UK-licensed casino sites: understanding the Gambling Commission register

Updated September 2026

Licensed

Available in GB

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18+ Only

23 September 2026 — figures checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register of gambling businesses.

Most of the names a UK player meets in casino advertising are the domestic-facing ends of brands incorporated somewhere else. The interesting question is not where the company sits; it is whether the Gambling Commission lets it take pounds from people in Great Britain. That licence, or its absence, decides every protection the player feels.

Player safety on a foreign casino site

What a UK licence actually obliges

A remote casino operating licence from the Gambling Commission is the only permission that lets a site take deposits from people in Great Britain, regardless of where the operator is incorporated. The 2014 change to the Gambling Act closed the loophole that had let offshore brands advertise into Britain without holding one. From that point forward, jurisdiction followed the customer, not the company. A Malta-registered operator with no Commission licence is no longer a Maltese question when it accepts a £20 deposit from Manchester; it is a British one.

The Commission’s public register lists every business holding an active licence and every website that operates against it. As of 18 September 2026, that register carried 139 businesses with an active remote casino licence. The number is small against the population of online casinos globally, because entry is conditional: a UK licence holder must hold player funds in trust, follow the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP), participate in GAMSTOP, and answer to an approved alternative dispute resolution service if a complaint cannot be resolved in-house. None of those obligations travel with a Curaçao or Malta number, and no foreign regulator enforces them on a UK player.

What a player loses on a site without one

The costs of using an unlicensed site show up where a player can least afford them — when the session stops being fun. The Commission does not block unlicensed sites at the ISP level; it sends cease-and-desist notices, asks search engines to delist them, and forwards payment and hosting details to its counterparts abroad. The result is a slow squeeze rather than a wall, and the squeeze stops at the player.

An unlicensed site is not obliged to offer GAMSTOP, the Commission’s national self-exclusion scheme, which every UK-licensed online operator must join. Self-excluding through GAMSTOP at a licensed site closes the door across every Commission-licensed brand at once, for six months, one year or five years. On a foreign site, the same decision closes the door on that site only — and only for as long as the operator chooses to honour it. A self-exclusion that can be undone by an email is not a self-exclusion.

Financial vulnerability checks have run at every UK-licensed site since 28 February 2025: once net deposits cross £150 in a rolling 30-day window, the operator runs a check using publicly available data. The mechanism exists because the Commission found that problem gamblers cluster in that band, and because the existing checks missed them. An offshore brand runs on its own house rules; the same £150 deposit slips by without a flag.

Anonymous play is impossible on a Commission-licensed site, by design. Name, address and date of birth are verified before the first deposit. That friction costs the player a few minutes at sign-up and buys the rest of the protections listed here.

Why the protections matter in cash terms

The protections on a Commission-licensed site translate to specific numbers, not general warmth. The maximum stake on online slots since 9 April 2025 is £5 per game cycle for players aged 25 and over, and £2 for 18-24 since 21 May 2025. Auto-play has been banned since 31 October 2021, a slot spin cannot resolve faster than 2.5 seconds, and losses disguised as wins (a celebratory sound on a net-loss spin) are banned. These are the things a £5-a-spin stake actually constrains: the speed at which the same bankroll can be run off, and the framing of the losing spins in between.

Wagering requirements on bonuses have been capped at 10x since 19 December 2025. The bonus-cost calculation that follows uses that cap. The combination of stake limits, spin cadence, identity verification, financial vulnerability checks and a national self-exclusion scheme is what the operator trade-off really means: those are the things the player gives up on a foreign site that does not answer to the Commission.

Top 10 UK-licensed casino sites accepting British players

How the table is read

The comparison below lists ten brands taken from the Commission’s public register. Every one is a GB-licensed online operator, and every one has the same baseline obligations to the player — GAMSTOP membership, mandatory financial vulnerability checks, the slot stake and spin cadence limits, and the 10x wagering cap. The differences are in ownership structure, the parent account each brand sits under, and the domain status the register records for it. None of the figures here are bonus terms; the register carries no bonus information, and no row implies a recommendation.

Several brands share a single licensee. Paddy Power and Betfair both sit under PPB Games Limited on account 39411. They are not separate operators for the purposes of consumer protection; if a complaint cannot be resolved in-house, both routes reach the same alternative dispute resolution service.

Every row above carries an active remote casino operating licence. The licence number itself follows a fixed form: a six-digit account number, an “R” marking the licence as remote (online), a second number, and a suffix. The account number at the front of the licence repeats the licence holder’s account on the register, which is how the register ties the licence to the company that holds it.

The domain list on the same register carried 1,065 active and 361 white-label website entries on the same date. A white-label site trades under another company’s licence; it does not hold its own. A player landing on a white-label site is dealing with the licensee whose name sits on the bottom of the page, and that licensee’s protections apply.

How to read a row against the wider market

The 10 brands in the table are a sample, not the market. The register’s 139 active remote casino licensees run thousands of active and white-label websites between them, and the table is a way to look at the licence structure rather than a directory. A reader who wants the full list downloads the register’s CSV file from the Commission’s website; the table here is what ten of those rows look like when lined up.

Where a foreign licence sits in this picture

A site marketing itself to UK players from outside the Commission register is not absent because the Commission dislikes it. It is absent because it has not satisfied the conditions that go with the licence — identity verification on registration, the £150 financial vulnerability threshold, GAMSTOP membership, the slot stake and spin cadence rules, the 10x wagering cap. Some of those obligations are expensive to comply with, and some conflict with the commercial model the operator wants to run. The list of 139 licensees is the list of operators willing to absorb that cost for the UK market.

Casinos based outside the UK: what the category actually contains

The two meanings of “foreign casino”

“Foreign casino” gets used in two ways in UK search, and the answer to most of the questions on this page depends on which one is meant. A foreign casino can be a brand whose company sits in another country but holds a Gambling Commission licence and operates a GB-facing website. Betfred, in the table above, sits under Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited and is a UK-licensed operator; the brand name carries a UK high-street identity but the licence holder is in Gibraltar. This is the group that looks foreign and behaves British.

The other sense is a casino that takes UK deposits but holds no Commission licence, and operates against a Curaçao, Malta, Isle of Man or similar overseas authorisation. Under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005, providing gambling to people in Great Britain without a Commission licence is an offence. The Commission disrupts such sites — cease-and-desist notices, search-engine delisting, payment and hosting referrals — but the player reaches one easily, because there is no ISP block. The protection gap is at the player’s end, not the regulator’s.

Why the second kind keeps advertising

Operators outside the Commission register continue to market to UK players because the marketing itself is not the offence. The offence sits at the point a UK deposit is accepted, and a brand can run affiliate campaigns, social posts and welcome bonuses aimed at British customers while directing them to a deposit page hosted outside the jurisdiction. The Commission’s enforcement reach stops where the operator’s payment processing stops; the player arrives in between.

The trade-off the marketing conceals is on the protection side, not the price side. Bonuses at unlicensed sites may be larger because the 10x wagering cap that applies to UK-licensed operators does not apply to them. The catch sits in the terms attached to those bonuses — maximum cashout caps, withdrawal holds, country exclusions — and in the absence of the dispute route a Commission licensee must offer. An “exclusive” bonus that comes with no ADR is more expensive than it reads.

The register as the test

The Commission’s public register is the only place that says, with no marketing filter, whether a brand is licensed to take UK deposits. The CSV download from the Commission’s website is the same data as the online search, in a form a reader can sort. Every licence number on the table above resolves there. A brand not on the register either has not applied, has been refused, has let a licence lapse, or has never held one — and the register’s status field says which, where it has been.

The register records three states for each website: Active, Inactive or White Label. An Active domain is one the licensee is currently running; Inactive means it once ran but is no longer; White Label means the site trades under another company’s licence, with the licensee responsible for compliance. A player is not choosing between an active site and a white-label site on safety — both routes reach the licensee — but the branding and the operator-of-record differ, and complaints need a name to address.

Licensing and regulation: who polices a UK-facing casino

The Commission as regulator

The Gambling Commission is the regulator for gambling in Great Britain, sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and operating under the Gambling Act 2005. The Commission’s remit covers Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales — not Northern Ireland. Any operator taking customers in those three nations needs a Commission licence, regardless of where the company itself is based. The 2014 Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act brought that change in; the era when a Curaçao-registered company could advertise into Britain without a British licence ended.

The Commission’s role is licensing, compliance and enforcement. It issues operating licences and personal licences, sets the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) that govern how licensees behave, and runs enforcement against operators who break them. The Commission’s enforcement tools include financial penalties, licence suspension and revocation. It does not have ISP-blocking powers; the digital enforcement it can run is the slower squeeze of delisting and payment referrals.

The standards a licensed operator must meet

The LCCP sets out the conditions a licensee must satisfy in detail, and a few of them are worth naming because they are what a player feels at the point of play.

Identity verification runs before the first deposit and before any play, since 7 May 2019. Name, address and date of birth are checked; the operator must be satisfied the customer is 18 or over and is who they claim to be. The friction at sign-up is the price of this, and it is the same price at every Commission-licensed site.

Financial vulnerability checks run at every Commission-licensed online operator since 28 February 2025. When net deposits cross £150 in a rolling 30-day window, the operator must run a check using publicly available data and act on what it finds. The £150 figure was chosen because the Commission’s evidence showed problem gambling clustering in that band. The check runs without asking the player for further documents at this stage; it works against external data. The wider financial risk assessments the Commission has signalled are not yet in force.

GAMSTOP membership has been a mandatory condition of every online licence since 31 March 2020. Self-exclusion periods are six months, one year or five years; a player cannot cancel the exclusion early. The exclusion covers every Commission-licensed online operator at once, which is the point of a national scheme: the player closes the door across the whole licensed market in one step.

The slot stake limit took effect in two phases. From 9 April 2025, the maximum stake on online slots for players aged 25 and over is £5 per game cycle. From 21 May 2025, the maximum for 18-24-year-olds is £2. The Commission set the limit because of evidence linking high-stake online slots to large-session losses. Auto-play has been banned since 31 October 2021; a slot spin must take at least 2.5 seconds to resolve; and losses disguised as wins (the celebratory sound on a net-loss spin) are banned.

Mixed-product bonuses have been banned since 19 December 2025, and wagering requirements capped at 10x. The earlier structure, where a free bet on sport could unlock casino spins, is over. The cap on wagering requirements is the rule that drives the calculation further down this page.

Payments, bonuses and identity at a UK-licensed site

Credit cards have been banned for gambling since 14 April 2020, including credit cards routed through e-wallets. The Commission estimated that around 800,000 UK consumers used credit cards to gamble in 2018, and that 22% of online gamblers who used credit cards were classed as problem gamblers. The ban covered every online and offline gambling product in Great Britain, except non-remote lotteries paid for face-to-face. Debit cards and bank transfers were unaffected.

Wagering requirements are capped at 10x since 19 December 2025. Before that change, a casino bonus could carry a 40x or 50x turnover requirement, which turns a small bonus into a long clearing task. The cap removes the worst of that. The arithmetic below uses the cap directly.

Players do not pay tax on gambling winnings in the UK. Operators pay Remote Gaming Duty, raised from 21% to 40% from 1 April 2026; that figure is the operator’s cost, not the player’s. A reader wanting the operator-side picture for HMRC should consult a tax adviser — the rule has changed twice in the last decade and may again.

What an unlicensed site is not obliged to do

The Commission’s rules apply to Commission licensees. An unlicensed site has no obligation to verify identity before a first deposit; no obligation to participate in GAMSTOP; no obligation to enforce the slot stake limit or the spin cadence rule; no obligation to run financial vulnerability checks; no obligation to cap wagering requirements at 10x; and no obligation to offer an approved alternative dispute resolution service. The list of absences is the list of protections the player gives up. The list is not exhaustive.

The Commission’s enforcement against unlicensed sites is real but slow. It disrupts sites that come to its attention, refers cases to overseas regulators, and asks search engines to delist. The player who arrives at an unlicensed site reaches it because the marketing worked, not because the regulator failed.

Reading a casino licence in 2026

The licence number itself

A remote casino licence number on the Commission’s register has the form account-R-number-suffix. The leading six digits are the licence holder’s account number; the “R” marks the licence as a remote (online) licence, distinct from a land-based licence; the middle number is the licence sequence; and the suffix is the issue number. The same account number appears at the front of every licence that account holds, which is how a reader can see whether two brands sit under one company.

PPB Games Limited on account 39411 holds licence 039411-R-319335-010, and the same account number appears at the front of the Betfair and Paddy Power rows in the table above. The shared number is the proof that they are not independent operators for the purposes of consumer protection.

The domain status field

The register’s domain list records each website against the licence account that runs it. The status field is one of three values: Active, Inactive or White Label. Active means the licensee is currently running the site; Inactive means the site once ran but no longer does; White Label means the site trades under another company’s licence, with the licensee taking the compliance responsibility.

A white-label arrangement is not a back-alley deal. A licensee can run any number of white-label sites, each branded to a different operator, and the licensed entity behind them is the same. The branding on the site is the brand the player sees; the licensee at the foot of the page is the brand the regulator sees.

What the register does not carry

The register is a licensing record, not a market study. It does not carry bonus terms, payout times, game counts, RTP figures, or anything else the player might want to compare. The register is the first question, not the last: does this brand have the licence that puts it under Commission supervision. The comparison questions — which brand pays out fastest, which has the better bonus — sit with the operator’s own terms, and the Commission’s role ends at licensing.

Bonus cost under the 10x cap: how long a bonus actually takes

The arithmetic, in plain terms

The wagering cap that took effect on 19 December 2025 sits at 10x. A £100 bonus now carries a turnover requirement of £1,000: the player must place £1,000 of qualifying bets before the bonus becomes withdrawable. At a £5 maximum stake on slots for players aged 25 and over (or £2 for 18-24), and with the 2.5-second minimum spin cadence the Commission has required since 31 October 2021, that £1,000 turnover translates into a fixed number of spins and a fixed number of hours.

At a £5 stake per spin, the £1,000 turnover requires 200 spins. At 2.5 seconds per spin, that is 500 seconds of play, or roughly 8 minutes 20 seconds. At a £2 stake per spin, the same turnover requires 500 spins. At 2.5 seconds per spin, that is 1,250 seconds, or roughly 20 minutes 50 seconds. The 10x cap, the stake limit and the spin cadence rule together turn what used to be a long clearing task into a short one for the older player and a very short one for the younger one.

What the result does not promise

The hours above are the time it takes to meet the turnover requirement. They are not a forecast of payout, because the slots themselves have a house edge that consumes a fraction of every pound staked regardless of whether the player meets the requirement. The 10x cap changed the size of the task; it did not change the expected return. A bonus that requires 200 spins at £5 with a 96% RTP loses, in expectation, 200 × £5 × 4% = £40 of stake on the way to clearing. The bonus pays the player back; the slots cost the player that £40 of expected loss on the way to meeting the requirement.

The wagering requirement as a band, not a point

The 10x cap sits at the top of what a UK-licensed operator can ask. Lower wagering requirements — 5x, 4x — sit underneath it and shrink the same calculation. A £100 bonus with a 5x requirement is £500 of turnover; at a £5 stake, 100 spins; at 2.5 seconds per spin, 4 minutes 10 seconds. A £100 bonus with a 4x requirement is £400 of turnover; 80 spins; 3 minutes 20 seconds. The arithmetic the cap produces is not a single time but a band, and the band’s lower bound moves with the operator’s chosen multiple. The cap sets the ceiling; the operator sets the actual multiple within it.

Foreign casinos accepting UK players: the licence question

What counts as accepting

A site accepts UK players the moment a player in Great Britain can deposit pounds and play. Where the company is incorporated does not enter the test; the test is whether the site takes the deposit. A Gibraltar-registered company can be a Commission-licensed operator and accept UK players through a GB-facing website; a Curaçao-registered company with no Commission licence is an unlicensed operator the moment it accepts a UK deposit, even if its terms say otherwise.

The Commission’s enforcement reaches unlicensed sites through cease-and-desist notices, delisting and payment referrals. None of those tools stops a player who knows where to go. The Commission’s published guidance is that the offence sits with the operator, not the player; the consequence for the player sits in the protection gap.

Why an operator chooses not to licence

The Commission’s licensing conditions cost the operator in two ways. The direct costs are fees, the time the application takes, and the compliance overhead of holding player funds in trust, running identity verification and financial vulnerability checks, and submitting to Commission audits. The indirect costs are the rules themselves: a 10x wagering cap, a £5 slot stake limit, mandatory GAMSTOP participation, the spin cadence rule. Some operators do not want those rules applied to their product, and the cost of complying is the price of declining to.

A site without those obligations can offer a bonus with a 40x turnover requirement, a slot with no stake limit, and a self-exclusion tool that the player can withdraw by email. The marketing can sell all three as features. The protection that the same player has at a Commission-licensed site is what those features displace.

The licence as a marketing filter

The Commission’s public register is the filter. Every brand that holds a Commission licence sits there; every brand that does not, does not. The register is searchable online and downloadable as a CSV or Excel file. The same data drives the table earlier on this page. The licence question is a yes-or-no question that resolves in one place.

Marketing to UK players from outside the jurisdiction

How the marketing reaches the player

A foreign casino site can advertise to UK players without committing an offence. UK advertising rules apply once a brand targets the UK market, and the Commission’s enforcement reach on advertising is broader than on operation. A brand can run welcome bonus campaigns, affiliate programmes and search-engine marketing aimed at the UK while its deposit page sits outside the jurisdiction. The marketing is the front door; the operator’s payment processor is the back door.

The Commission’s enforcement against unlicensed operators includes asking search engines to delist, asking payment providers to stop processing, and referring hosting providers to overseas counterparts. The delistings move the marketing reach down; they do not remove the player routes. Affiliate programmes that drive traffic through email and messaging are harder to delist than paid search.

What the marketing tends to omit

A welcome bonus offer at an unlicensed site typically states the bonus, the percentage and the maximum. It is less likely to state the wagering multiple, the maximum cashout cap, or the country exclusions. The Commission-licensed operator is required to surface those prominently; the unlicensed operator is not. The marketing that reaches the UK player in a search result is shaped accordingly.

A reader comparing offers between a Commission-licensed site and an unlicensed site is not comparing like-for-like. The licensed offer has a 10x cap, a Commission dispute route, and GAMSTOP. The unlicensed offer has whatever terms the operator writes, with no Commission oversight of those terms. The headline figure on each may look similar; the protection underneath the headline is not.

Why some players end up there anyway

The unlicensed site’s pull is size and speed: larger bonuses, faster withdrawals, fewer verification steps. The pull is real, and the protection gap is what it costs. The Commission’s view is that the player pays the difference; the marketing takes the rest.

Bonus terms in 2026 under the 10x cap

Where the cap sits

The 10x cap that took effect on 19 December 2025 sits at the ceiling of the wagering requirement a Commission-licensed operator can attach to a bonus. The mixed-product ban that came in on the same date means a bonus cannot combine a sports free bet with casino spins in the way that some operators used to. The cap’s effect is not on the size of the bonus but on the size of the clearing task the bonus imposes.

A bonus that asks for 40x turnover is now non-compliant with the LCCP. A bonus that asks for 35x is non-compliant. The cap’s effect is to remove the long clearing tasks that used to be a feature of the bonus market, and the consumer-protection argument for the cap is exactly that: the longer the clearing task, the more the house edge consumes the bankroll before the requirement is met.

What a £100 bonus costs in practice

The arithmetic in the calculation block above gives the time the bonus takes to clear: 200 spins at £5 stake, or 500 spins at £2 stake. The expected loss over those spins depends on the slot’s RTP. A 96% RTP slot loses 4% of stake in expectation; a £1,000 turnover on such a slot loses £40. A 94% RTP slot loses 6% of stake; the same turnover loses £60. The bonus pays back the £100 once cleared; the slots consume a fraction of the stake on the way there.

The numbers above are a statistical estimate over many spins. They are not a guarantee for any single session. The house edge is the average; the variance is the player’s lived experience.

The 10x cap as the floor for some offers

The 10x cap is the ceiling, not the floor. Some Commission-licensed operators run bonuses with a 5x or even a 4x requirement, and the consumer-protection argument for a lower multiple is the same as the argument for the cap. The 10x cap allows a £100 bonus to be attached to a £1,000 turnover requirement; it does not require it. The arithmetic that follows from the cap is a band, and the band’s lower bound is whatever the operator chooses within it.

Reading a UK casino offer in 2026

What the small print carries

The terms of a Commission-licensed casino bonus carry: the bonus amount or percentage; the wagering multiple; the maximum stake per spin during clearing; the games that contribute to the requirement (slots at 100%, table games often lower); the maximum cashout cap where one applies; the time limit on the offer; and the country restrictions. Every Commission-licensed operator must surface these clearly; the Commission’s enforcement record on missing terms is the reason the wording is standardised.

A reader comparing offers should look for the wagering multiple first, then the game weighting, then the time limit. The maximum cashout cap applies to winnings from the bonus, not from the deposit, and is sometimes the largest difference between offers. A £100 bonus with a 10x turnover and no maximum cashout cap is a different proposition from a £100 bonus with a 10x turnover and a £500 cap on bonus winnings.

What the small print does not cover

The small print does not cover the protection framework. The GAMSTOP scheme, the financial vulnerability check, the slot stake limit and the spin cadence rule apply at every Commission-licensed site regardless of what the bonus terms say. Those rules are not in the terms because they are not part of the offer; they are part of the licence. A reader comparing offers is comparing the variable on top of a constant.

The 10x cap and the price of marketing

The 10x cap has narrowed the gap between the offers Commission-licensed operators can run and the offers unlicensed operators run. The unlicensed operator still has the higher multiple available; the licensed operator now has a hard ceiling. The protection is the same; the marketing differentiation has shrunk. The licensed operator’s pitch is the protection, not the bonus.

What a player sees at a foreign-licensed site

The site experience

An unlicensed casino site typically loads with the same lobby pattern as a Commission-licensed one: slots, live casino, a welcome banner, a deposit button. The visual difference is small. The functional differences sit behind the lobby. Identity verification happens at withdrawal rather than at deposit. The withdrawal process can carry a manual review and a hold period; the bonus terms sit further down the page than the bonus banner.

The site’s licence statement is the easiest place to look. A Commission-licensed site names the Commission licence on the bottom of the page; an unlicensed site names a Curaçao or Malta number that is not a substitute. The number is real; it is just not the number that gives a UK player the protections above.

What the bonus looks like there

The unlicensed site’s bonus is typically larger than the licensed site’s, and the wagering multiple is typically higher. A 200% welcome bonus with a 40x turnover is a familiar shape. The cashout cap can sit at 5x or 10x the bonus amount. The time limit can be seven days. The small print is the part the marketing does not show, and it is the part that decides the offer’s actual value.

What the player pays for the difference

The price of the unlicensed offer is the protection gap. No GAMSTOP means the self-exclusion tool the player needs at the moment the player most needs it is the tool the site has no obligation to provide. No financial vulnerability check means the £150 deposit window that triggers a check at a licensed site slips past without a flag. No approved dispute resolution service means the complaint route stops at the operator. The arithmetic of an unlicensed offer is the arithmetic of the licensed offer minus these protections.

Where the licences differ

A Curaçao licence

A Curaçao gaming licence is issued by the Curaçao Gaming Control Board. The licence is a single authorisation that covers the operator against the Curaçao regulatory framework. An operator taking UK deposits on this licence is breaking the law in Great Britain.

A Malta licence

A Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) licence sits within the EU regulatory framework. The MGA’s rules apply to operators taking deposits within the EU and EEA. An MGA-licensed operator taking UK deposits must also hold a Commission licence, or it is in breach of British law.

An Isle of Man licence

An Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission licence is a well-regarded online gambling licence. It is not a substitute for a Commission licence for the UK market. For an operator taking UK deposits, this licence is insufficient without a corresponding Commission licence.

A Gibraltar licence

A Gibraltar-licence holder can also hold a Commission licence. The Betfred row in the table above sits under Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited; the company is Gibraltar-incorporated but holds a Commission licence and operates a GB-facing site. The shared structure is the cleanest example of a “foreign” operator that is, for the purposes of UK consumer protection, a UK-licensed one.

The Commission’s register as the tie-breaker

The licence question resolves on the Commission’s register. A Malta or Curaçao number on the bottom of a page is not enough; the Commission licence on the register is the test. The Commission’s register lists every active remote casino licence and the websites that operate against it; a brand on that list is licensed to take UK deposits; a brand not on that list is not.

What to check before depositing

The four checks

Before depositing at any site marketing itself to UK players, four checks are worth running.

First, search the Commission’s public register for the brand name. The register is online and downloadable as a CSV or Excel file. The brand is either there with an active licence, or it is not. There is no middle state.

Second, read the licence number on the bottom of the page. The form is account-R-number-suffix. The six-digit account at the front repeats on the Commission’s register, and the register entry confirms the licence holder and the licence status.

Third, read the bonus terms before claiming. The wagering multiple, the game weighting, the maximum cashout cap, the time limit and the country restrictions are the variables that decide what an offer is worth. The Commission’s 10x cap applies at licensed sites; a higher multiple is a sign the site is not under the Commission’s rules.

Fourth, check the dispute route. Every Commission-licensed operator must belong to an approved alternative dispute resolution service. The ADR provider’s name is in the terms. A site without an ADR is a site without an independent complaints route.

What those checks do not cover

The four checks above do not cover game quality, RTP, payout speed, customer service, or anything else a player might want to compare. The Commission’s role ends at licensing and compliance. The market for everything else sits with the operator’s terms, the player’s reading of them, and the player forums and review sites that sit alongside the register.

Where this leaves a UK player

The honest summary

A UK player who chooses a Commission-licensed site accepts the Commission’s stake limits, spin cadence, identity verification, financial vulnerability checks, GAMSTOP membership, and 10x wagering cap. The same player takes the Commission’s dispute route when needed, and the same player’s self-exclusion closes the door across every Commission-licensed site at once.

A UK player who chooses an unlicensed site accepts none of those obligations. The marketing reach is wider; the bonus is larger; the protection is absent. The Commission’s enforcement against unlicensed sites is real but does not reach every operator; the player is the one who arrives at the unlicensed site, and the player is the one who takes the consequences.

The Commission’s public register is the test. A brand on the register is licensed to take UK deposits; a brand not on the register is not. The decision the register answers is binary, and the protections follow from the answer.

Frequently asked questions

What does it mean for a casino site to be based outside the UK?

A casino site based outside the UK means the operating company is incorporated in another jurisdiction — Gibraltar, Malta, the Isle of Man, Curaçao, and elsewhere. The location of the company is not the test of whether it can take UK deposits. The test is whether the Gambling Commission has issued it a remote casino operating licence. A Gibraltar-incorporated company with a Commission licence is a UK-licensed operator for the purposes of UK consumer protection; a Curaçao-incorporated company without a Commission licence is not.

Do foreign casino sites accepting UK players hold a Gambling Commission licence?

Some do, and some do not. The Commission’s public register lists every business with an active remote casino licence. A site accepting UK deposits that is not on the register has no Commission permission; the offence sits with the operator, and the protection gap sits with the player. The register is the test, and the register resolves in one place.

What protections does a UK player lose by using a foreign casino site?

A UK player on a site without a Commission licence loses the slot stake limit (£5 per game cycle for those 25 and over, £2 for 18-24); the spin cadence rule (2.5 seconds minimum per spin, auto-play banned); the 10x wagering cap on bonuses; GAMSTOP membership and the ability to self-exclude across every licensed site at once; financial vulnerability checks at £150 net deposits in 30 days; identity verification before first deposit; and the approved ADR route for unresolved complaints. None of those obligations travel with a Curaçao or Malta number.

Is a Malta or Curaçao licence the same as a UK Gambling Commission licence?

No. A Malta Gaming Authority licence and a Curaçao Gaming Control Board licence are authorisations under their respective jurisdictions. They do not authorise the operator to take deposits from people in Great Britain. The Commission licence is the only authorisation that does. An operator holding an MGA or Curaçao licence without a Commission licence is outside the Commission’s regulatory reach.

Can a UK player self-exclude through GAMSTOP on a foreign casino site?

GAMSTOP membership has been a mandatory condition of every Commission-licensed online operator since 31 March 2020. A site without a Commission licence has no obligation to participate. A player who self-excludes through GAMSTOP at a Commission-licensed site closes the door across every licensed site for six months, one year or five years; a self-exclusion at an unlicensed site closes the door on that site only, and only for as long as the operator chooses to honour it.

Why would a foreign casino site still market itself to UK players?

The marketing itself is not the offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005. A site can run welcome bonuses, affiliate programmes and search-engine campaigns aimed at UK players while its deposit page sits outside the jurisdiction. The Commission’s enforcement against unlicensed operators includes cease-and-desist notices, search-engine delistings and payment referrals, but the marketing reaches the UK player in the gap between those actions. The unlicensed operator’s pitch is size and speed; the protection gap is the price.

Created by the ”casinoprovidersuk” editorial team.