino assessed on 44 of the 100 points carries its score with “44 of 100 points assessed” next to it.
We changed this rule deliberately. Scoring an unmeasured criterion as zero produces a number that reads like a verdict on
the casino when it is really a statement about us: a household name we have never deposited at would land near 3/10 and
look condemned, which is a lie of a different kind than the one we are trying to avoid. Scoring it as an average, or
filling it with the operator's own claim, would be worse still.
What this costs, said plainly: until we have deposited our own money at a casino, the payout, mobile and
support axes stay unassessed for it, and the part we can assess is weighted towards licence facts and bonus terms.
That means the order of our toplists today is decided largely by the terms of the welcome offer and the strength of the
licence record — not by how quickly a casino actually pays. Two casinos with an identical assessed score can be very
different places to play, and the smaller the assessed share, the less the score is worth. Every score on this site
carries that share next to it so you can weigh it yourself.
Below 40 assessed points we publish no score at all. A number built on
a fifth of the method is not a weak verdict, it is a measurement of our own coverage wearing a verdict's clothes — and out of
ten it would read as a condemnation of casinos we have barely looked at. Those pages show the criteria we did assess, the
licence record and the facts we read, and say plainly that there is no score yet.
Each review therefore carries, for every criterion: either the points, the rule that produced them and the date of the
check — or the words Not assessed and the reason. Scores are refreshed at least every
90 days, and immediately when a licence status changes.
The test protocol — what we do to a casino
Below is the whole list, version 1.0
(2 August 2026). Every review prints these
9 lines in this order and fills each one with a date, a result and the artefact it produced —
or with Not tested yet. There is no third state, and a line we have not done is never left blank.
We checked what the market shows instead: across 14 competitor reviews measured on 21–22.07.2026 there were
no deposit amounts, no timed withdrawals and no artefacts of any kind. All five sites say their
experts tested the casino; none says what was done, on what day, or with whose money.
REGISTER
Licence found in a public register · feeds security
Is there a real licence behind this domain, and is it active today?
Method. We look the domain up in our own mirror of the regulator's public register — not on the operator's site, where the claim costs nothing to make.
Artefact. Register extract: licensee, account number, licence numbers, and the date of the snapshot the answer came from.
BY US
Real money deposited · feeds payouts
Does an ordinary player account, funded with an ordinary amount, actually work?
Method. We register as a normal player, pass whatever verification is asked at sign-up, and deposit our own money — never a comped or affiliate-funded balance.
Artefact. The amount, the method and the date, printed below. Cashier confirmation kept on file.
BY US
Withdrawal timed end to end · feeds payouts
How long until the money is back in the account it came from?
Method. One withdrawal, timed from the moment the request is submitted to the moment funds land — including any pending period the casino applies. The clock is not stopped for weekends.
Artefact. Both timestamps, the elapsed time and the method used.
BY US
When documents were demanded · feeds payouts
Were the ID checks asked for up front, or only once there was a win to pay out?
Method. We record the date of every document request against the date of the withdrawal request.
Artefact. The list of documents asked for and the day each was requested.
BY US
Bonus terms read in full · feeds bonuses
Do the terms behind the headline offer say what the headline implies?
Method. The full terms page is read on the date shown, and four numbers are pulled out: wagering basis and multiplier, max bet while wagering, cash-out cap and expiry.
Artefact. The four numbers, the date they were read, and a link to the terms page they came from.
BY US
Library counted in the lobby · feeds games
Is the games library the size the operator advertises?
Method. We count titles and live tables in the logged-in lobby ourselves, on the date shown, rather than repeating the number in the operator's footer.
Artefact. Our count, the operator's claim, and the gap between them.
BY US
RTP compared to the provider default · feeds games
Which RTP setting does this casino actually run on the same game?
Method. RTP is configurable by the operator, so one number lies. We open the game's own info panel at this casino and compare it with the provider's published default for the same title.
Artefact. Both figures and the title they were read from.
BY US
Live chat timed, three contacts · feeds support
How long does a real answer take, outside office hours as well as inside?
Method. Three chats at three different times of day, each opened with a question that has a checkable answer in the terms. We time the first human reply and grade the answer against those terms.
Artefact. Three response times, the median, and how many answers were correct.
BY US
Twenty minutes on a real handset · feeds mobile
Does the site hold up on a mid-range phone on mobile data, not on a desktop resized?
Method. A 20-minute session on a named mid-range Android over 4G: deposit, withdrawal, live chat and deposit limits all reached from the phone.
Artefact. The device and OS used, time to an interactive lobby, and anything that broke.
The money for deposits is ours. We do not accept a funded test account from an operator, because a balance we did not
pay for cannot test whether a withdrawal of real money arrives.
Money, and what does not move a score
We are paid commission when a reader signs up through our links — that is stated on every page and explained in the
affiliate disclosure. What that money cannot buy:
- A place in a toplist. Order is by score, and where scores tie, by measured payout time.
- A point on any axis. Commission is not an input to the rubric above.
- Removal of a bad review, or of a section an operator dislikes.
- Priority for operators we have a deal with over ones we do not — unaffiliated operators are rated the same way and
appear in the same tables, without an outbound link.
If you think a score is wrong
Operators and readers can both challenge a score. Send the axis, the criterion and the evidence to
TO BE COMPLETED: contact e-mail. If the evidence stands, we change the score, note the change on the
review with its date, and say what was wrong. We do not remove a score because it is unflattering.