How We Review Casinos — Our Testing Methodology
Tested with real money. Honest by design.
Most casino review sites work from templates — the same paragraph structure, the same vague claims, recycled across dozens of casinos with the names swapped. We do something different: we deposit real money, play through the actual conditions, and request a real withdrawal, then document every step with timestamps and screenshots.
Our Testing Process
Every casino on this site goes through the same protocol:
- Registration from scratch — no prior account, no shortcuts
- A real deposit — usually crypto, at an amount close to the casino’s stated minimum so we can verify it ourselves rather than trust the marketing page
- An active gameplay session — enough to test the actual game library, RTP disclosure, and any wagering requirements that apply, whether or not a bonus was activated
- Support inquiries — usually two or three, with specific questions (withdrawal timing, KYC requirements, wagering terms), testing both response speed and whether the answer is templated or genuinely substantive
- A real withdrawal request — logged to the minute, from the moment we click “withdraw” to the moment funds actually arrive
- Full documentation — every stage backed by a timestamped screenshot or, for crypto, an on-chain transaction hash
We publish what we find, including when it contradicts a casino’s own marketing.
How We Rate
Every casino is scored across five weighted categories:
| Category | Weight | What It Measures |
|---|---|---|
| Payouts | 30% | Real withdrawal time, fees, whether the casino matches its own claims |
| Safety | 25% | Verified operator and license, KYC policy, account security |
| Bonuses | 20% | Real wagering terms from the T&Cs, not the headline percentage |
| Games | 12.5% | Library size, RTP transparency, live casino quality |
| Support | 12.5% | Response time and answer quality — templated vs. specific |
We recalculate every rating from scratch using this formula. We never copy a score from a source document, a tester’s own summary, or another review site — even when our math and a tester’s gut-feel number land close together, the published rating is the one that comes out of the formula.
Verifying Licenses and Operators
We don’t take a casino’s “About” page at face value. For every casino, we independently check who actually holds the license — cross-referencing official regulator registries (like the Curaçao Gaming Authority’s public certificate portal) against what secondary review sites report, because the two don’t always agree. We’ve found real discrepancies doing this: operators that changed entities without most of the industry catching up, casinos whose stated license didn’t match the regulator’s own records, and in one case, an operator whose identity was documented as inconsistent across the casino’s own Terms pages by a specialist compliance outlet.
When we can’t confirm something, we say so directly instead of filling the gap with a confident-sounding guess.
Casinos We Don’t Recommend
Not every casino we test earns a spot on our recommended list. When one doesn’t, we publish the full review anyway — with the same level of detail as a recommended casino — so you can see exactly what went wrong and decide for yourself whether it matters to you. See our full list of casinos we don’t recommend and why.
About This Site
This site is currently purely informational — we don’t run affiliate links or earn commission from any casino listed here. Every rating and ranking reflects our own real-money testing, with nothing behind it beyond that. If this changes in the future, we’ll update this page to disclose it clearly, and any partner relationship will never influence a rating.
Who Does the Testing
Our reviews are conducted by independent testers who deposit and play with real funds, following a structured brief for each casino. We deliberately vary testing conditions — different times of day for support inquiries, different deposit amounts, sometimes a second attempt when the first one reveals something worth digging into further (as happened with 7Bit Casino, where a failed first deposit led us to test the wagering requirement in more depth). The goal isn’t to make a casino look good or bad — it’s to find out what actually happens when a real player uses it.
Our team is based internationally. We test each market’s casinos independently, regardless of where our testers happen to be located — the withdrawal process itself doesn’t change based on who’s sitting in front of the screen. What matters is that every deposit, every wagering condition, every support conversation, and every withdrawal is real, whoever conducted it.
Contact
Questions about a review, a correction to flag, or something we got wrong? Reach us at hello@realcasinotest.com.