Casino guides

Our guides for players in Great Britain

Each guide takes one practical question and answers it with checklists, worked numbers and links to the rules themselves. Together with our safer-gambling page, they cover what to understand before a first deposit:

A sensible order before your first deposit

If you are new to online casinos, or returning after a break, this order covers the questions that matter most, from the one with the biggest consequences down:

1. Check who holds the licence. Look the operator up in the Gambling Commission register by name or domain. Our guide to UK and overseas casinos explains what changes when the answer is "a regulator abroad".
2. Set a deposit limit before you play. Since 30 September 2026, UK-licensed operators must offer gross deposit limits, a hard cap on what goes into your account.
3. Decide on the bonus before you deposit. At UK-licensed casinos wagering is capped at 10 times the bonus; abroad it is often far higher. Our bonus guide shows when saying no is the better choice.
4. Read the withdrawal and verification rules. Find out which documents the casino may ask for, and whether withdrawals must go back to the method you paid with.
5. Know where help is. Note the National Gambling Helpline number and how GAMSTOP works before you need either.

How a guide is put together

A guide has to hold up when you follow it with your own account and your own money. That is why each one is built the same way:

• One question per guide. A guide answers a single practical question rather than covering everything at once.
• The rule at its source. Legal points are taken from the Gambling Commission's own pages and linked, so you can read the rule rather than our summary of it.
• Real numbers. Worked examples use actual multipliers and amounts, such as £100 at 10 times and at 40 times, so you can see the difference in pounds.
• Our own accounts. What we say about sign-up, the cashier and withdrawals draws on accounts we opened and the deposits and withdrawal requests we made ourselves.
• Honest limits. Where a foreign licence stops protecting you, the guide says so plainly. Where something depends on the operator, we say that it is set out in the terms rather than guessing.
• A checklist to finish. Each guide ends with questions you can answer in a few minutes before you decide.

Guide, review or news story?

The three parts of our UK section do different jobs:

• A guide explains how something works and what to check, whichever casino you use: licences, wagering, limits.
• A review tells you how one named casino performed when we tested it, including its licence holder, cashier, bonus terms and withdrawals. Our casino reviews start with the operator's status in the register.
• A news story tells you what has just changed and whether it is proposed or already in force. When a rule in a guide changes, our UK gambling news is usually where you read it first, and the guide is updated afterwards.

If you are deciding whether to sign up somewhere, read the guide first and the review second.

Keeping the guides in step with the rules

The guides are only useful if they match the current rules. When the Gambling Commission changes a requirement that a guide relies on, such as the 10-times wagering cap that has applied since 19 January 2026, we revise the guide and set a new updated date at the top.

We also update a guide when what we find in our own accounts changes: a new limit tool, a different verification step or new terms at the casinos we compare. If you notice something that no longer matches, tell us through our contact page and we will check it.

What our guides are not

Our guides explain how licences, terms and tools work. They are not legal, financial or tax advice, and they cannot tell you what is right for your own situation.

• For whether an operator is licensed in Great Britain, the Gambling Commission's public register is the authority, not us.
• For a dispute with a UK-licensed operator, use its complaints process first and then the dispute-resolution service it names.
• For debts linked to gambling, a free debt advice service can help you work out what to do next.

Nor are the guides an invitation to gamble abroad. Explaining what changes at an overseas casino is meant to show what you would give up, not to recommend it.

Limits before you play

Every guide comes back to the same point: decide your limits while you are not playing, and use the tools that hold them for you.

Your bank can block gambling transactions, and blocking software can stop gambling sites on all your devices. How each tool works, and what it does not stop, is on our responsible gambling page linked above.

Who writes the guides

The UK guides are written by Hannah Whitmore, our UK editor, who also writes our reviews and news for British players. Hannah writes the guides on wagering, withdrawals, verification and safer gambling from the same account research the reviews use, and keeps an operator's promise separate from what we measured.

Each guide shows its author, its sources and the date it was last updated.