Each criterion is scored out of ten against the published rubric: a ten means the operator is at or near the top of the UK market on that criterion, a five means it is in the middle of the pack, and a two means a reader should be actively cautious. The headline rating is the weighted average rounded to one decimal place, and the raw sub-scores are shown so a reader can tell whether a middling overall came from one bad category or from being merely average across the board.
Scores lower than four on licensing or safer-gambling trigger a flag at the top of the review regardless of the other categories: a casino with great games and a questionable licence is not a recommendation. Scores higher than nine are rare and require unanimous agreement between the editor and the bonus analyst; we would rather look conservative than hand out a nine for something that drops to a seven on the next quarterly re-test. The scoring on each criterion is capped at the operator's own published terms — we do not score on "usually" or "in practice", only on what a reader signing up today would actually get.
Each operator we cover is re-tested on a quarterly cycle: payment methods and withdrawal speed in month one, bonuses and terms in month two, lobby and mobile build in month three. The cycle is staggered across the operators on the site so no single month is heavier than the others. Material changes between cycles — a lifted maximum-bet clause, a new wagering requirement, a withdrawn payment method, a change of licence jurisdiction — are patched into the review on the day we notice them, with a line in the changelog at the bottom of the page and the date in the H1 updated.
Operators we no longer recommend are marked as such at the top of the review rather than quietly delisted, so a reader arriving from search knows why. Where an operator ceases to accept UK players altogether, the review is archived with a note explaining what happened and when, and the recommendation badge is removed. The archive is public rather than deleted; a reader who used the site in the past is entitled to see what we used to say about an operator and how our view changed.
A review on this site is scored against five criteria, in this order of weight: welcome and ongoing promotions (including the wagering, game weighting, maximum-bet and excluded-games clauses attached to each), payment methods and withdrawal speed from a GB IP, catalogue depth and provider mix in the lobby we actually see, mobile experience on current Android and iOS builds, and the quality of licensing and safer-gambling tooling. Marketing fluff — "best casino 2026" banners, personality quizzes, celebrity endorsements, affiliate award logos — does not move the score.
For each criterion we work from a specific checklist rather than an overall impression. On promotions, for example, we score separately on headline value, clarity of the terms, friendliness of the wagering structure, and how much of the offer is actually accessible to a player who deposits the minimum rather than the maximum. On payment methods we score on breadth, speed from a GB IP, fee transparency and the operator's handling of a KYC request that is triggered mid-withdrawal. Each sub-score is a number we can defend, not a vibe.