About Regulon

Why this site exists

Regulon started with a line of small text in a footer.

Most online casinos name their licence somewhere near the bottom of the page, usually in grey, usually in six point type, and almost always without explaining what it means. A player reading that line sees Malta on one site and Curaçao on another and reasonably assumes the difference is cosmetic. It is not. One of those licences gives you somewhere to go when a withdrawal is refused. The other gives you a complaint form that will be filed against the operator’s record and will not get your money back.

Nobody was explaining that clearly. Plenty of sites listed casinos, ranked bonuses and wrote reviews. Very few treated the licence as the thing worth understanding, and a surprising number were describing licensing regimes that no longer existed.

That last point is what turned an irritation into a project. Curaçao replaced its entire framework between 2019 and 2024. The master licence system, where four private holders sub-licensed hundreds of operators, was abolished when the National Ordinance on Games of Chance came into force on 24 December 2024, and the final master licence expired on 31 January 2025. More than a year later, most English language guides still describe the old model as if it were current. They are not lying. They simply have not read the ordinance.

What we do

We compare gambling licences and the casinos that hold them.

That means reading the regulations rather than the marketing. It means checking an operator against the regulator’s own published register instead of trusting the badge in its footer. It means opening accounts, depositing money, playing, and taking the money back out, because how a casino handles a modest withdrawal tells you more than any amount of desk research.

We cover five regimes in detail. Malta, Gibraltar, Curaçao, Anjouan and Costa Rica, with the Gambling Commission treated separately because it is the one licence that changes the legal position for a player in Great Britain rather than just the commercial one.

We also say plainly when a licence is not a licence. Costa Rica has no gambling regulator at all. Hundreds of casinos describe themselves as Costa Rica licensed, and the phrase refers to nothing more than ordinary company registration. We would rather be unpopular with those operators than useful to nobody.

Who writes it

Regulon is written by four desks rather than one voice, because the subject divides cleanly and the skills do not overlap much.

The licensing desk reads ordinances, tracks register changes and dates every claim. The payments desk runs the deposit and withdrawal testing and follows how money actually moves rather than how the cashier page says it will. The complaints desk works through disputes, escalation routes and what each regulator will and will not do. The compliance desk checks the claims operators make about themselves, which is the desk that produced our position on Costa Rica.

What we will not do

We will not publish a casino we have not checked against a regulator’s register.

We will not quote a bonus without the wagering requirement attached, because the percentage on its own is the least informative number in the industry.

We will not recommend a site to a reader who has self excluded through GamStop. The scheme covers casinos licensed by the Gambling Commission, and a site licensed in Malta or Curaçao has no connection to it and no obligation to check. We explain that difference because people deserve to understand it. We do not treat it as a marketing opportunity.

We will not describe a Costa Rica company registration as a licence.

How we pay for it

Some of the casinos listed on this site pay us a commission when a reader signs up through our link. That funds the testing, the account opening and the time spent reading ordinances, and it is the normal model across this industry.

It does not decide the order. A casino cannot buy a licence it does not hold, and the licence is what our comparisons rank on. Our affiliate disclosure sets out exactly how the arrangement works and what it does not buy, and our methodology explains what we test before anything appears on the site.

Gambling should stay entertainment

It stops being entertainment the moment it becomes a way to solve a money problem.

Deposit limits, time limits and self exclusion are free and work best before you feel you need them. If gambling is causing harm to you or someone close to you, GamCare offers free confidential advice and runs the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, the NHS runs specialist gambling clinics in England that you can refer yourself to, and GamStop lets you self exclude from every casino licensed by the Gambling Commission in one step.

Getting in touch

If we have something wrong, tell us. Corrections go to the editorial desk through our contact page, and a factual error with a source attached will be fixed and dated rather than quietly edited.