How we test online casinos at BetterGambling

Ten steps, in order

Reviews follow one sequence every time. Later steps depend on earlier ones, so the order matters as much as the checks themselves.

1. Find the licence number in the footer and identify the issuing authority
2. Check that number against the register the licensing authority publishes
3. Register an account and complete the signup as a new player would
4. Count the lobby, category by category, and record the provider list from the filters
5. Read the promotions page, then read the terms document behind it
6. Open the cashier and record every method, minimum, limit, and fee
7. Contact support with a genuine question and record the reply
8. Check the mobile site or app against the desktop version
9. Capture screenshots at each step as the evidence behind every figure
10. Hand the whole file to an editor, who checks the review against it

The order is deliberate. Where a licence does not check out, the rest of the process produces nothing we would publish.

Licence details come first

Everything else depends on whether the licence holds up. Operators with no verifiable licence tell you more in that one fact than the rest of the site will.

For South African licences, we use the National Gambling Board's verified operators list, which shows every licensed operator by name, licence number, licence type and province. Nine provincial boards issue those licences, and each one covers its own province only.

Offshore licences go through the same check, with the issuing regulator named. Every review states which licence the operator holds, so you can weigh what protection comes with it.

Every review starts with an account

We register an account at each casino before we write about it, and explore the site from inside it. Plenty of what matters hides behind a login: the cashier, the real bonus terms, the full game library.

Registration itself tells us something. We note how much the form demands, what the site does with a phone number, and how quickly the account becomes usable.

We check the account settings too, including which deposit, loss, and session limits the operator offers. Those limit tools matter more to a player than any bonus does.

Blocked registrations and broken forms go in the review as well. Signup failures count as findings in their own right.

Game and provider counts are our own

Operators round their game numbers generously. Our figures come from the lobby.

We count each category separately: slots, live dealer, table games, jackpots, crash, and anything the operator lists on its own. Providers come from the filter list in the lobby, never from a logo strip on the homepage, because the two rarely match.

Where an operator advertises a figure we cannot reproduce, the review gives our count alongside the advertised one.

Operators sometimes push back on that. Commission changes neither the count nor the review, as our affiliate disclosure sets out.

Bonus rules live in the small print

Promotional banners advertise the headline. The conditions belong to a separate document, and that is the one we read.

For every offer we record:

• Wagering requirement, and which games contribute at what rate
• Maximum bet allowed while the bonus is active
• Maximum you can withdraw from bonus winnings
• Expiry on the bonus and separately on any free spins
• Minimum deposit to qualify
• Sticky or non-sticky

These clauses decide what a bonus is worth, and a banner never shows them. Anyone unsure what game weighting or a sticky bonus means will find both in ourglossary.

Cashier limits beat the payments page

Payments pages display logos. The cashier tells you what you can actually use, with the limits attached.

We record deposit and withdrawal methods with their minimums, any fees the operator applies, and the processing windows it states. We also note any rule forcing a withdrawal back to the method that funded the account.

Where the cashier and the payments page disagree, the review says so.

Payout timings come from the operator's own published terms, and the review attributes them that way. We report what a casino commits to, and we do not present it as a time we have measured ourselves.

Support has to answer a real question

We contact support with a genuine question about the site instead of a test message. The question is one a new player would ask: an ambiguous bonus condition, a payment method that appears in one place and not another, or a verification step the site never explains.

The review records the channel used, how long the reply took, how accurate the answer proved, and how well the agent understood a question about the casino's own terms. Support that cannot explain its employer's bonus conditions has told us something useful.

Screenshots document what we found

Each claim in a review traces back to something we captured at the time. Bonus terms, cashier screens, game counts, licence footers, support conversations.

Terms change, so a screenshot dated in March explains why a review said what it said. Figures with evidence behind them are also ones we can defend when an operator disputes them.

Those files are what an editor works from before we publish, under the sourcing rules set out in our editorial guidelines.

The same fields, for every casino

Each area of a casino produces a fixed set of fields, so two reviews of two operators compare like with like.

Operators sometimes leave a field blank or decline to answer, and the review records the silence. Silence on a withdrawal limit counts as a finding.

What we do not test

All review sites have limits. Treat any site that claims otherwise with suspicion.

Our process stops here:

• Payout speeds come from the operator's published terms, labelled that way in the review, because we do not deposit and withdraw at every casino we list
• RTP figures stay unverified by us, since nobody outside the studio can see the game server data that would settle it
• Game coverage reports what a library holds instead of how each title performs, because nobody plays 3,000 slots
• Payment methods get spot-checked, not tested one by one at every operator

This costs us claims we could otherwise make. It also means everything else here holds up when you check it, which counts for more.

Four things send us back through a casino

Our findings are a snapshot, and casinos move. We revisit an operator when any of the following happens.

• The operator changes something material: New licence, revised bonus terms, a payment method added or dropped, a change of ownership
• Readers report a problem: Someone tells us a figure is wrong or a term has changed, and we check it against the source before we touch the page
• Regulators publish something new: Licence status changes, a board issues a decision, or a register entry moves
• The page comes up for scheduled review: We re-check pages on a cycle, whether or not anything has gone wrong

Each redo covers the same ten steps. We do not glance at the parts we expect to have changed and leave the rest. The verified date at the foot of a review moves only when someone has been back through it.

Scores come afterwards

Testing and scoring are separate steps, handled in that order. Everything above produces findings, and only then does anyone turn those findings into a number. That separation matters: a score follows what we found on the site, and never decides in advance what we ought to find.

Our how we rate page covers the criteria, the weight each one holds, and what pushes a score up or down.