Editorial Guidelines and Rating Methodology
This framework is published so it can be held against the reviews. The fastest way to catch us out is to read a review with this page open beside it.
Who Writes and Who Checks
No page on this site is published unattributed, and no page is published by one person alone. Every review and guide carries a named writer and a named fact-checker, and the two are never the same person.
Work is assigned by subject rather than by availability. Ethan Caldwell owns the testing side: payments, withdrawal performance, platform and licence verification, mobile and site performance, and any investigation into whether an operator is what it claims to be. Mahi Zahid owns terms and regulation: bonus and wagering analysis, terms and conditions breakdowns, legal and regulatory explainers, comparison and ranking pages, and responsible gambling content.
Where a page covers both, the split is stated in the text so you know which of us stands behind which claim. Full backgrounds are on the team page.
The Seven Rating Criteria
Every operator is scored in seven categories, each out of 10, combined into a weighted average out of 10. The weightings are deliberately unbalanced: whether an operator can be relied on at all, and whether you can get your money out, matter more than how many games there are.
1. Licensing and safety – 25%
Licence number confirmed against the regulator’s own database rather than read off a footer, an identifiable operating company, traced parent ownership, and what recourse the jurisdiction actually gives a player in the target market. Our highest-weighted category, because it is the one that decides whether anything else can be relied on.
2. Payout velocity – 20%
Time from clicking withdraw to money settled, recorded in two stages: operator processing, then the payment rail. A casino controls stage one only, and blending them hides who is actually slow. Repeat document requests and unexplained pending holds count against this score.
3. Bonus integrity – 15%
The effective wagering multiplier, meaning whether the requirement applies to the bonus alone or to deposit plus bonus, and the resulting turnover in currency. Also the maximum cashout, the maximum bet while a bonus is live, game weighting and expiry. An operator that publishes no wagering base cannot score well here.
4. Payment rails – 15%
Whether the market’s local methods are genuinely supported for withdrawal as well as deposit, whether the withdrawal method matches the deposit method, published fees, sensible limits, and whether advertised methods actually appear in the cashier.
5. Game engineering – 10%
Whether named providers are genuine integrations rather than logos on tiles, whether the operator runs default RTP configurations or downgraded variants, and whether the random number generator is certified by a recognised independent laboratory. Library size on its own earns nothing.
6. Mobile and UX – 10%
Tested on real handsets rather than desktop emulation: load time, whether the cashier completes a deposit in a mobile browser, whether payment reference codes copy correctly, and whether any layout failure blocks a withdrawal on a phone.
7. Support efficiency – 5%
Time to reach a human during the worst-case window for the market’s timezone, contacted anonymously. We ask one payments question, one bonus question and one responsible gambling question, and we grade the responsible gambling answer hardest.
The thresholds behind each category – what a given withdrawal time or verification delay actually scores – are published in full on how we rate.
Two of these exist because of where Ethan came from rather than because competitors use them. Mobile and UX are graded on real handsets, because a cashier that breaks on a phone is an obstacle desktop testing never finds. Platform and licence verification sits inside licensing and safety, and means confirming a number against a regulator’s register instead of repeating what a footer says.
Three Gates That Override a Score
These are not adjustments to the weighted total. They replace it.
| Condition | Consequence |
| Licence cannot be verified on the regulator’s own register | We do not rank the operator at all, whatever else it does well |
| Withdrawal not yet tested | The score is capped, and the review states plainly that it is capped and why |
| Documented pattern of voided withdrawals | We do not rank the operator, and we consider writing the investigation instead |
When We Publish No Score
A number is a claim to have measured something. We publish no score at all where we cannot measure enough to justify one, which in practice means fewer than four of our seven tests completed, or a licence we could not verify.
This happens more often than you might expect. Some operators geo-block their sites so completely that no test can be run from outside the market. Some sit behind bot protection that blocks any automated access. Some are no longer trading. In each case, the review says what could and could not be established, and carries no rating. Our reviews of 29Hoki and Scorepesa are both written this way, and they are the two pages we would point a sceptical reader at first.
How We Fact-Check
The fact-checker’s job is to try to break the page, not to approve it. Specifically, each of the following is checked before publication:
- Every timing trace traces to a row in our testing ledger, with a named tester and a date. If there is no row, the claim comes out.
- Every licence claim states that the number was checked against the regulator’s register, and names the register.
- Every bonus mention names its wagering base, not only its multiplier.
- Every withdrawal figure is split into operator processing and payment rail.
- Every legal, tax or regulatory statement is confirmed against the regulator’s or government’s own page and linked, because this document may be older than the article being written.
- Every statistic carries a source, or the sentence is cut.
- Currency and market terminology are consistent, with one market per page.
- The banned-words list has been run, and no paragraph could appear unchanged on the operator’s own marketing.
How Often Pages Are Updated
| What | Cadence |
| Bonus terms and live promotions | Review queue at 90 days. Each promotion carries a verified date and a named owner |
| Payout timings | Re-tested before being cited again if older than six months, because performance changes when an operator switches processor |
| Operator status and licence | Quarterly: does the operator still exist, and does it still hold the licence we cited |
| Legal and regulatory statements | Re-confirmed at every substantive edit, and whenever a regime changes |
| Responsible gambling contacts | Re-checked on a schedule, because services move and lose funding |
One rule matters more than the cadence itself. A page’s modified date is written by a person who has actually revised the page, and never by an automated job. A freshness signal attached to unchanged content is a lie told to a search engine, and it is the defect we most often find on competitors.
Claims We Will Not Publish
These are not stylistic preferences. Each is either a factual fabrication or a regulatory exposure in at least one of our markets.
| Never | Instead |
| Any timing not recorded in the testing ledger | “We have not timed a withdrawal here yet” |
| “Tested and verified” on an operator we have not tested | “Terms and licence checked; payout testing pending” |
| A licence number repeated from an operator’s footer | “Licence [number], confirmed on the [regulator] register” |
| Guaranteed or implied winnings | Describe mechanics and return to player, never outcomes |
| “Risk-free” applied to any bonus | State the wagering base, the multiplier and the cap |
| Urgency pressure, countdown timers on offers | State the actual expiry date, neutrally |
| A statistic, study or survey without a source | Cite and link it, or cut the sentence |
| Tax or legal advice | “General information, not tax or legal advice” |
| Anything that could appeal to people under the legal age | Adult framing throughout, with the market’s age stated |
Commission and Independence
We earn commission when readers sign up through some of our links. Pretending otherwise would be the first thing to disbelieve about us, so here is the mechanism and the limit on it.
Commission rates are not an input to any score, ranking or ordering. An operator cannot pay to move up, cannot pay to have a finding removed, and does not see a review before it is published. Where an operator earns from scores badly, we publish that. Some pages carry no commercial link at all, either because we could not verify the operator or because the market’s advertising rules make a promotional link inappropriate.
The advertiser disclosure sets out the commercial relationships in full.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we would rather hear it from you than leave it. Email [email protected] and it goes to a named person rather than a queue.
Substantive factual corrections are made promptly, and the page’s modified date is updated to reflect the real edit. Where a correction changes what a reader would have decided, we say what changed rather than editing silently.
Score weightings
| Licensing and safety | 25% |
| Payout velocity | 20% |
| Bonus integrity | 15% |
| Payment rails | 15% |
| Game engineering | 10% |
| Mobile and UX | 10% |
| Support efficiency | 5% |
Each category is scored out of 10. Weightings sum to 100%, and three gates can override the total entirely.