How we rate casinos

Last updated: 22 May, 2026

Our casino ranking methodology is published in full on this page. The methodology is reviewed annually and updated when the underlying landscape changes. The current revision is dated May 2026 and applies to all rankings on this site published from that date forward.

The seven evaluation dimensions

Every operator we review is scored across the same seven dimensions. The weighting in the composite score is shown in parentheses.

Licensing and regulatory standing (25%). The strongest predictor of operator quality. MGA (Malta) licences carry the highest score, post-2024 Curaçao CGCB direct licences carry the second-highest, Anjouan licences carry the lowest. Operators with no verifiable licence are excluded entirely.
Withdrawal reliability and speed (20%). Tested by a live withdrawal cycle by our reviews team. We deposit, play, and withdraw at every operator before scoring. Operators with unverifiable withdrawal claims are not ranked.
Bonus-term readability (15%). Wagering requirement, maximum bet during wagering, expiry period, eligible-game restrictions. Hostile bonus terms (50x+ wagering, sub-£2 max bet, sub-14-day expiry) reduce the score significantly even if the headline bonus value is large.
Game library breadth and provider diversity (15%). Total title count is less important than the number of distinct providers shipping to the operator. We look for 30+ providers at the top tier.
Payment-method coverage (10%). Number of supported methods and the operator's transparency about deposit/withdrawal fees on each.
Customer support quality (10%). 24/7 live chat availability, response time during peak hours, and the quality of resolution on a test query.
Reputation and community feedback (5%). Cross-referenced against Casino Guru, AskGamblers, and our own reader-email patterns. A sustained pattern of unresolved complaints in either third-party source is a fail criterion regardless of the other scores.

The testing process

Every operator that appears in any ranking on this site has been through the following testing sequence:

Licence verification against the issuing regulator's public register.
Account registration, including completion of all required identity steps.
Test deposit of a documented amount, using a payment method published on the operator's cashier page.
Active gameplay across at least three distinct game categories.
Bonus-clearance attempt where a welcome bonus was accepted.
Test withdrawal of a documented amount, using the slowest published method (typically bank transfer).
A timed customer-support interaction with a non-trivial query.
Cross-check against external reputation sources for unresolved complaint patterns.

The full sequence takes a minimum of seven calendar days per operator. We re-test every quarter and remove operators that fail re-test, regardless of any affiliate relationship.

The score-to-tier mapping

Composite scores from the seven dimensions are mapped to public-facing tiers as follows: 95-100 "Epic", 90-94 "Great", 80-89 "Solid", 70-79 "Fair". Below 70 is unranked. The tier labels appear on each casino card in our ranked lists.

What we exclude

Operators younger than six months (we wait for a track record).
Operators with unverifiable licences.
Operators with sustained third-party complaint patterns about payout failures.
Operators that refuse to publish their licence number or wagering terms.
Operators that have failed our re-test on payout reliability in the past six months.

Affiliate disclosure (methodology)

Our composite scoring is conducted before any affiliate relationship is established. The score determines whether an operator qualifies for ranking; the ranking determines whether we seek an affiliate relationship. The order of the steps matters, and it is the order we follow. If a ranked operator subsequently changes terms in a way that would lower its composite score below the inclusion threshold, the operator is removed from the ranking at the next quarterly re-test, regardless of the affiliate relationship.