How Trustworthy Are Online Casinos in 2025?

One way to be assured of a casino’s legitimacy is whether or not it has a trusted casino licence. These are licences handed out and enforced by government bodies like the Irish Revenue Commissioners, the UK Gambling Commission or the Malta Gaming Authority. These departments have put in place restrictions and practises to protect players at online casinos. Whilst these specific requirements change per casino licensing board, all of them put in place safeguarding techniques to prevent fraud, money laundering or any other form of malpractice. A casino that operates without a licence should be the major red flag for players, and should result in players staying far away from that casino. You can verify if a casino has a casino licence by checking their site to see if they declare one, these are normally on show but they can be in terms and conditions or about us pages. Once you have seen that a casino is claiming to have an active licence you can double check this by looking on the license register of whichever governing body the casino has said to have a licence from. These can be found on their websites.

⚠️ Watch out: some rouge casinos might display fake licence logos. Always cross-check with the regulator's official site to confirm if it's legit.

Another major thing for players to look out for, a Random Number Generator certificate or provably fair games both establish that the games at a casino aren’t rigged in any way. A RNG certificate can only be obtained by a casino from a third party tester, who can fully support that all the games offered at a casino use a random number generator to function. This means that the casino has no ability to change the probability of winning, as their games are powered by randomness. 

Provably fair games are another way to verify a game’s legitimacy, except with these, the casino gives the player to check this whenever they’d like to. Provably fair games work off three mechanics, the server seed, the player seed and the nonce. Before the game begins you’ll receive the player seed and an encrypted hash containing the server seed. This is encrypted so at this point neither you or the casino can access it at all. The player seed, server seed and nonce determine the result of the game. At the end of a game, it will reveal the original server seed to you, which you can check against the hashed server seed you were given at the beginning and see if they are the same result. Including games like this reduces any doubt of foul play as the game proves how fair it is to you. 

🚩 Red flag alert: If a casino only offers obscure payment methods or doesn’t show game providers, that’s often a sign they’re cutting corners, or worse.

Whilst this is less reliable than checking for a RNG certificate or a casino license, you can sometimes tell how trustworthy a casino is depending on their games and payment options. If a casino has access to recognisable games from top software providers, like Pragmatic Play or Evolution, those games could be completely safe. Similarly, if a casino has trusted payment methods, especially cryptocurrencies or e-wallets, those methods could be more trustworthy. It’s definitely better to go with an assessment based on if a casino has a license and a way of proving their games are fair, but these can help too. 

💡Use Your Gut (and Google) If something feels off, like weirdly high bonuses or clunky terms, it probably is. A quick search can often confirm your hunch.