How we rate operators and games
Our ranking method in full, so you can check our work and disagree with it.
On this page
One list, and the licence on every row 📜
Every operator we cover sits in the same ranking, and each row carries the licence that operator actually holds, with its number where the operator publishes one. We used to split the page in two, licensed above and offshore below. The split told you less than the licence line does: a Western Cape bookmaker licence, a Northern Cape one and an Anjouan one are three different things, and putting the last two in the same box hid that.
What has not changed is the statement underneath. Online casino play is not licensed under the National Gambling Act; sports betting, and the casino-style games that licensed bookmakers carry, are licensed province by province. An operator licensed in Curacao or on Anjouan is not licensed here, its page says so in those words, and no row on this site will ever show a South African regulator for a brand that does not hold one. That rule is enforced in code, not by memory.
Where a row shows no licence at all, it means we did not find one stated on the operator's own site. We would rather leave it empty than guess at a regulatory record.
What the score in the pill actually is 📐
Every operator and every game on this site carries a score out of five. It is not a review score and it is not our own play: it is computed from facts we have verified, by the formula set out below. You can recalculate it yourself and tell us we are wrong.
We publish it as a number because a number is what people scan a list with. We publish the formula with it because a number without a method is just an opinion wearing a uniform.
The one thing it cannot tell you is what an operator is like to actually use. That needs our own deposits and withdrawals, which we have not done yet. When we have, the score becomes a tested one, the page says so in different words, and only then does the gold highlight appear on the first row.
Why every score here starts with a four 📐
You will not find a 2.1 on this site, and that is deliberate rather than generous. We are not scoring the whole South African market. We are scoring the 28 brands we chose to cover, and a brand that does not clear the bar for being covered does not get a low score - it does not get a page. Punt is the worked example: its .com stopped resolving and its .co.za states no licence at all, so it is unpublished rather than sitting at the bottom of the list.
So the published scale runs from 4.0 to 5.0, and 4.0 means the bottom of an already filtered set, not a warning. Underneath it there is a plain facts score from 1.0 to 5.0, built by the two formulas below, and the published number is that score put on the shorter scale: published = 4.0 + (facts score - 1) divided by 4. Nothing else touches it. There is no per-brand adjustment, no rounding in anyone's favour, and no commission anywhere in the arithmetic.
If our editors ever set a score by hand instead, the page that shows it says so next to the number and gives what this formula produces, so the difference is there for you to see.
Because the range is narrow, the number alone cannot carry the whole difference between brands - so the colour of the pill does. Green is a South African provincial licence with a number we could check plus most of the rest confirmed. Teal is the same licence with something missing. Amber means the licence is foreign, or the number is not published, and a complaint has a long way to travel. Read the colour first and the digits second.
If you would rather see the raw 1-to-5 figure, work it backwards: facts score = (published - 4) times 4, plus 1. A 4.5 in the pill is a 3.0 on facts.
How an operator score is built 📐
This is the facts score, on the plain 1-to-5 scale, before it is put on the published 4-to-5 one. It starts from the licence, which is worth more than everything else combined, then adds what else we have confirmed.
- The licence: 1.0 to 3.5. A South African provincial licence with a number we can check scores 3.5; the same licence without a published number, 3.0. A foreign licence with a number scores 2.5, and without one 2.0. A brand that states no licence at all scores 1.0. This ordering is not snobbery about jurisdictions: it is how far a complaint can travel, and whether the claim can be checked at all.
- Payment methods: up to 0.5. Four or more local methods confirmed on the operator's own site adds 0.5; one to three adds 0.25.
- A confirmed app: 0.25. Only where we have found the app ourselves. No entry means not checked, not absent.
- Documented minimum deposit and bonus: 0.25 each. Terms that are findable before you deposit are worth something in themselves.
- A withdrawal we tested: 0.5. Nobody has this yet. It is here so you can see what is missing from every score on the site today.
- When two scores are equal. The operator where we have found more of the games covered on this site goes first, and only then the name. Before that rule, a tie went to whichever brand came first in the alphabet.
How a game score is built 📐
Again the facts score first, on the 1-to-5 scale. Anchored on RTP, because it is the only number that says directly what the game costs you to play.
- RTP: 1.0 to 3.5. 94% scores 2.0, 98% scores 3.5, and the values between scale linearly; for several figures, their average. A game whose RTP the operator configures, where the studio publishes several RTP versions or says the casino sets the figure, loses 0.25, because you cannot know what you are playing until you open the game's own information screen. A range the studio ties to your own choices, or gives without saying the casino sets it, costs nothing. A game with no RTP at all - Lucky Numbers is a bet on a real draw, not a game with a return - takes a neutral 2.5 rather than a penalty.
- How many licensed operators carry it: up to 0.75. Five or more adds 0.75, two to four adds 0.5, one adds 0.25. A game you can only play in one lobby ties you to one operator's terms.
- Provider licence, max win and volatility: 0.25 each. Not because disclosure makes a game generous, but because a game whose numbers are published can be compared with the next one.
Why there is only one score on this page 📐
Every number you see here is ours, computed by the formula above. We do not republish other review sites' scores alongside it.
We did read them while researching, and what we found is the reason we compute our own. Those scores come from sites that earn commission from the operators they are scoring, and it shows: the same brand gets 4.0 from one and 4.8 from another, and offshore casinos sit at the top of those lists more often than the licensed South African bookmakers do. A number produced that way is not on the same scale as one produced from a published formula, and printing the two side by side would invite a comparison that favours whoever paid for the review.
So the pill carries one number, the formula for it is on this page, and you can recalculate it from the facts listed on each operator's own page. If you think our score is wrong, the method is right here to argue with.
What does not count
Commission rates do not affect position. Neither does the size of a welcome bonus on its own: a large bonus with wagering terms you cannot clear is worth less than a small one you can.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and note the date of the change on the page. Operators change bonuses and payment methods without notice, so pages carry the date they were last checked.