Licences, and what each one obliges

Every operator on this site holds a licence from somewhere, and the differences between those somewheres are larger than the single word suggests, which is why "licensed and regulated" on a footer (and it is on almost every footer) settles nothing. What follows is what each regulator actually obliges, so that the licence line on a card carries a meaning and not a reassurance.

The licences that come with a public register

Great Britain, Spain, Sweden, Ontario and Alberta all publish a register of who holds a licence, what it covers and whether it is "current": the single most useful thing a regulator can do, since nobody then has to take our word, or any publisher’s, for anything. The Gambling Commission’s public register, the list kept by the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego, Spelinspektionen’s licence register, the iGaming Ontario list and the AGLC list each answer the question in about a minute (who holds the licence, and whether they still do), which is a minute better spent than any amount of time on a page like this one.

Malta, Alderney, Kahnawake and the Isle of Man publish registers of their own, and since that is where most of the "offshore" operators on this site are licensed, checking a name against one of them is the same minute’s work, and a register answers in a minute what a review cannot answer at all. A licence number absent from the register of the body said to have issued it is not a licence number at all (the register is the thing being pointed at, and the footer only the pointing).

What a licence obliges, and what it does not

A licence obliges an operator to hold player funds in a particular way, to run age and identity checks, to offer "self-exclusion" (a bar the player asks for and the operator must then enforce), and to send an unresolved complaint to a "dispute resolution body". It promises nobody a win, says nothing about whether the games are generous, and takes no position on whether the terms attached to a bonus are fair. Those are separate questions, and the licence answers none of them, which is worth remembering before a licence number is read as a recommendation.

What a licence does change is what happens when something goes wrong. An operator licensed in the country a reader is sitting in has a complaints route that ends somewhere and a regulator able to act on what it finds; an operator licensed only offshore has neither of those (no route, and no regulator within reach), from where that reader is standing, however confidently the words "licensed and regulated" sit on its footer!

The difference a local licence makes

Three things come with a licence in the reader’s own country and with nothing else. A national "self-exclusion" scheme covering every licensed operator at once, a "complaints route" the regulator recognises, and rules about what may be offered at all: GAMSTOP in Great Britain, Spelpaus in Sweden, the Spanish register of interdictions, OASIS in Germany and Cruks in the Netherlands all work that way (one registration, every operator).

That is why the pages written for those countries show only locally licensed operators, and why in our view it is the right way round rather than a restriction being put up with: a reader who can reach a national scheme in one registration is better served by a short list the scheme covers than by a long one it does not, however many "exclusive bonuses" the long one carries. The shorter list is the stronger one (short, dull, and worth more than the other kind), which is not how a list is usually sold.

The offshore licences on this site, and what to make of them

Most of the international list is licensed in Curaçao, in Anjouan, in Kahnawake or in Malta, and those are real licences with real conditions, which is not to say they are equivalent to one another or to a licence held in the reader’s own country. Where we list such an operator, the regulator, the number and the company holding it are all printed (all three, because two will not find the third), and we leave the comparison to the reader rather than flatten it into a "safety index".

How that jurisdiction reached its present position, and whether it holds it, is the subject of a separate piece on this site. One practical note belongs here (and an easy one to check): Curaçao replaced its old "master licence" system with "direct licensing", so an operator still quoting a master-licence number is quoting a form of authorisation that no longer exists, and a number on a footer is worth checking against the register rather than reading.

By the No Deposit Bonus editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2014