How we rate online casinos at BetterGambling

Six categories add up to 100

Each weight reflects how much the category affects a player.

Licensing matches games and bonuses in weight for a reason. Whether a regulator stands behind an operator decides what happens when something goes wrong, and no amount of slots makes up for the absence of anywhere to complain.

Categories score independently and then add up. Games cannot compensate for a missing licence, since no trade-off runs between categories.

Every review publishes its category scores beside the relevant section, so you can add them up yourself. Those scores come out of the same ten steps applied to every casino.

What each category measures

The weights show how much each area counts. Below is what earns the points inside them.

Bonuses and promotions (20 points)

What an offer is worth once the conditions apply decides the score here. We look at the headline value, the wagering requirement, game contribution rates, the maximum bet allowed while a bonus is active, the cap on bonus winnings, and the expiry.

Offers at odds with themselves cost the most. Where a banner advertises one figure and the cashier pays another, the score reflects what a player can actually claim.

Operators who publish a worked example of their wagering score higher for it. Those conditions decide what an offer is worth, and a casino willing to show its arithmetic has told you something already.

Games and software (20 points)

Size matters less than range. We weigh the number of titles, the spread of studios behind them, the presence or absence of live dealer tables, and the ease of finding anything in the lobby.

One studio behind an entire library puts twenty points out of reach, however good the studio. Eight rows from one provider make a narrower offer than half the titles spread across twenty studios.

Licensing and legality (20 points)

Full marks need a named regulator, a licence number, the operating company, and an address, all published where a player can find them and check them against the register the licensing authority publishes.

Casinos with nothing published score low here regardless of everything else. Where a licence exists, we check the number ourselves, and we never trust a footer on its own. Offshore licences score, but lower than South African ones. The licence itself is real. What it gives a South African player who needs to complain is far less.

Deposits and withdrawals (15 points)

Four things decide the points here: the routes money can take, the entry minimum, the cost, and the wait on a payout.

Deposit routes count for less than withdrawal routes. Every casino makes it easy to pay in, and the ones worth points make it equally easy to take money out. One withdrawal route with a week-long clearing time scores near the bottom. Several routes with low minimums and same-day payouts score near the top.

Mobile play (15 points)

Apps matter, but so does the browser version, and so does parity between the mobile lobby and desktop. Casinos lose points for mobile pages they no longer maintain. Some guides name platforms nobody has used in a decade. They show you when the operator last looked.

Support and responsible gambling (10 points)

Support and player protection share this category. Support scores on the channels available, the speed of a reply, and its accuracy. Correctness outweighs speed. Agents who reply in seconds with the wrong bonus terms do worse than those who take ten minutes and get it right.

The rest comes from the tools an operator gives you: deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion, and whether those limit tools cover every payment method or only some.

Where a score falls on the scale

Scores cluster in the middle. Very few casinos reach either end of the scale.

Two casinos can look similar on the surface and finish twenty points apart. Both might price in rand, answer support properly, and hold a decent library.

The difference comes down to whether a regulator stands behind one of them, and how quickly money leaves the account. Which is the reason the score alone says less than the category breakdown beside it.

Low scorers stay on the site. Nobody gains when we drop a weak operator, because someone will find it anyway and arrive with no idea what the site is like. Low scores, with the reasons written out beside them, are more useful to a reader than an absence.

Points come off for specific reasons

We deduct nothing on a feeling. Each item below belongs to a category, and each appears in the review where it applies.

• Advertised offers the cashier does not honour
• Terms at odds with the promotions page
• Withdrawal limits or dormancy rules buried where a player will not look
• Payment methods listed on a marketing page and absent from the cashier
• Mobile pages left unmaintained for years
• Support unable to explain the operator's own conditions
• Licensing details the operator declines to publish

Conduct past a certain point takes an operator off the site altogether, with no points involved. Our editorial guidelines set out the triggers.

Two casinos on the same score can suit different players

Scores compare casinos overall. They cannot tell you which one suits you, because the categories matter differently according to how you play.

Someone who plays once a month gets little from a loyalty scheme, so twenty points of bonus value may be worth less to them than five points of payout speed. Voucher payouts matter far more to a player without a bank account than the size of a game library does.

Each review closes with a section on who the casino suits and who it does not. Read it before you read the number.

Scores move when a casino moves

Every score describes a casino on the day we checked it. Terms change, licences move, payment methods disappear, and a March score can mislead by September. Reviews show a verified date for this reason. Where findings change on a re-check, the score follows.

Commission plays no part in any of it. Operators cannot buy a category score, a total, or a position in a list, and our affiliate disclosure explains how the money actually works.

Last verified: September 2026