Responsible gambling

The services below are organised by country, because the useful service is the one near the person who needs it, and because the arrangements behind them (who runs them, who pays for them, what each of them can do) differ from one country to the next. Each of them is free, and most will talk to a family member as readily as to a player.

The national self-exclusion schemes

The single most effective tool in gambling is also the least advertised. A national "self-exclusion" scheme takes one registration and applies it to every operator licensed in that country at once, marketing included, so the decision is made once and enforced everywhere, including at the operators a person has not heard of yet (once, rather than operator by operator until the list runs out).

Great Britain has GAMSTOP, which covers every operator licensed to offer online gambling to British customers; Sweden has Spelpaus.se, Spain the Registro General de Interdicciones de Acceso al Juego, and the Netherlands has Cruks. Germany has OASIS (online operators and the premises as well), Australia has BetStop for licensed wagering services, and Ontario and Alberta each run a provincial programme reaching every registered operator.

An operator licensed only offshore belongs to none of these schemes, which is the practical difference a local licence makes and the reason we show readers in those countries only the operators licensed there. A registration with a national scheme is worth nothing against a room the scheme cannot reach (and an offshore room is exactly such a room).

Where to call

In Great Britain the National Gambling Helpline answers on 0808 8020 133, free and at any hour, while Australia has Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858 and New Zealand the Gambling Helpline on 0800 654 655. In the United States the National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-GAMBLER; in Ontario ConnexOntario is 1-866-531-2600, in Alberta the service is Alberta 211, and in Norway Hjelpelinjen is 800 800 40.

In Spain there is jugarbien.es, from the gambling regulator, in Sweden Stödlinjen, in Germany check-dein-spiel.de, from the BZgA, in the Netherlands Loket Kansspel, and in Poland uzaleznieniabehawioralne.pl, from the national centre. Elsewhere, Gambling Therapy offers support online in several languages, which makes it the one address on this page that does not depend on where the person reading it happens to live.

The tools the operator must give you

Every licensed operator on this site is obliged to offer "deposit limits", "loss limits", session reminders, a cooling-off period and "self-exclusion", and to apply them when they are asked for rather than when it suits the operator. They sit in the account settings (settings, and not a form to request) and take about a minute to set.

The one worth setting first is the "deposit limit", the only tool on the list that acts before the money moves. A limit set on a calm evening binds the same person on an evening that is not calm, and that displacement in time is the whole of the point (a limit is not advice, it is a decision already taken).

What is worth noticing

A short list of the things worth noticing. Chasing a loss with a larger stake; playing for longer than intended, and then doing it again; borrowing in order to play, or playing with money meant for something else; hiding how much or how often; playing in order to feel better rather than for the game itself.

None of those is a diagnosis, and this page is not qualified to offer one. They are the things the services above say they hear most often, and any single one of them is reason enough to call a number on this page, which costs nothing and commits nobody to whatever might follow. Noticing one of them early is worth more than noticing several of them late.

The age limits

The minimum age is eighteen in Great Britain, Spain, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Alberta; it is nineteen in Ontario and most of Canada, and twenty-one in the American states that licence online casino gambling. Gambling under the age of the place one is standing in is an offence in most of them, and an operator that lets it happen risks the licence the whole business is built on.

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