How We Rate Online Casinos at a Glance
Our method is simple to state: we score six dimensions out of 100, weight them, and add them up. The weights favour what protects your money first — who holds the licence, what the bonus terms really say, and whether you can move Canadian dollars in and out.
Every number in a review traces back to a page the casino published itself. If we can’t find a fact on an official page, we leave it out instead of guessing. That rule shapes everything below.
- Scale: each dimension scored 0–100; the overall rating is the weighted total, also out of 100.
- Sources: bonus terms, general T&Cs, cashier and payments pages, help centres, responsible-gambling pages and licence statements.
- Location: pages read from a Canadian IP address on October 9, 2026.
- Not done yet: real-money deposits, withdrawals or live support chats.
- Re-checks: monthly, plus whenever an offer changes or a reader flags an error.
Right now our rankings cover 12 offshore brands, rated from 82 to 94. Those numbers only mean something if you know how they were built, so the rest of this page shows the working.
Where Our Facts Come From
Our facts come from the operators’ own published pages, not from press releases, affiliate feeds or other review sites. For each casino we build a fact sheet in which every line carries the exact quote and the URL it came from.
That sounds bureaucratic, but it has a practical payoff. When a reader asks “where did you get C$7 as the maximum bet?”, we can point to the clause rather than to a memory of a page we once skimmed.
Official Pages Read From a Canadian IP
We open each site from a Canadian IP address because offshore casinos often show different offers, currencies and restrictions by country. A welcome package quoted in euros on a European landing page is useless to someone in Winnipeg.
For the October 9, 2026 round, we read these page types for every brand, where they existed:
- Bonus terms — general bonus rules plus the specific terms of the welcome offer, cashback and VIP programme.
- General Terms and Conditions — restricted territories, age, withdrawal rules, account closure and dormant-account clauses.
- Cashier and payments pages — methods, minimums, maximums and stated processing times for Canada and CAD.
- Help centre and FAQ — verification (KYC) documents, support channels and practical how-tos.
- Licence statements — the footer, About Us page and any licence page naming the issuer, number and operating company.
- Responsible-gambling pages — deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion and the help organisations listed.
Some sites resist this. Stake’s and Roobet’s main sites blocked automated access, so for those two brands we relied on their official help centres (help.stake.com and help.roobet.com). We say so in both reviews, and we don’t show lobby screenshots for them because we don’t have any.
Screenshots and the iGaming Ontario List
Alongside the text, we capture screenshots of lobbies, promotions pages and VIP pages as they appeared from Canada on the check date. A screenshot is a dated record: if an offer changes next week, we can still show what was live when we scored it.
We also check every brand against iGaming Ontario’s official list of regulated sites, which held 84 websites in the version marked accurate as of September 1, 2026. That list is the only reliable way to tell whether a specific website is part of Ontario’s regulated market.
Pro Tip:
Check the exact web address, not just the brand name. TonyBet is a good example: a TonyBet site appears on iGO’s list, while tonybet.com itself states that its Kahnawake-licensed service covers Canada excluding Ontario and Alberta.
What We Don’t Do (and Why We Say So)
We did not open real-money accounts, deposit, withdraw or chat with support for the ratings published in October 2026. Our reviews describe what the casinos promise in writing — not what happened to our own money, because nothing did.
We think that’s worth stating plainly. Plenty of casino content implies hands-on testing that never took place, and a payout time “we measured” is a strong claim. If we didn’t measure it, we won’t write it.
What this means in practice for each dimension:
- Withdrawal speed is the time the operator states in its terms or FAQ, not a stopwatch result. When those two disagree, we quote both.
- Support quality is judged on the channels offered and documented (live chat, email, help centre depth), not on how a specific agent answered us.
- KYC is described from the documents the casino says it requests and the time frame it publishes.
- Bonus value is calculated from the written terms — wagering multiple, maximum bet, expiry and cashout caps — using worked examples.
Real-money testing is something we intend to add. When we do, each result will be labelled with the date it was made and the method used — for example, “Interac withdrawal requested on [date], received on [date]” — so you can tell measured facts apart from published ones.
Watch out:
A stated processing time is the operator’s promise, not a guarantee. Terms usually allow extra checks before a first withdrawal, so plan as if the slower figure applies to you.
The Six Rating Dimensions and Their Weights
Licence and transparency carries the most weight at 25%, followed by bonuses and Canadian payments at 20% each, games at 15%, and mobile plus support and responsible gambling at 10% each. The table shows what feeds each score.
| 📊 Dimension | ⚖️ Weight | 🔍 What we check | 📄 Main source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence & transparency | 25% | Issuer, licence number, named operator, restricted provinces, clarity of terms | Footer, About Us, licence page, T&Cs |
| Bonus value & fairness of terms | 20% | Wagering multiple and base, max bet, expiry, cashout caps, game weighting | Bonus terms, promotions page |
| Canadian payments | 20% | Interac and other local methods, CAD support, limits, stated payout times, fees | Cashier and payments pages, FAQ |
| Games & live casino | 15% | Slots, live tables, game shows, table games, crash and originals, providers | Lobby, game pages, screenshots |
| Mobile | 10% | App availability, mobile web, what the site says about devices | Help centre, app pages |
| Support & RG tools | 10% | Chat, email, help centre, limits, time-outs, self-exclusion, help links | Help centre, responsible-gambling page |
Together the weights add to 100%, so a casino that scored 100 everywhere would land exactly on 100 overall.
Licence and Transparency (25%)
This dimension asks one question: if something goes wrong, do you know who you’re dealing with? A named operating company, a licence issuer and a licence number you can look up score highest.
The brands we cover span Curaçao Gaming Control Board licences (for example OGL/2024/589/0556 for the GBL Solutions N.V. sites), Kahnawake licences (22Casino and TonyBet), and an Anjouan licence (BC.Game). None of these is a Canadian provincial licence, and we never present them as one.
Gaps cost points. Kingmaker’s and Golisimo’s terms and footer don’t name the operating company or a gaming licence (checked October 2026), which is the main reason both sit near the bottom of our list despite decent game lobbies. We also reward terms that are readable and internally consistent — more on that in the section on conflicting pages.
Bonus Value and Fairness of Terms (20%)
We score bonuses on what you can realistically convert into withdrawable cash, not on the size of the headline. A C$5,000 package with heavy conditions can be worth less than a C$500 one with light ones.
Our main inputs are the wagering multiple and whether it applies to the bonus alone or to deposit plus bonus, the maximum bet while wagering, the activation window and validity period, any cap on winnings, and which games count. Kingmaker and Golisimo, for instance, share default rules of x35 on deposit plus bonus with a maximum cashout of 10 times the bonus.
Here’s why the base matters. A C$100 deposit with a C$100 bonus at x35 on deposit plus bonus means C$7,000 in bets. The same x35 on the bonus alone would be C$3,500 — half the play for the same headline. Our guide to wagering requirements walks through more examples.
We also do the headline maths. On Winshark’s page, the 240% figure comes from the Standard path (100% + 80% + 60%), while the C$3,945 maximum only works on the High-Roller path — so the two numbers can’t both be reached on the same route. That kind of finding goes into the review, and into the score.
Canadian Payments (20%)
Payments get a fifth of the score because a casino you can’t fund or cash out of in a familiar way is a poor casino for Canadians, however good its games are. We look for methods Canadians actually use: Interac, Instadebit, iDebit, cards, e-wallets and crypto.
Only methods confirmed on the cashier page, payments page or help centre count. When a page doesn’t load properly — Kingmaker’s payments page returned “No payments found” for Canada and CAD on our check — we don’t fill the gap with assumptions; we simply can’t award points for methods we couldn’t confirm.
We also check whether CAD is a real account currency or just a display option, what the minimum withdrawal is, and whether the terms mention fees. Crypto-first sites such as Vave, whose terms list crypto account currencies, are scored on how clearly they explain conversion — see our crypto casinos guide for that angle and our Interac casino comparison for the fiat side.
Games and Live Casino (15%)
Games carry 15% because almost every offshore casino now offers thousands of slots; breadth alone no longer separates good sites from average ones. What we score is the mix and how clearly it is presented.
We go through the lobby looking for distinct categories: slots, live dealer tables and game shows, RNG table games such as blackjack and roulette, and crash or in-house “originals”. Provably fair games count where the operator documents how verification works.
We trust the live lobby over marketing copy. On Rolling Slots, for example, homepage SEO text named large studios that didn’t appear among the providers in the lobby we captured, so the review describes the lobby we saw, not the paragraph.
Mobile Experience (10%)
Mobile is worth 10%: most Canadians play on phones, but the gap between a decent mobile site and a native app is smaller than it used to be. We record whether the operator offers an iOS or Android app, a web app, or a mobile-optimised site only.
Because we haven’t run device tests on real accounts, this score leans on what the operator documents — app pages, help-centre instructions and whether the full lobby and cashier are available on mobile. When we add hands-on device checks, they’ll carry a date like every other measured result.
Support and Responsible Gambling Tools (10%)
This last 10% rewards casinos that make it easy to get help and easy to stop. Deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion that you can set yourself score better than tools you have to request by email.
We check the support channels the site lists, how complete the help centre is, and which help organisations the responsible-gambling page points to. Golisimo’s page, for instance, lists international organisations but no Canadian resources — a small point, but one we note, since Canadian helplines are what a player here actually needs.
For VIP programmes, we read the level rules as part of this dimension and the bonus one, because loyalty schemes are where the pressure to keep playing is built in.
On that page, the promoted total of up to C$24,000 in rewards matters less than the conversion rate. At 1 point per C$25 wagered, every point represents a meaningful amount of play, and each level bonus then needs x45 wagering before it turns into cash.
How Scores Map to Our /100 Rating
The overall rating is the sum of each dimension score multiplied by its weight, rounded to the nearest whole number. Here is a worked example for an illustrative casino — not one of our listed brands:
- Licence & transparency 90 × 0.25 = 22.5
- Bonuses 80 × 0.20 = 16.0
- Canadian payments 85 × 0.20 = 17.0
- Games 92 × 0.15 = 13.8
- Mobile 85 × 0.10 = 8.5
- Support & RG 80 × 0.10 = 8.0 — total 85.8, published as 86/100
Notice how the weighting works: a 10-point drop in licence and transparency costs 2.5 points overall, while the same drop in mobile costs only 1. That’s deliberate.
| 🏅 Overall score | 📝 What it means | ✅ Listed in rankings? |
|---|---|---|
| 90–100 | Excellent: strong on licence, terms and payments, with few or no contradictions in its own pages | Yes |
| 85–89 | Very good: solid overall, with one or two clear weak spots we explain in the review | Yes |
| 80–84 | Good: worth considering for specific needs, but with gaps such as unnamed operator or unclear terms | Yes |
| 70–79 | Fair: notable problems in a heavily weighted dimension | Only with clear warnings |
| Below 70 | Weak: we don’t recommend it | No |
All 12 brands in our current rankings fall between 82 and 94, so every listed casino cleared the “Good” band — but the review still tells you exactly where each one lost points.
Why Our Scores Are Not an Average of Opinions
Each dimension score is anchored to checkable facts — a licence number, a wagering multiple, a list of cashier methods. Judgement still plays a part, but the reviewer has to be able to point to the line on the operator’s page that justifies it. If two editors disagree, the one with the source wins.
When a Casino’s Own Pages Contradict Each Other
When two of a casino’s pages disagree, the bonus terms or general T&Cs prevail, and we show both figures so you can see the discrepancy yourself. Terms are what the operator applies to your account; banners are advertising.
This happens more often than you’d expect. In our October 2026 round, conflicting figures turned up on most of the sites we read:
- 22Casino: a homepage banner promises “Instant Withdrawals”, while the terms say winnings are paid “within 30 (thirty) calendar days”. We report the 30-day clause as the binding limit.
- Need for Spin: the homepage advertises up to C$4,500 + 550 free spins, but the three welcome offers on the promotions page add up to C$4,100 + 500 free spins.
- Wild Tokyo: the FAQ calls deposits “100% free of charge”, while the T&Cs say the player pays basic bank fees and the casino may charge a processing fee. Verification is “within 24 hours” in the FAQ and up to 72 hours in the T&Cs.
- Vave: the VIP page credits 1 point per 30 USDT in casino bets, while the FAQ says 1 point per 20 USDT. We use the VIP programme’s own page.
TonyBet shows why this matters. Its landing page advertises up to C$2,500 + 250 free spins, the promotions selector shows a first-deposit offer of 100% up to $1,000 + 100 free spins, and the FAQ mentions a first-deposit bonus limited to CAD 120.
Here’s the order of precedence we apply:
- Offer-specific terms — the T&Cs of that particular bonus or programme.
- General bonus terms and T&Cs — the default rules when no specific terms exist.
- Programme pages and help-centre articles — VIP pages, cashier pages, FAQ.
- Banners, cards and SEO copy — useful for spotting what’s advertised, never the final word.
Contradictions also cost points in licence and transparency. A casino that advertises one figure and enforces another makes you do the detective work, and that’s a fairness issue even when the terms themselves are reasonable.
What We Do When a Fact Can’t Be Confirmed
If a page didn’t load, returned a generic fallback, or simply doesn’t state something, we leave the fact out rather than fill it in. On BC.Game, several help URLs returned the same crash-game fairness page, so we didn’t capture bonus terms and don’t quote a wagering figure for its welcome offer.
We also avoid carrying a number from one offer to another. Wild Tokyo states x50 on daily bonuses, but its welcome-pack wagering wasn’t stated on the pages we read, so we don’t assume x50 applies to it. Check the terms in your account before you opt in.
How We Check Legal Status by Province
Every review states who licenses the casino and makes clear that the 12 brands we rate are offshore, not regulated by a Canadian province. If a dispute arises, you deal with the operator and its licensing body, not your province.
Under the Criminal Code, gambling is legal when it is conducted and managed by a provincial government or under its licence. Ontario has run a regulated iGaming market since April 4, 2022, and Alberta’s regulated market launched on July 13, 2026. Players in Ontario and Alberta should use their province’s regulated sites; we don’t target Ontario players with offshore brands. See our Ontario online casinos guide for the regulated options there.
Other provinces offer government sites: PlayNow.com in British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, lotoquebec.com in Quebec, and the Atlantic Lottery Corporation in the Atlantic provinces. The legal age is 19+ in most provinces and 18+ in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec. Our province-by-province legal guide covers the detail.
We also read each casino’s restricted-territories clause. Where the terms exclude Ontario or Alberta, the review says so; where the sources say nothing about a province, we don’t claim either way.
How Often We Re-Check Our Ratings
We re-check the official pages of every rated casino once a month, and sooner when we spot an offer change or a reader reports an error. Each review shows the date of its last verification next to the offers it describes.
A monthly check repeats the full round: bonus terms, T&Cs, cashier pages, help centre, licence statements and the iGaming Ontario list, again from a Canadian IP. If a fact changes, the fact sheet is updated with the new quote and URL, the affected dimension is re-scored, and the overall rating is recalculated.
Ratings can move down as easily as up. A casino that drops Interac, removes its licence number from the footer or tightens its wagering will lose points in the next cycle, and the review will say what changed.
Affiliate Disclosure: How We Earn Money
This site is free to read because we may earn a commission when you sign up at a casino through our links. That’s how most casino comparison sites are funded, and you should know it before you trust any ranking, including ours.
Commissions never change a rating. The score is calculated from the six weighted dimensions first, and the ranking order follows the score. A casino can’t pay for a higher number, a better position or the removal of a criticism, and if a commercial deal ever conflicted with a published score, the score would stand.
You’ll notice that our reviews openly list contradictions in operators’ terms and gaps such as unnamed licence holders. Those findings stay in the review whether or not we have a commercial relationship with the brand.
Corrections Policy
If you find an error — a changed bonus, a wrong limit, an outdated licence number — contact us and we’ll check it against the operator’s official page. Please include the page where you saw the correct information, if you can.
- We verify the reported fact on the casino’s own pages from a Canadian IP.
- We update the fact sheet, the review text and, if needed, the affected dimension score.
- We date the change, so the review shows when the information was last verified.
Operators can report errors too, through the same route and under the same rule: the correction has to be backed by their published terms, not by a marketing claim.
Who Writes and Reviews Our Ratings
Every review has two people behind it: Grant Halloway writes it and Colleen Marsden reviews it before it goes live. The writer builds the fact sheet and the first scores; the reviewer checks each fact against its source URL and challenges any score that can’t be traced to one.
The reviewer’s job is deliberately adversarial. If a claim reads like testing we didn’t do, or a figure lacks a quote behind it, it’s cut. The same two-step process applies to monthly re-checks and to reader corrections.
Pro Tip:
Gambling should stay entertainment. Set a deposit limit before you claim any bonus, and if it stops being fun, call your provincial helpline — the full list is on gamblingguidelines.ca — or read our responsible gambling guide.
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