BetterGambling exists to tell South Africans what an online casino is actually like before they put money into it. The rules below set out where our information comes from, how we check it, and what happens when we get it wrong. They apply to every page on the site.
Who we are and what we do
BetterGambling reviews online casinos and betting sites for players in South Africa, so you know what to expect before you deposit. Each review explains what a bonus really asks of you, which regulator stands behind the operator, how the cashier works, and where the site falls short. Your money, however, stays between you and the casino. BetterGambling doesn't run a casino, take deposits, hold player accounts, or process payments, and it regulates nobody. Our job is to give you an accurate picture of each operator, and the decision stays yours.
Our information comes from the operator and the regulator
Facts on this site come from the source closest to them, in this order:
The operator's own site, terms and cashier pages, for bonuses, limits, payment methods and game counts
Provincial gambling boards and the National Gambling Board, for licensing and regulatory detail
Court judgments and legislation, for anything about the law
Game studios and payment providers, for product detail the operator does not publish
Trade press, only where no primary source exists, and named as such
We do not use another comparison site as a source. Where a figure appears on three affiliate pages and nowhere on the operator's own site, it does not go on ours.
Game and provider counts are our own. We count what is in the lobby instead of repeating the number in an operator's marketing copy, and the two often differ.
We cover offshore casinos, and we say so
Some casinos we review hold a South African provincial licence. Many hold a licence from Curaçao, Malta or elsewhere. Both appear on this site, and every review states which.
That distinction matters more than any score. With a South African licence, a provincial board can investigate a complaint, penalise the operator and suspend its licence. Offshore licences give no South African authority any power over the casino, so your only complaint route goes through whichever regulator issued that licence.
We publish the licence and the issuing authority on every review so you can weigh that yourself. For South African licences, our licensing authorities page lists all nine provincial boards and shows how to check a licence number against the national register.
How we rate casinos, in summary
Every casino on the site earns a score out of 100 across six weighted categories: bonuses and promotions, games and software, licensing and legality, mobile play, deposits and withdrawals, and support and responsible gambling.
Of those six, licensing counts for as much as games and bonuses, because the regulator decides what happens next when a payout stalls or a dispute starts. Each category has its own breakdown on our rating criteria page, with what earns points and what costs them.
Every figure on this site shows a date
Bonus terms change, payment methods disappear, and licences move. Anything that ages shows a "Last verified" date, and that date tells you when a person last checked it against the source. You will find it under operator data tables, licence details, and anywhere else a figure could move.
Re-checks happen on a schedule and whenever something prompts one:
Readers report that something has changed
Operators change terms, a licence, or the payment lineup
Regulators publish new figures or a new decision
The page comes up for scheduled review
Where we have not re-checked something recently, the date shows that instead of hiding it.
Unverified claims stay off the site
Plenty of numbers circulate in this industry with no source behind them. Payout percentages nobody publishes, player counts nobody audits, withdrawal times lifted from a press release. We publish none of it.
The rules we work to:
Every figure needs a source we can point to before it goes on the site
Operator marketing copy is not evidence, and we do not repeat it as fact
Where we cannot confirm a claim, we leave it out instead of hedging it
Where two sources disagree, we say so and name both
This costs us content. Take an operator's own "97% average payout" claim. It would fill a line in a review, and dropping it makes the review shorter and more accurate.
Commission plays no part in what a review says
Operators pay us commission when a reader signs up through our links, which is how the site stays free. That arrangement funds the testing and doesn't change anything about the findings.
Rankings follow scores, scores follow published criteria, and no operator can buy a position, a rating, or the removal of criticism. We have marked operators down and dropped them despite the commission. Our affiliate disclosure sets out the model in full.
Some operators come off the site entirely
Low scores still leave an operator listed, with its problems written up so you can judge them. Certain conduct goes past that.
We remove an operator when it:
Refuses to pay out a win we have confirmed as legitimate
Changes its terms after the fact to avoid paying
Voids winnings on grounds that appear nowhere in its own published terms
Leaves documented player complaints unanswered over a sustained period
Removal costs us whatever commission the operator was paying, and that is exactly why the rule holds.
Who writes and who checks
Each review comes from a member of our editorial team, and an editor fact-checks it before it goes live. Both names appear on the page, the author first and the fact-checker below, so you can see who wrote a review and who verified it.
We check every factual claim against a primary source before publishing, which usually means the operator's own pages or a regulator's register. The person writing a review does not know what the casino pays us.
Nothing is published without a human check
Every figure on a review is one we have confirmed against the operator's own pages, and every licence number is one we have matched against the National Gambling Board's register of verified operators. Every bonus term comes from the operator's terms, not from its promotional banner.
One named person is accountable for each page, and nothing reaches the site without that check.
Corrections are made openly
We get things wrong. Bonus terms shift, a payment method disappears, a figure we verified in March stops being true in September.
When we find an error, or a reader reports one, we check it against the source and fix the page. Where the correction changes something material, such as a licence, a score, or a payment detail, we update the verified date so you can see the page has moved.
We do not quietly delete the problem. Where a review was wrong about a withdrawal time, it gets a corrected withdrawal time, not a missing section.
Responsible gambling
Gambling is legal for adults aged 18 and over, and it works best as paid entertainment. Set a budget you can afford to lose, and treat any win as a bonus, never as income or a way out of debt.
If play no longer feels like fun, our responsible gambling guide explains where to turn. It starts with the free NRGP helpline on 0800 006 008, then walks you through self-exclusion and the deposit limits you can set yourself.
The same principle guides every review on the site. Each operator's score reflects the limit tools it gives you, and our pages about gambling harm contain no affiliate links, so nothing on them earns us money.
Copyright and originality
Our writers produce every article on this site themselves, based on accounts they open and terms they read in full.
Some facts still need an official source, such as a licence number from a regulator's register or a bonus rule from an operator's terms. We check those sources directly, explain what they mean for you, and put that explanation in our own words. Images follow the same rule. We license each one or get the owner's permission before it goes on the site.
Tell us if we got something wrong
Accuracy matters more to us than any single review reading well. If you find a figure out of date, a bonus term we described incorrectly, or an operator we rated too kindly, write to [email protected].
Operators are welcome to use the same address. We will check what you send against the source and correct the page where you are right.
Related pages
To better understand how we work and the rules we follow, we also recommend these pages:
Editorial guidelines | BetterGambling
Editorial guidelines
BetterGambling exists to tell South Africans what an online casino is actually like before they put money into it. The rules below set out where our information comes from, how we check it, and what happens when we get it wrong. They apply to every page on the site.
Who we are and what we do
BetterGambling reviews online casinos and betting sites for players in South Africa, so you know what to expect before you deposit. Each review explains what a bonus really asks of you, which regulator stands behind the operator, how the cashier works, and where the site falls short. Your money, however, stays between you and the casino. BetterGambling doesn't run a casino, take deposits, hold player accounts, or process payments, and it regulates nobody. Our job is to give you an accurate picture of each operator, and the decision stays yours.
Our information comes from the operator and the regulator
Facts on this site come from the source closest to them, in this order:
We do not use another comparison site as a source. Where a figure appears on three affiliate pages and nowhere on the operator's own site, it does not go on ours.
Game and provider counts are our own. We count what is in the lobby instead of repeating the number in an operator's marketing copy, and the two often differ.
We cover offshore casinos, and we say so
Some casinos we review hold a South African provincial licence. Many hold a licence from Curaçao, Malta or elsewhere. Both appear on this site, and every review states which.
That distinction matters more than any score. With a South African licence, a provincial board can investigate a complaint, penalise the operator and suspend its licence. Offshore licences give no South African authority any power over the casino, so your only complaint route goes through whichever regulator issued that licence.
We publish the licence and the issuing authority on every review so you can weigh that yourself. For South African licences, our licensing authorities page lists all nine provincial boards and shows how to check a licence number against the national register.
How we rate casinos, in summary
Every casino on the site earns a score out of 100 across six weighted categories: bonuses and promotions, games and software, licensing and legality, mobile play, deposits and withdrawals, and support and responsible gambling.
Of those six, licensing counts for as much as games and bonuses, because the regulator decides what happens next when a payout stalls or a dispute starts. Each category has its own breakdown on our rating criteria page, with what earns points and what costs them.
Every figure on this site shows a date
Bonus terms change, payment methods disappear, and licences move. Anything that ages shows a "Last verified" date, and that date tells you when a person last checked it against the source. You will find it under operator data tables, licence details, and anywhere else a figure could move.
Re-checks happen on a schedule and whenever something prompts one:
Where we have not re-checked something recently, the date shows that instead of hiding it.
Unverified claims stay off the site
Plenty of numbers circulate in this industry with no source behind them. Payout percentages nobody publishes, player counts nobody audits, withdrawal times lifted from a press release. We publish none of it.
The rules we work to:
This costs us content. Take an operator's own "97% average payout" claim. It would fill a line in a review, and dropping it makes the review shorter and more accurate.
Commission plays no part in what a review says
Operators pay us commission when a reader signs up through our links, which is how the site stays free. That arrangement funds the testing and doesn't change anything about the findings.
Rankings follow scores, scores follow published criteria, and no operator can buy a position, a rating, or the removal of criticism. We have marked operators down and dropped them despite the commission. Our affiliate disclosure sets out the model in full.
Some operators come off the site entirely
Low scores still leave an operator listed, with its problems written up so you can judge them. Certain conduct goes past that.
We remove an operator when it:
Removal costs us whatever commission the operator was paying, and that is exactly why the rule holds.
Who writes and who checks
Each review comes from a member of our editorial team, and an editor fact-checks it before it goes live. Both names appear on the page, the author first and the fact-checker below, so you can see who wrote a review and who verified it.
We check every factual claim against a primary source before publishing, which usually means the operator's own pages or a regulator's register. The person writing a review does not know what the casino pays us.
Nothing is published without a human check
Every figure on a review is one we have confirmed against the operator's own pages, and every licence number is one we have matched against the National Gambling Board's register of verified operators. Every bonus term comes from the operator's terms, not from its promotional banner.
One named person is accountable for each page, and nothing reaches the site without that check.
Corrections are made openly
We get things wrong. Bonus terms shift, a payment method disappears, a figure we verified in March stops being true in September.
When we find an error, or a reader reports one, we check it against the source and fix the page. Where the correction changes something material, such as a licence, a score, or a payment detail, we update the verified date so you can see the page has moved.
We do not quietly delete the problem. Where a review was wrong about a withdrawal time, it gets a corrected withdrawal time, not a missing section.
Responsible gambling
Gambling is legal for adults aged 18 and over, and it works best as paid entertainment. Set a budget you can afford to lose, and treat any win as a bonus, never as income or a way out of debt.
If play no longer feels like fun, our responsible gambling guide explains where to turn. It starts with the free NRGP helpline on 0800 006 008, then walks you through self-exclusion and the deposit limits you can set yourself.
The same principle guides every review on the site. Each operator's score reflects the limit tools it gives you, and our pages about gambling harm contain no affiliate links, so nothing on them earns us money.
Copyright and originality
Our writers produce every article on this site themselves, based on accounts they open and terms they read in full.
Some facts still need an official source, such as a licence number from a regulator's register or a bonus rule from an operator's terms. We check those sources directly, explain what they mean for you, and put that explanation in our own words. Images follow the same rule. We license each one or get the owner's permission before it goes on the site.
Tell us if we got something wrong
Accuracy matters more to us than any single review reading well. If you find a figure out of date, a bonus term we described incorrectly, or an operator we rated too kindly, write to [email protected].
Operators are welcome to use the same address. We will check what you send against the source and correct the page where you are right.
Related pages
To better understand how we work and the rules we follow, we also recommend these pages:
These guidelines were last reviewed in September 2026.
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