Licenties uitgelegd

A gambling licence is the single most useful thing to check before you deposit anywhere. It tells you who authorised the operator, what rules they agreed to follow, and — crucially — who you can complain to if something goes wrong. This page explains what a licence actually gives you, how the main regulators differ, and how to check for yourself that the casino in front of you really holds the licence it claims.

What a licence actually does

A licence is permission from a regulator for a named company to offer gambling, subject to conditions. Depending on the regulator, those conditions can cover:

Game fairness — that outcomes come from tested random number generators.
Segregated funds — that player balances are held separately from company money.
Identity and anti-money-laundering checks — the KYC you are asked to complete.
Responsible gambling tools — deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion.
Complaint handling — a route of appeal above the operator itself.
Advertising rules — what may be promised, and to whom.

What a licence does not do is guarantee you will be treated well. It sets a floor, and the height of that floor varies enormously between regulators.

The two broad families

National regulators

These license operators to serve players in one specific country, and they are usually the strictest. Examples include the UK Gambling Commission, Sweden's Spelinspektionen, Denmark's Spillemyndigheden, the Netherlands' Kansspelautoriteit, Germany's GGL, and Malta's MGA — which, while offshore in origin, operates inside the EU regulatory framework.

What you typically get: enforced deposit limits, a national self-exclusion register, an independent complaints body, and a regulator with a real incentive to act, because the operator needs that market. What you typically give up: bigger bonuses, looser verification, and access to some game types that national rules restrict.

Offshore licences

These authorise an operator to run a gambling business from a jurisdiction, without being tied to the country you happen to live in. Curaçao is the best known, alongside Anjouan, Costa Rica, Tobique and Kahnawake. Most of the casinos on this site hold one.

Offshore regulation is lighter. In practice this means:

Supervision is thinner, and enforcement against an operator is rarer and slower.
Complaint escalation may exist on paper but achieve little in practice.
Player funds may not be segregated or protected if the operator fails.
Responsible-gambling tools are often present but not independently enforced.
Costa Rica in particular issues a general business registration rather than a gambling licence in the ordinary sense — it verifies that a company exists, not that it runs fair games.

Offshore-licensed casinos are not automatically bad. Many are run competently and pay reliably, and they often offer larger bonuses and faster crypto payouts precisely because their costs are lower. But the safety net beneath you is thinner, and you should size your deposits accordingly.

Curaçao's reform

Curaçao historically issued a small number of master licences whose holders then sold sub-licences onward, which made it hard to tell who was actually supervising a given site. Since 2024 the island has been moving to direct licensing under the Curaçao Gaming Authority, with operators holding licences in their own name. If a site still advertises an old-style master-licence number, that is worth a second look.

How to check a licence yourself

This takes two minutes and is worth doing every time.

Find the claim. Scroll to the casino's footer. It should name the licensing authority, the licence number, and the company that holds it.
Check the company matches. The company named in the footer should be the same one named in the terms and conditions and on the payment descriptor. A mismatch is a real warning sign.
Verify on the regulator's own site. Do not trust the seal in the footer — images are trivially copied. Go to the regulator directly and search their public register for the licence number. If the regulator has no public register you can search, treat the claim as unverified.
Check the licence covers you. A licence is issued for specific activities and often specific markets. A national licence for one country does not protect a player in another.
Check it is current. Registers show status and expiry. Suspended and expired licences are common enough to be worth a look.

If any step fails, or the footer names no licence at all, the sensible response is not to deposit. We do the same check when we review, and you can see the result in the Licence field on every casino page — but a licence can lapse between our review and your deposit, which is why the final check is yours.

The licence is not the whole answer

A strong licence held by an operator with terrible withdrawal terms is still a bad deal, and a modest licence held by an operator with a decade of paying on time may be fine. Read the licence alongside the withdrawal limits, the wagering requirements and the payment methods — which is why we publish all of them on every review.

Your own law comes first

An operator's licence says what the operator may do. It says nothing about what you may legally do where you live. Online gambling is restricted or prohibited in many countries, and in some it is legal nationally but not regionally. Checking your own local law is your responsibility, and nothing on this page is legal advice.

Browse casinos by their regulator on our licensed casinos page, or read how we rate to see where licensing sits in our score.