Betting sites not on GAMSTOP — what the licence actually requires

Updated October 2026

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A reader typing “betting sites not on GAMSTOP” usually wants one of two answers: the name of an operator that does not check the register, or a clean explanation of why no Great Britain-licensed online bookmaker can do that. The second answer is the page; the first is a misunderstanding the page is written to clear up. The national self-exclusion scheme sits inside the licence, every Gambling Commission remote licence requires it, and the operator that opts out of it by definition does not hold a Commission licence. What the reader is actually asking about, on closer reading, is what a non-licensed site looks like, what it lacks in protection, and what a licensed alternative does instead. Those are the three questions this article answers, in that order, and at the end of the page sits the shortlist of ten licensed remote bookmakers the reader can verify against the Commission’s public register without leaving their chair.

A reader who has already chosen to exclude themselves from gambling should keep that decision and not look for ways around it. The whole purpose of GAMSTOP is to be hard to reverse on a bad afternoon, and the mechanics below are written so an excluded reader sees what each option costs — a licensed site that will not let them in, an unlicensed site that will let them in and which carries consequences the licence was designed to prevent. The page does not recommend one path over the other; it sets both out so the reader can decide for themselves.

*Current as of 27 October 2026 · check based on the UK Gambling Commission’s public register and the GAMSTOP terms of use.*

The statute behind a Great Britain betting licence

Why no licensed operator sits outside GAMSTOP

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme that has been a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. It is run by The National Online Self Exclusion Scheme Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 10504973 and based in Harrogate. The service is free to the user, blocks access to existing accounts and prevents new accounts with any online gambling company licensed in Great Britain, and operators check the register every time a person logs in or tries to sign up. A bookmaker licensed by the Commission cannot lawfully offer remote betting to a self-excluded player, and the Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice treat that as a non-negotiable social responsibility duty rather than an optional add-on. So the answer to “which betting sites are not on GAMSTOP” inside the licensed market is, by construction, none.

The legal frame sits one level deeper than the licence. The Gambling Act 2005 is the statute the Commission administers; the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 amended it so that any operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence regardless of where that operator is based. Sections 33 and 36 of the 2005 Act carry the offence and the penalty for the operator who supplies facilities without the required licence; the statute is silent on a criminal charge against the player who simply bets there. That silence is not the same as permission — it is just one part of the picture, and the second part is the absence of every protection the licence sets up.

What Section 33 actually changes for the player

The clearest way to see what an unlicensed site costs is to read the statute backwards from the licensed protections it removes. Section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 makes it an offence for an operator to provide gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires; on summary conviction the penalty is up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment, a fine up to level 5, or both (six months in Scotland). That is aimed at the operator, not at the user, but it frames the unlicensed site as a business the regulator has not approved and the regulator’s enforcement powers have been aimed at. The Commission’s tools are not blockades: they are cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with domain registrars and payment providers, and a court-order DNS blocking power that has been granted or is about to be granted. None of that closes the unlicensed site the way the National Lottery cannot, but each one raises the cost of staying open.

The honest frame is that licensed and unlicensed are two genuinely different products, not two flavours of the same thing. The licensed site carries identity verification before the first deposit, a £150-rolling-30-days financial vulnerability check, the GAMSTOP register, the 10x bonus wagering cap, a Commission complaints route and an approved dispute-resolution body, plus a British consumer redress route if funds are withheld. The unlicensed site carries none of those, the operator can disappear with the balance, and the player has nowhere to file a complaint the British regulator will read. That asymmetry is the point of the statute, and it is also the point of this article.

The licence categories the public register lists

The Commission’s public register is the single test of whether a brand holds a British licence, and it lists the licence under categories that reflect what the operator is licensed to do. The five that matter for sports betting are: remote general betting standard (real events), remote general betting standard (virtual events), remote general betting limited, remote pool betting, and remote betting intermediary, which is the licence a betting exchange runs on. The register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or Commission account number, and any of the licensed brands in the comparison below can be checked against it directly. The register lists far more operators than this page can feature, no single brand is “the only” licensed one, and the limits of the register are the limits of this article: a brand that does not appear on it is not a licensed online bookmaker, and a brand that does appear is bound by every condition in this paragraph.

Responsible gambling in the licensed frame

What GAMSTOP actually does for a self-excluded player

GAMSTOP’s terms of use describe the service as a free online self-exclusion service that blocks access to accounts on gambling websites and apps licensed in Great Britain. A new registrant chooses a minimum exclusion period of six months, one year or five years; the six-month period is the shortest available, and a five-year term can be set to renew automatically at the end of each five-year block. That auto-renewal is the safeguard against the impulsive opt-out: a five-year minimum period begins automatically at the end of each previous five-year term unless the registrant turns it off. Half a million people in the UK have used GAMSTOP, betting shops use a separate service called GAMSTOP Betting Shops, and the terms state that no price is required to be paid for it.

The cooling-off is the part readers miss. To deactivate a GAMSTOP exclusion after the minimum period, the registrant has to contact the GAMSTOP Contact Centre and ask; a 24-hour cooling-off period applies to that request. During those twenty-four hours the exclusion stays in place, and the request can still be cancelled by contacting the Contact Centre again. The point is to defuse the bad-afternoon reversal: a person who wakes up regretting the decision has a day to undo the undoing. After the exclusion is removed, operators continue to be informed for seven years that the person was previously self-excluded, but they are not required to refuse access during that time. A licensed operator may still apply its own product restrictions, deposit limits or affordability checks to that customer — the seven-year flag is a flag, not a guarantee.

The licensed bookmaker’s safer-gambling toolkit

The Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice require every Commission licensee to carry a defined set of safer-gambling tools, and the public-facing pages of the licensed brands in the shortlist show what that looks like in practice. Unibet’s safer-gambling tools list includes deposit limits, a Player Profile test, product restrictions and self-exclusion, with live-chat support and links to BeGambleAware, GamCare, GAMSTOP, Gambling Therapy and the Betting and Gaming Council. That toolkit is the floor for every brand below; what each operator does beyond the floor is its own product decision. The categories the Commission mandates, in their published form, are: deposit limits on a fixed time frame, product restrictions, self-exclusion, time-outs, reality checks, and access to support organisations by direct link or telephone. The licensed brand’s own help page is the place to confirm which of those are configured for an individual account.

The cash-level checks sit on top of the toolkit. Since 30 August 2024 a financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4) applies whenever a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30-day period, and that check has run in that form since 28 February 2025. It is a public-record check — bankruptcies, county court judgments — not an income check and not a credit-reference check. A further financial risk assessment regime (the “affordability checks” of press coverage) has been announced in a staged plan, with no start date; the correct phrasing is “announced, staged, no start date”, not “in force”. Operators set their own maximum stakes and may restrict customers at their discretion; no statutory cap on sports-betting stakes was found.

Where to get help if the page brought a reader here under duress

Help outside the operator exists and is independent of it. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline, GambleAware funds research and treatment, the NHS runs gambling clinics across the regions, and Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. A reader who has set a GAMSTOP exclusion should keep it; a reader who has not and who is reading this page because they want to bet without one has a different conversation to have, and the organisations above are the people to have it with. The licensed bookmaker’s safer-gambling page is a route to those organisations, not a substitute for them.

The shortlist and what each licence gives the reader

How ten licensed brands compare on the headline matters

The comparison below is built around four matters the reader can check against the Commission’s public register: the brand, the Gambling Commission account number and licence holder, and what the operator’s own terms state on the key’s subject. These brands are licensed and participate in GAMSTOP; the table does not list a non-licensed brand because this article does not recommend one. Each entry below the table covers the brand’s offer, its markets, and what it actually costs the reader in plain terms, with the operator’s own published specifications underneath every figure.

A reader who wants to verify any of those licence numbers can search the Commission’s public register by the business name, trading name or the licence-holder name in the second column. Where an account number is given (e.g. 57730 for Kalooki Sports Book Ltd in the surrounding material) it can be searched directly on the register. The domain in the address bar does not prove anything either way: licensed operators may use .com or .co.uk, and the licence-holder name is the part that matters.

Reading the welcome offer as it actually pays out

The licensed brands above advertise their welcome offers in headline numbers — “Bet £10, Get £10”, “50% back”, “Free bets credited” — and the small print does the rest. Bet600’s offer is a worked example: at least five qualifying single bets of £10 or more at Evens (2.0) or greater, inside the first seven days after registration, credits one £10 free bet. The qualifier is the operative term: a £10 free bet is the prize, but the entry ticket is fifty pounds of qualifying turnover at minimum price 2.0 in a week. Dabble’s £10-in-free-bets offer reads as the same number twice but is one welcome offer of £10 in free-bet value with a 7-day expiry and the stake not returned on a win; the timing and the stake rule change what the offer is worth. BetTom splits the headline: 50% back up to £50 as a sports free bet and 50% back up to £50 as free slot funds for casino, with a sports path and a casino path rather than a single product. The Commission’s published promotion rules, in force since 19 January 2026, cap any wagering requirement on a bonus at 10x the bonus; £10 of bonus at 50x wagering needs £500 of bets, which is now outside the rule. Mixed-product promotions — “bet on football to get free spins”, for example — are banned under the same rule.

The numbers most readers skip are the ones that change the offer’s value. A free bet is not a cash bonus: its stake is usually not paid back with a win, so the headline credit is a credit on the win only, not on the stake-plus-win return. The minimum odds on a qualifying or settling bet, the expiry window, the cap on free-bet winnings, the rollover requirement and the eligible-market list are where the offer’s true cost lives. A reader who reads only the headline will misread the value; a reader who reads the small print will, with the same headline, see what the offer is actually worth.

A starter calculation for one bettor, one budget, one market

The calculation below illustrates what the bookmaker’s margin actually costs on a standard budget. The scenario is a turnover of £500 staked once on a two-way market at illustrative decimal odds of 1.90 and 1.90 (fractional 9/10) — an example rather than a quoted price; Great Britain has no state-set deposit or loss ceiling, so the £500 is an illustrative monthly budget chosen by the reader, not a number pulled from the statute. A market with two outcomes priced at 1.90 and 1.90 has a payout share of 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90) = 1 ÷ (0.5263 + 0.5263) = 0.9515, or about 95.2%. The bookmaker’s margin is 1 − 0.9515 = 0.0485, or about 4.85%. On £500 of turnover the expected cost sits at £500 × 4.85%, or roughly £24.

The honest gloss on that band is that it is an average across many bets at the stated prices, not a guarantee for any single bet. A winning bet at 1.90 returns £500 × 1.90 = £950, of which £450 is profit and £500 is the stake returned; a losing bet loses the £500 stake. Across many bets at the same pair of prices, the reader would, on average, lose £24 per £500 staked. The same £500 staked on a three-way market at 1.90 / 3.40 / 4.00 carries a smaller payout share and a heavier margin; a higher-odds market such as an each-way accumulator carries a still heavier one. The expected-loss calculation is the same shape each time: the turnover times the market’s margin, with the margin read from the prices the operator is actually publishing on the bet the reader is about to place.

The fundamentals a British bettor should know before opening an account

The verify-before-you-bet rule

The Commission’s identity rules sit between the reader and the first deposit. Since 7 May 2019 every licensed remote operator has had to verify the customer’s name, address and date of birth before a customer can deposit or gamble, including with a free bet or bonus; the rule does not stop at the first cash deposit. The point is that no anonymous play is possible on a British site, and the trade-off is the same as the rest of the licensed frame: verification is what gives the reader the Commission’s complaints route and the approved dispute-resolution body. A reader who sets up an account on an unlicensed site gives up that route before the first bet is placed.

The financial vulnerability check on top of identity has its own threshold. When a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30-day period, a public-record check runs; the threshold is not an income check and not a credit check, and the reader who bets small will not see it. The financial risk assessment regime that has been in the press has been announced in a staged plan, with no start date; describe it as “announced, staged, no start date”, not “in force”. The full picture of the player’s protection on a licensed site is verification, the £150 trigger, GAMSTOP, deposit limits the customer can set, and the 10x bonus wagering cap; outside the licence, none of those apply.

The payments frame: what can actually go through

The Commission-licensed British bookmaker takes debit cards and bank-based payments; credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020 (LCCP condition 6.1.2), including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet. The ban is one-way: a credit card cannot fund a gambling transaction even indirectly, but a debit card can. William Hill’s published terms read as a worked example: deposits and withdrawals from £5 by debit card, no debit card fee, maximum deposit £99,000 and maximum withdrawal £33,000 per transaction. The licensed brands in the shortlist do not publish a uniform payment-method list because the holder, not the Commission, sets the limits. A state list of permitted payment methods at licensed operators is not established, and the rules on cryptocurrency deposits at British-licensed bookmakers are not established either; describe payments from each operator’s own terms rather than from a statute.

The named-account rule sits underneath the payment frame. The licensed bookmaker has to know the customer is who they say they are before money moves either way, and the money-laundering rules put source-of-funds questions on the table at higher spend. A reader who plans to deposit heavily should expect those questions and have the documents ready; a reader who plans to deposit modestly will usually pass through uneventfully. The unlicensed site has no such rule and so no such friction; the friction is the cost of the licensed protections the unlicensed site does not have.

The marketing and bonus rule as the reader actually meets it

The Commission’s marketing rules run alongside the ASA’s CAP Code (non-broadcast) and BCAP Code (broadcast), and the LCCP marketing conditions are what bind the licensed bookmaker. CAP Code section 16 is the rule most readers feel: marketing for gambling must be socially responsible, must not be of strong appeal to under-18s, and no one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling or play a significant role (with an exception for marketing placed where a bet can be made directly). That rule concerns who may appear in the advertisement, not who may bet — the minimum age to bet is 18. The promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 are the next line down: any wagering requirement on a bonus is capped at 10x, and mixed-product promotions that ask the customer to gamble across product types are banned. The bonus cap is the rule most relevant to the offers in this article; whether the cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition, and any cap on the bonus money value itself, are not established.

The “whistle-to-whistle” rule is industry code rather than law. Since 1 August 2019 betting advertisements have not been shown on TV from five minutes before a live sporting event to five minutes after it, before the 9pm watershed; horse and greyhound racing are excluded. The Premier League clubs’ withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts from the 2026/27 season is voluntary and not law; sleeves and hoardings stay. Those are the codes and agreements that shape how an offer reaches the reader, and a reader who has seen a “risk-free” or “100%” or “free bet” headline should read the terms page of the licensed operator before clicking through. A promo code is never printed on this page because the licensed bookmaker’s own terms page is where the reader checks what is on offer today, not because the offers do not exist.

Tax: what the bettor pays, what the operator pays

The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain (general information, not tax advice; a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser). General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on its gross profits from general betting, currently 15% — and the licensed book’s gross-profit margin is small (the average margin shown above is well below 15%), so the duty is paid out of a thin base. From 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within General Betting Duty, with bets on UK horse racing, self-service betting terminal bets in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting remaining at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate is 15%; whether operators pass duty on through tighter odds is not established, so the page never writes that the player is charged duty. Spread betting has its own rates (3% financial, 10% other) and Financial Conduct Authority regulation alongside the Commission’s, and that is the one niche where two regulators meet on the same product. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge on the operator and is not a tax on the player.

The offshore alternative, seen honestly

An offshore site carries the same product but a different frame. The site’s home jurisdiction sets the house rules and the licence, the player is not protected by the British statute, and there is no Commission complaints route. A player who chooses an offshore site gives up the GAMSTOP block, the Commission complaints route, the approved dispute resolution body, any British consumer redress if funds are withheld, the £150 financial vulnerability check, the 10x bonus cap, and the bonus-mix ban that has been in force since 19 January 2026. What the player gets in return is access without the identity check, the verification friction, and the GAMSTOP exclusion — exactly the things the British statute was written to require, and exactly the things an excluded player is most likely to want to bypass. The page does not endorse one path; it states what each path costs. A reader who has self-excluded has made the safer choice already and the rest of the page is not for them.

The ten licensed brands in detail

Bet365

Bet365’s published position lists it as the official global betting partner of the UEFA Champions League, and its app is described as the most downloaded sports betting app in the UK. The Gambling Commission remote licence for bet365 is 055148-R-331498-002, with the licence holder Hillside (UK Sports) ENC on the register; the site is bet365. The published product is the full bookmaker catalogue — pre-match and in-play football, racing, tennis, American sports, an extensive in-play offering — and the registered customer sees the same kind of safer-gambling toolkit every Commission licensee is required to surface. Its advantage on the shortlist is volume and a settled betting infrastructure; its disadvantage for some readers is that the welcome offer has been more conservative than some of the newer brands in the list. A reader who wants the largest catalogue and a familiar interface gets that here; a reader chasing the biggest promotion headline gets a thinner deal.

Betfair

Betfair Sportsbook runs as a traditional bookmaker alongside the Betfair exchange; the remote licence on the Commission’s register is 039439-R-319330-013, with PPB Counterparty Services Limited as the licence holder and site Betfair. The published product includes in-play betting, a Bet Builder function, free live streaming of UK and Irish horse racing and football within the app, and a 90 Minute Payout market. The 90-minute payout is a settled product feature rather than an in-play edge — the bet is paid out at full-time score on a small set of markets — and the free live streaming is the more durable draw for a bettor who watches the events they bet on. The exchange underneath carries its own logic: back and lay prices set by customers, with the Commission registering the operator as a betting intermediary. A reader who wants both a bookmaker and an exchange under one roof gets that here; a reader who only wants one should pick the side they want.

Ladbrokes

The Ladbrokes app is the sports betting app published by Entain Operations Limited and is rated 4.66 from 101,255 ratings in the GB App Store. The remote licence is 054743-R-330863-014, with LC International Limited as the licence holder on the register and site Ladbrokes. Ladbrokes sits inside the Entain group alongside Coral, and the two brands run under the same licence holder on the Commission’s register; a reader comparing the two is, on a strict reading, comparing two products of one operator. The published catalogue is broad — high-street heritage, racing and football depth, in-play football, sports-betting promotions — and Entain’s loyalty scheme runs across both brands. A reader who likes a high-street bookmaker look and a deep racing book gets that here; the trade-off is that the product is broader than it is differentiated, and a reader looking for the thinnest house margin will still find it on Betfair or bet365.

William Hill

William Hill’s published deposits and withdrawals terms set the debit-card floor at £5 per transaction, with a maximum deposit of £99,000 and a maximum withdrawal of £33,000 per transaction and no debit card fee. The remote licence is 039225-R-319373-015, with WHG (International) Limited as licence holder and site William Hill. The published catalogue covers the standard bookmaker product — racing, football, in-play, bet builder — and the published payments terms are unusually explicit for the licensed set, which makes William Hill the easy reference point for a reader who wants the numbers on the deposit and withdrawal side. A reader whose priority is the payment side rather than the offer side gets a clearer answer here than at most of the other licensed brands; the trade-off is that William Hill’s welcome offer tends to read modest against the heavier promotional brands.

BetMGM

The BetMGM UK app is published by LeoVegas Gaming p.l.c. and lists Gambling Commission account number 39198 on the App Store listing. The remote licence on the Commission’s register is 039198-R-319450-029, with LeoVegas Gaming PLC as licence holder and site betmgm.co.uk. The product is a sportsbook and casino on a single app, which is the model for several of the newer entrants on the licensed list. A reader who wants both sports and casino on one wallet and one app gets that here; the trade-off is that the casino product is what the operator is best known for, and the reader whose interest is betting rather than gaming may find the catalogue slightly thinner on the sports side. The promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 ban mixed-product promotions, which is the Commission’s response to that kind of multi-product bundle.

Unibet

Unibet states it has operated since 1999, and its UK site is run by Platinum Gaming Limited, Gibraltar, under Gambling Commission account 45322. Unibet’s published safer-gambling tools include deposit limits, a Player Profile test, product restrictions and self-exclusion, with live chat support and links to BeGambleAware, GamCare, GAMSTOP, Gambling Therapy and the BGC. That list of partnerships is the most public-facing safer-gambling spread on the shortlist, and it is a fair guide to the floor a reader should expect from a Commission licensee. The catalogue is broad — sport, in-play, a bet builder — and the published product skews European, which is a fit for the reader whose markets sit across multiple football leagues and tennis tours. A reader whose priority is the safer-gambling floor gets an unusually explicit answer here; the trade-off is the operator’s European-anchored product, which is broader on continental football than on US sports.

Dabble

Dabble’s welcome offer is published as “Bet £10, Get £10 in Free Bets” on a first deposit for new customers, with minimum odds applying, a 7-day free-bet expiry and the stake not returned. The remote licence is 065677-R-340363-005, with Dabble Sports UK Ltd as licence holder and site dabble.co.uk. The product is a sportsbook with a social-betting overlay (customer chat inside the betting slip is part of the brand’s published feature set); a reader who likes the social feature gets that here. The trade-off is that a free-bet stake not returned on a win is a different product from a cash bonus: the £10 is a credit on the win, not the stake-plus-win return, and the 7-day expiry is a shorter window than several other licences on the shortlist publish. A reader who is happy with that trade-off gets the headline; a reader who is not will read past it.

Bet600

Bet600’s app welcome offer requires at least 5 qualifying single bets of £10 or more at Evens (2.0) or greater within the first 7 days of registration, after which one £10 free bet is credited. The remote licence is 044731-R-323941-016, with Tyche Tech Limited as the licence holder and site bet600.co.uk. The qualifier is the published shape: a £10 free bet is the prize, but the entry ticket is fifty pounds of qualifying turnover at minimum price 2.0 in a week. A reader who bets that volume anyway treats the offer as a credit on what they would have staked; a reader who bets less than the qualifying bar gets the offer but pays turnover for it. The Commission’s 10x bonus wagering cap does not change that — the qualifier here is on the free bet’s settlement, not a deposit-multiplied rollover — but a reader who intends to make five small bets at minimum price and pocket a free bet is reading the offer accurately. A reader who reads only the headline is not.

DragonBet

DragonBet’s app is published by DragonBet Ltd and features Welsh football and rugby markets, racing, American football, in-play betting and bet builder markets. The remote licence is 064908-R-339041-003, with DragonBet Ltd as licence holder and site dragonbet.co.uk. The product’s distinctive edge is the Welsh football and rugby coverage — a regional sports product running under a national licence — alongside the broader racing and American football catalogue. A reader in or near the Welsh market gets a product that several larger licensed brands do not match on regional depth; a reader outside that market gets a thinner house catalogue. The trade-off is straightforward: regional depth here, broader depth elsewhere.

BetTom

BetTom’s sports welcome offer is published as 50% back as a free bet of up to £50, with a matching 50% back up to £50 as free slot funds for casino play, with full terms applying. The remote licence is 064959-R-339314-003, with Bet Tom Limited as the licence holder and site BetTom. The offer splits the headline into a sports path and a casino path, and the Commission’s promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 ban mixed-product promotions — which is the rule that changes the operator’s published shape, since the same headline under the old rules would have meant a single bundle. A reader who reads the offer as a single bundle is reading the headline; a reader who reads the offer as two paths sees what is actually on offer. The product is a standard sportsbook, and the licensed catalogue is what most of the licensed set offers.

Other licensed brands worth knowing about

The licensed shortlist above is this page’s ten; the Commission’s public register lists far more. Kalooki Sportsbook is operated by Kalooki Sports Book Ltd (company number 12938274), licensed by the Gambling Commission under account number 57730, and is a GAMSTOP member. Midnite’s site cites Gambling Commission licence 101839 and shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits. Spreadex is regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting, and states that spread-betting losses can exceed the deposit. Kwiff is licensed by the UK Gambling Commission and describes itself as a trademark operated by Spryme Ltd; the app has a 17+ App Store age rating. Each brand sits inside the same licensed frame as the ten above; each is GAMSTOP-covered; each is verified by the public register. None of them is “the only” licensed brand, and the table above is this article’s top ten by the matters it has chosen, not a full ranking of the British licensed set.

Reading the licence itself

What the Commission’s public register actually shows

A reader who wants to verify any brand above opens the Commission’s public register and searches by business name, trading name, domain or Commission account number. The register’s “Licence status” panel is published as: licensed, suspended, revoked, surrendered, or lapsed; only “licensed” means a brand is currently authorised to take remote bets in Great Britain. The register also lists the licence categories — remote general betting standard (real events), remote pool betting, remote betting intermediary and so on — and the licence conditions and codes of practice bind the operator under each category. The register does not list the welcome offer, the markets, the margin or the deposit limit; those are on the operator’s own terms page, and the offer the operator advertises changes. The licence is a binary; the offer is a moving product.

A licence number on the operator’s own site is not proof; the proof is the register entry. Some licensed operators use a house trading name (e.g. Entain Operations Limited for Ladbrokes and Coral) and the register carries the licence-holder name rather than the trading name. Search by trading name and the register returns the licence-holder entry; search by domain and the result is the same. The Commission publishes an access date next to every register entry; that date is the date the register was queried for the entry in question, not the date the licence was issued. A reader who quotes a count of licensed operators without an access date is quoting a number that has aged.

The choose-and-check routine

A reader who wants to bet with a brand they have not used before should run a four-step check before the first deposit. The first step is the Commission register — search the trading name, the licence-holder name or the domain, confirm status is “licensed” and confirm the licence category covers what the reader wants to bet on. The second step is GAMSTOP — register if the reader wants the national exclusion, check the offer of safer-gambling tools on the operator’s own help page. The third step is the offer page — read the welcome offer’s small print (qualifying bets, minimum odds, free-bet expiry, stake rule on a free bet win), read the bonus terms (wagering cap, eligible markets, mixed-product rules), and check the deposit and withdrawal terms against the reader’s bank. The fourth step is the product — confirm the markets the reader wants to bet on are listed, confirm the in-play offering if the reader bets in play, and confirm the bet-builder offering if the reader uses one. The first three steps take ten minutes; the fourth step is a day-by-day product decision. The whole routine is what the licensed frame asks the reader to do — and what the unlicensed frame specifically does not.

Closing notes on what this page is and is not

The page is a guide to the British licensed frame for online sports betting, written from the angle of what each path costs the reader. It does not list a non-licensed brand because no name on this page should read as a recommendation to leave the British frame. It does not advertise any of the ten licensed brands because no name on this page should read as a recommendation either. It states what each brand publishes, what the law requires, what the Commission’s rules require and what GAMSTOP offers the reader who wants to exclude themselves. A reader who has not yet used a licensed British bookmaker starts at the public register; a reader who has used one and wants to compare can use the table above; a reader who is looking for a way around GAMSTOP is at the wrong page.

The arithmetic earlier in the article is one worked example of what a margin costs the reader at one pair of prices on one bettor’s budget. The same shape — turnover times margin — answers every version of the question, and the margin changes with the market: a two-way market at 1.90/1.90 is a different proposition from a three-way market at 1.90/3.40/4.00, and an each-way accumulator is a third. The reader who plans an offer-clear should not plan against an average; they should plan against the wagering cap, the minimum price on qualifying bets and the eligible-market list, because those are the variables the operator controls. The expected loss on the bonus itself is turnover times the margin of the markets the offer forces the reader into. The expected loss on a single bet is the stake times the market’s margin. Both are averages, and both can change with the operator’s published offer tomorrow.

Frequently asked questions

Which betting sites are not on GAMSTOP?

No Great Britain-licensed online operator sits outside GAMSTOP. The national self-exclusion scheme has been a mandatory Commission licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020, and the register blocks both new accounts and access to existing ones. A brand that offers betting in Great Britain without a Commission licence is an unlicensed site; it can be reached only by giving up the Commission’s protections.

What betting sites are not on GAMSTOP inside the licensed market?

None. The licensed market is closed on this question. Every Commission remote licensee — from bet365 to DragonBet — checks the GAMSTOP register on every login, and the licence conditions require it. The list of licensed bookmakers runs into the hundreds once the Commission’s public register is counted, and they all run GAMSTOP.

Does GAMSTOP cover every online betting site in Great Britain?

Every site licensed in Great Britain, yes. The register blocks existing accounts and prevents new ones with online gambling companies that hold a Commission licence for Great Britain. Sites without a Commission licence are outside the register by definition, and the British licence is what gives the Commission’s enforcement tools their purchase.

What does a player lose by betting on a site without a Commission licence?

A player on an unlicensed site loses the Commission’s complaints route, the approved dispute-resolution body, the British consumer redress path if funds are withheld, the GAMSTOP coverage, the £150 financial vulnerability check, and the 10x bonus wagering cap and mixed-product bonus ban that have been in force since 19 January 2026. The site is registered under a different jurisdiction that sets the rules, and the operator’s solvency is the operator’s own.

How can a reader verify that a bookmaker holds a Commission licence?

Search the Commission’s public register by business name, trading name, domain or licence-holder name. Confirm the status is “licensed”, confirm the licence category covers the markets the reader wants to bet on, and note the register’s access date. The licence-holder name on the register is the legal entity; the trading name on the operator’s own terms is the brand the reader sees.

Content created by the «UK betting» team