Methodology

Every casino on Regulon has been through the same process. This page describes it in enough detail that you can check our work, disagree with it, or run the parts of it yourself.

What we are actually measuring

We are not scoring how enjoyable a casino is. Game libraries are largely identical because the same studios supply everyone, and a slot plays the same whether you reach it from Malta or Anjouan.

What differs between sites, and what we measure, is accountability. Who is legally responsible for the operation, whether an authority has looked at them, what happens to your money between a withdrawal request and your bank account, and who you can escalate to when that process fails.

Step one: the licence, on the regulator’s register

This comes first and it eliminates more candidates than everything else combined.

We take the operating company named in the casino’s terms and conditions, not the brand on the homepage, and look it up on the licensing authority’s own published list. The badge in a casino footer is an image. It can be copied, it can be out of date, and it can refer to a licence that belonged to a different company.

If the operating company does not appear on the register, the casino does not appear on Regulon.

We record the regulator, the status on the date we checked, and the date itself. Every licence claim on this site carries that date, because licences lapse and operators get suspended, and an undated claim is worth very little.

Step two: the terms, read properly

We read the full terms before depositing, with four clauses treated as decisive.

Restricted territories. Whether a casino accepts players from the United Kingdom is set by the operator, not by the licence, which is why two casinos on the same Curaçao licence routinely differ. We record the clause as written on the date we read it.

Withdrawal limits. Daily, weekly and monthly caps decide how long a real win takes to reach you. A site with a low monthly cap can be technically compliant and practically useless.

Bonus conditions. Wagering multiple, whether it applies to the bonus alone or to deposit and bonus together, game weighting, maximum bet while a bonus is active, and expiry. The last two are where most bonus disputes begin.

Dormancy and account closure. What happens to a balance if you stop playing.

Step three: the account, with our own money

We open a real account, verify it, deposit, play and withdraw. We use our own funds. We do not accept hosted accounts, pre verified accounts or balances supplied by an operator, because an account a casino knows is ours is not a test of anything.

We record how long verification took and what was asked for, whether the deposit method matched what the cashier advertised, how long the first withdrawal took from request to funds arriving, and whether anything was queried.

The first withdrawal matters more than any other single data point. Anti money laundering obligations attach to every licence we cover and they bite at cashout rather than at signup, so the first withdrawal is where a well run operation separates itself from a badly run one.

Step four: what happens when it goes wrong

For each regime we establish the escalation route and test what we can of it.

That means confirming whether the regulator operates a player complaints function, whether it will mediate or merely record, and what time limits apply. Malta is the only licence we cover that gives a player a meaningful route past the operator. Curaçao and Anjouan accept complaints and log them against an operator’s record without ordering payment. Costa Rica has no regulator, so there is no step above the company itself.

We state this plainly in every licence comparison, because the gap between what players assume a licence does and what it does is where most disappointment lives.

What disqualifies a casino

A casino is removed, or never listed, if the operating company cannot be found on the stated regulator’s register, if the licence has lapsed or been revoked, if a tested withdrawal is refused without a basis in the published terms, if the terms are changed retrospectively to the player’s detriment, or if the site misrepresents its own licensing status.

A pattern of unexplained withdrawal delays across repeated tests will also remove a site, even where each individual delay had an explanation.

Re-checking

Licences change. Registers are updated, operators are suspended, and restricted country lists are edited without announcement.

Every listed casino is re-checked against the register on a fixed cycle, and anything we publish carries the date of the last check so you can judge how fresh it is. A page without a date is a page you should not rely on, including ours.

What we cannot test

We cannot verify that a random number generator behaves as certified. We rely on the testing requirement attached to each licence and on the published certification of the game studios, which is the same position every honest reviewer is in.

We cannot predict whether an operator that pays reliably today will pay reliably next year.

We cannot tell you whether a specific casino will accept you, because operators apply restricted territory and account opening rules individually and sometimes inconsistently.

And we cannot recover money for you. We are a publisher, not a regulator and not a dispute service.

Corrections

If a fact on this site is wrong, we want to know, and a correction with a source attached will be made and dated rather than quietly edited. Send it through our contact page.

Commission arrangements with some listed operators are set out in full in our affiliate disclosure. They have no bearing on any of the steps above.