How we rate, and what we refuse to print

1. The licensing gate

Nothing reaches this site until it has passed a single test: does the domain hold a current Great Britain remote casino authorisation?

We search the exact web address on the Gambling Commission's business register rather than the brand name, because brands are not always registered as trading names while domains almost always are. Two of the operators currently in our comparison illustrate why that matters. One brand does not appear on the register at all, only its domain. Another shares its domain with four separately licensed companies.

From the licensed company that comes back, we confirm three things: that a remote casino activity is listed, that its status is active and current, and that the licence reference is recorded. An operator that holds only a betting licence does not qualify for a casino comparison, however well known it is. Neither does an international brand whose Great Britain authorisation we cannot find. We do not infer authorisation from a familiar name, a British-sounding domain or a page of trust badges.

2. Where each fact comes from

Everything published here falls into one of two categories, and we keep them visibly separate on the page.

Register facts

Licensee name, account number, licence reference, the date an authorisation became active, what else the licence covers, the registered domain, the licensee's head office location, and anything recorded in the regulatory actions section. Source: the Gambling Commission's public register, checked on the date shown on the page.

Operator-published facts

Product detail such as the game categories in a lobby, whether a live casino section exists, which live studios are credited on the tables, and what policy pages the operator publishes. Source: the operator's own website, seen directly.

Marketing material sent to us is not a source. Neither is another comparison site, an aggregator, a scraped database or a figure that appears widely online without an origin. If we cannot trace a claim to the register or to the operator's own pages, it is not a fact as far as this site is concerned.

3. What we will not publish

The temptation on a comparison page is to fill every cell, because a table with gaps looks unfinished. We take the opposite view: an invented figure is worse than a blank, because it looks exactly like a verified one.

So we do not publish bonus amounts, wagering requirements, minimum deposits, maximum withdrawals, payout speeds, payment method lists, game counts, provider counts, support hours or return-to-player figures unless we have confirmed them from the operator's own current published terms. Where an operator's site was not reachable to us during a round of checks, the product detail stays empty and we say why. There is an example of that on the current comparison.

We also do not publish reader review scores or review counts, because we do not collect them, and there is no honest way to display a number nobody gave us.

4. The editor's verdict

Each operator carries one short verdict line. It is an editorial judgement, it belongs to this publication alone, and it is labelled as ours on the page so it cannot be mistaken for a rating awarded by anyone else.

A verdict has to be earned by something already published in the entry above it. If we call a site the widest game mix in the table, the game categories are listed. If we call one the newest licence, the dates are there to check. A verdict never introduces a claim that appears nowhere else, never predicts what will happen to your money, and never suggests a site is safe, approved, endorsed or guaranteed in any respect. Where an operator has a thinner entry because less could be verified, the verdict is correspondingly narrower.

We use a written verdict rather than a numerical score on purpose. A score out of ten implies a precision that the available evidence does not support, and it invites readers to compare two numbers instead of reading two different sets of facts.

5. Ordering

Wherever operators are listed in a sequence, the rule that produced the sequence is stated on the page. On the main comparison, the order is the length of time each remote casino authorisation has been active — the one objective ranking the register hands us. It is not a quality ranking and the page says so. We do not present a commercially convenient order as though it were a merit table.

6. Commercial influence

This site is funded by affiliate commission and that is disclosed next to the comparison itself rather than buried. Commercial relationships influence which operators we cover and can influence placement. They do not touch the licensing gate, the register facts or the regulatory history, and no operator sees a page before it is published, or has any right of approval over a verdict. The affiliate disclosure sets the whole arrangement out.

7. Marketing standards

Gambling advertising in the UK is subject to rules on socially responsible marketing, and we hold this site to them regardless of whether a given page counts as advertising. We do not suggest gambling improves your finances, solves a problem, raises your standing or makes success likely. We do not use urgency, superlatives, or language such as risk-free, free money or guaranteed. We do not use imagery or presentation with particular appeal to children or young people, and no one under 25 appears in a gambling context anywhere on this site. Every page carries the age restriction and a route to independent support.

8. Dates, reviews and corrections

Every date on this site is the date something was actually checked, not a scheduled review that may or may not have happened. If a page says licence details were verified on a given day, they were looked up that day.

We re-check licence details when we revise a page, when a reader or an operator tells us something has changed, and when we become aware of a development that affects an entry. We do not claim a fixed review cycle, because promising a monthly audit we could not always deliver would be a worse commitment than dating each check honestly.

When we get something wrong we fix it and, where the error was material, we say what changed. The corrections page explains how to report one and what happens next. This is a small editorial operation without named bylines — the same people write, check and correct these pages, and editors@reelcheckpointuk.com reaches all of them.