About StakesCheck

What we test

Every review answers the same six questions, in the same order, so two reviews can be compared against each other.

• Withdrawal speed and verificationHow long a redemption really takes, including the identity check that runs alongside your first one.
• Bonus terms, not bonus headlinesPlaythrough, redemption floors, and whether the advertised offer is reachable without spending.
• Who actually operates the siteThe company, the registration number, the jurisdiction. Some operators publish all three. Some publish none.
• State availabilityWhich states are blocked today, checked against the operator's own terms rather than a rival's copy.
• Platform and supportGame library, apps, and what happens when something goes wrong and you have to contact someone.
• What players reportReview distributions rather than averages, measured against the sector baseline, because almost every operator in this market looks bad at face value.

How we rate

Every score is the same four components with the same weights. The rubric is published here so you can disagree with it.

The four components are scored out of ten, weighted, and halved to give a rating out of five. Two casinos with similar evidence get the same rating, and a weaker one sits visibly below rather than a tenth of a point below. Ranking pages sort by that rating, and a tie breaks on the trust score first, then on payout speed, and only then on the name, because two casinos that land on the same one-decimal rating are rarely actually equal.

Two things decide whether a casino can be ranked at all, separately from how it scores. If an operator's own terms exclude US residents we leave it out of every ranking and every top pick, and we do not link to it, because recommending a site you cannot open an account at is not a recommendation. Its review stays up, and says so at the top. And an operator under state stop-orders keeps its place in a ranking, with the reason printed on its card, but it never holds a top pick.

Two rules do most of the work inside a trust score. Almost every gambling operator, licensed or offshore, sits between 85 and 93 percent one-star reviews on the public review platforms, so we compare a distribution against that sector baseline rather than reading it at face value: sitting inside the band tells us nothing and costs an operator nothing. Enforcement is weighted by whether it touched player money, so a penalty over self-exclusion failures, identity checks, withheld withdrawals or misleading bonus terms counts heavily, while one over a sports market or an advert counts for little or nothing.

The scale is deliberately harsh. Five out of five is effectively unattainable, because it would need a perfect score on all four components at once and nothing in this market earns that. Read a 4.5 here as a strong result rather than a qualified one.

What we cover

Five categories, each with different rules, different payouts and a different legal position.

Who writes StakesCheck

Every article carries the byline of the person who did the work, and each of us covers a fixed beat so the same eyes return to the same operators.

Why trust us

Responsible gambling comes first

Gambling should be entertainment, not a way to make money. We do not publish systems that claim to beat the house, we do not push readers toward deposits, and every review that covers a paid product says what it actually costs to reach a payout.

You must be 18 or over to play at most sites we cover, and 21 or over at several. If it stops being fun, help is available at BeGambleAware.org or on 1-800-GAMBLER in the US.