How to Verify a UK Casino Licence

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Last updated 5th July 2026

Checking whether a casino genuinely holds a British licence takes about ninety seconds and requires nothing more than the site’s own footer and a free government database. It is the single highest-value habit a UK player can develop, and it happens to be the exact process this website is built on: every review we publish starts with the check described below, as our methodology page sets out. Here is how to run it yourself on any casino, step by step.

Step 1: Find the licence number in the footer

Open the casino’s homepage and scroll to the very bottom. Sites licensed by the UK Gambling Commission are required to display their operating company and licensing details, and by convention this lives in the footer. You are looking for the name of a limited company, wording along the lines of “licensed and regulated by the Gambling Commission”, and an account number, typically five digits. On compliant sites the number is a clickable link straight to the operator’s register entry. Note both the company name and the number, because you will verify each against the other.

Step 2: Look the number up on the public register

Go to the Gambling Commission’s public register, the official, free, searchable record of every business licensed to offer gambling in Great Britain. Search by the account number from the footer, or by the operating company’s name. The register entry shows the licensee’s registered details, the activities it is licensed for, its trading names and domains, the current status of each licence, and any regulatory action the Commission has taken against it. Everything that follows comes from this one page.

Step 3: Check the trading name and domain actually match

A licence being real is not the same as it covering the site in front of you. On the register entry, open the list of trading names and domain names and confirm the exact website you are checking appears there. This step catches two common problems: sites that display another operator’s licence number, and brands that have moved between companies while their footer text trails behind. Brands migrate more often than most players realise, so if the domain is missing from the claimed licensee’s entry, keep digging before trusting either source.

Step 4: Confirm the licence status is Active

Every licence on the register carries a status. Active is what you want to see. Surrendered means the operator handed the licence back; lapsed and revoked mean it no longer exists; suspended means the Commission has stepped in, sometimes mid-investigation. A casino whose licence is anything other than active has no business taking deposits from British customers, and any site still trading in that state has already answered the question of whether it can be trusted.

Step 5: Read the regulatory action history

The register also records enforcement outcomes: fines, licence reviews, official warnings and the failures behind them, most commonly around money-laundering controls and safer gambling obligations. A past penalty does not automatically make an operator untouchable, since several of the industry’s biggest names have paid settlements and tightened up afterwards, but a pattern of repeated failures tells you how the company behaves when nobody is checking. We re-read this section for every operator each time we update a review, and it has changed our verdicts more than once.

When to run the check again

Verification is not a one-off. Casino brands are bought, sold and shuffled between licensees constantly, and a site that checked out cleanly last year may sit under a completely different company today, with different terms and a different track record. Re-run the lookup whenever you return to a casino after months away, whenever the footer text or site design changes noticeably, and before any unusually large deposit. The whole process takes less time than the deposit itself, and the register reflects licence transfers that a site’s own pages sometimes announce quietly or not at all.

Red flags that end the check early

Some findings mean you can stop and simply close the tab. No licence number anywhere in the footer is the loudest one, since compliant operators are required to display it. A company name in the footer that does not match the register entry for the claimed number is another. A licence that turns out to belong to an entirely different brand family, a status showing surrendered or suspended, or a site offering only a Curacao or other offshore licence while openly courting UK players all mean the same thing: no UKGC protection, no GamStop coverage and nowhere official to turn if your money disappears.

If the footer gives you nothing to search

Occasionally a site makes step one impossible: the footer names no company and no number, or buries a vague “fully licensed and secure” claim with nothing behind it. You can still run the check in reverse by searching the register for the site’s domain name directly, since the Commission records domains against each account. If the domain returns nothing, the conclusion writes itself. It is also worth glancing at the terms and conditions page, where the operating company usually has to name itself even when the footer is coy; whatever name you find there goes straight into the register search box.

What a passed check tells you, and what it does not

A verified active licence means the operator is subject to British rules on fund segregation, dispute resolution, advertising, and safer gambling tools, and that self-exclusion will genuinely apply. It does not tell you whether the bonuses are generous, the withdrawals fast or the game library any good; that is what reviews are for. The register has one more gift for the curious, though: the trading-names list shows every other site on the same licence, which is precisely how we map the networks in our sister sites guide and on hub pages like ProgressPlay, whose licence carries over 160 trading names, and Broadway Gaming Ireland. One lookup can tell you about fifty casinos at once.

Licence checking FAQs

Where do I find a casino’s licence number?

Scroll to the footer of the casino’s homepage. UK-licensed sites state their operating company and licence details there, usually with a wording such as "licensed and regulated by the Gambling Commission" plus an account number, often linked directly to the Commission’s register entry.

What does it mean if a licence shows as surrendered or lapsed?

The operator no longer holds an active British licence, so it cannot legally take bets from customers in Great Britain and none of the UK protections apply. A site still accepting UK players on a surrendered or lapsed licence should be avoided entirely.

Is a Curacao licence enough for UK players?

No. Anyone offering gambling to consumers in Great Britain needs a Gambling Commission licence. A site holding only a Curacao licence while taking UK custom is operating outside British regulation, with no GamStop coverage and no UKGC route to redress.

The footer licence number does not match the register entry. What now?

Treat it as unresolved and do not deposit. Brands do migrate between operators, and register data can briefly trail reality, but a mismatch between the claimed licensee and the register’s record of the domain is exactly the kind of inconsistency that verification exists to catch.

This site is for readers aged 18 and over. However thoroughly a casino is licensed, only gamble with money you can afford to lose, and if that line is blurring, GambleAware offers free confidential help on 0808 8020 133.