We cover online casinos, sportsbooks, poker rooms, and sweepstakes-model platforms that hold a licence from at least one recognised regulatory body. Unlicensed operators, and platforms in markets where they can’t legally operate, don’t get reviewed or scored here — that’s a hard line, not a factor we weigh against everything else.
Every operator is scored out of 9.5. We cap the scale below 10 on purpose, no operator is flawless, and 9.5 reflects an exceptional result across every category we test, not perfection. The overall score is built from these weighted categories, each contributing a different share based on how much it actually affects a player’s experience:
Because the score is produced by running an operator through this checklist, there’s no separate step where it can be adjusted afterward, a higher score isn’t something an operator can request or negotiate.
Every review follows the same sequence:
This direct-access process is what separates a review here from one built off an operator’s press kit.
A small number of issues remove an operator from recommendation entirely, regardless of how it scores elsewhere:
Reviews are re-verified on a recurring schedule and revisited immediately if we learn of a licensing change, an ownership change, or a significant, verifiable pattern of complaints. Every review shows the date it was last checked.
We test each operator directly, but we can’t verify every internal system it runs, the exact mechanics of a game’s random number generator, for instance. Where we’re relying on a third-party testing certificate or regulator audit rather than something we verified ourselves, the review says so.