How we rank Australian casino sites

Online casino games are not licensed in Australia. Under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 it is the operator, not the player, that breaks the law by offering them here, and every brand on this site is therefore offshore. That single fact decides what can honestly be checked from Australia and what cannot: there is no Australian regulator to ring about an offshore casino, no local licence register to read, and no ombudsman behind a disputed balance. So we publish the things that are on the record and can be read back by anyone, and we leave the rest empty.

The 10 points we publish for every brand

These 10 points are not a shortlist we liked the look of. They are the fields our review template prints, kept only where the source data fills them for at least four brands in five. Fields that are thinner than that — wagering multiples, minimum deposits, bonus codes, the corporate owner — are shown on a brand page when we have them, but they are not part of the comparison, because a point missing for a fifth of the pool compares nothing.

1. Year the brand went onlineThe first year the casino took players, not the year somebody bought the domain. Where the operator states no year, we take the oldest date we can read: a review portal that dates its own first listing, or the WHOIS record.
2. Where that year is publishedThe page or record the year came from, named on the review itself. A year with nothing behind it is not a fact, and we leave the point empty rather than round it.
3. The welcome offer in the operator's own wordsWe copy the headline as the operator words it and do not restate it in rounder numbers. If the wording changes, the review changes with it.
4. The page we read the offer onEvery offer points at the operator page it was read from, so the claim can be checked against the operator rather than against us.
5. Currency the offer is stated inAn offer headlined in AUD and an offer headlined in euro are not the same offer for an Australian, so the currency is a point of its own.
6. Free spins attached to the welcome offerCounted as the operator states them. Where the offer carries none, the point reads none — it is not left blank to make the offer look bigger.
7. Account currency an Australian actually getsSeparate from the currency of the offer: a headline in AUD does not mean the account is held in AUD. Where we could not confirm the account currency, the point says so instead of guessing.
8. Whether the same brand also takes sports betsA brand that runs a sportsbook is subject to a different part of Australian law than a pure casino, and its promotions read differently.
9. How many of the portals we track list the brandA count, not a score: how many of the casino portals we watch carry the brand at all. Zero is a legitimate answer and is printed as zero.
10. How the brand admits Australian playersWhether Australians can open an account, and on what footing. Online casino games are not licensed in Australia, so every brand here is offshore.

How the order is decided

Where a page lists several casinos, the list is ordered before it is published, and the order is the same every time the page is built. First position goes to the strongest welcome package among the brands that fit the subject of the page; second to an alternative from a different affiliate network, so the top of the list is not one company twice; third to the brand with the longest record in this market. Below that come the brands carried by the most casino portals we track, and then the long-running names.

Two things follow from that. The order changes between pages, because the subject changes — a page about voucher deposits ranks brands that take vouchers. And no operator can buy a position: the inputs are the published points above, not the size of a deal.

What we do not do

• We do not open accounts, deposit or request payouts. Nobody here has played through a welcome offer on your behalf, and a site that tells you it has done so at forty casinos is telling you a story. Everything we publish about an offer is read from the operator’s own page and points back at it.
• We do not score casinos out of ten. A number out of ten hides the reason behind it. The points above are the reason, printed in full.
• We do not publish player reviews or star ratings. We have no way to tell a real complaint from a competitor’s, so we collect neither.
• We do not claim years in business or a team of experts. Where a date matters it is the brand’s date, with the record it came from.
• We do not contact operators for comment, and nothing on this site should be read as an operator’s statement to us.
• We do not invent numbers. If a figure, a date or a licence detail has no source we can name, the field stays empty rather than plausible.

How this site is paid for

Every casino listed on this site is an advertising partner, and links to operators are affiliate links: if you open an account through one, the operator may pay us. That is said on the pages that carry listings, and it is why the points above are published rather than summarised — a reader who can see the inputs does not have to take the order on trust.

What the money does not buy is a position, a missing point or a softer sentence. The guides in our guides section carry no listings at all, because the subjects there — declined payments, dormant balances, chargebacks, self-exclusion — are the ones where an ad would read as advice.

When a page goes out of date

Welcome offers change without notice and brands close to Australians without notice either. Every page here carries the date it was last updated, and the offer on a casino’s own page always beats the offer on ours. Read the terms on the operator’s site before you deposit — particularly the wagering requirement, the maximum bet while a bonus is live and the expiry, which are the three clauses that void most bonuses.