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TrustFacts.ca

Frozen August 2026

How we score casinos

TrustFacts publishes the weights. If a brand pays us as an affiliate, the Gauge does not move. You can rerun the math from the category scores on every review.

Weights

  • Licensing & regulation25%

    Who can sanction the operator, freeze markets, and force payouts. iGO/AGCO and UKGC/MGA outrank Curaçao-only setups.

  • Payment reliability20%

    Documented withdrawal windows, local rails where the licence requires them, KYC delays, and whether funds are ring-fenced.

  • Player safety15%

    Age checks, geo-blocking of illegal markets, AML, and whether the site refuses play from markets it is not licensed in.

  • Fairness & RNG15%

    Independent RNG labs, published RTP, and (for crypto brands) whether originals are actually provably fair.

  • Transparency10%

    Named owner, licence numbers that verify on the register, readable T&Cs, and bonus rules that are not buried.

  • Responsible gambling10%

    Deposit/loss/time limits, time-out, self-exclusion, reality checks — and whether they are enforced, not just linked.

  • Complaint record5%

    Volume and themes on forums and ADR. Unresolved non-payment drops this hard. No named ADR is a penalty.

Bands

  • 80–100 · High trust

    Strong regulator, reliable payouts, usable RG tools.

  • 65–79 · Acceptable with caveats

    Playable if you understand the gaps (ADR, licence mix, KYC).

  • 50–64 · Elevated risk

    Thin regulation or opaque operations. Size bets accordingly.

  • 0–49 · High risk

    Serious trust issues. We do not recommend depositing.

Verification — R D C A

Every review carries four checks. Green means we did the work. Empty means we have not — and we will not fake it.

  • R · Register

    Licence checked on the live regulator list, dated.

  • D · Desk

    T&Cs, owner, RG tools, and complaint themes reviewed.

  • C · Cashier

    First-party deposit and withdrawal logged. Empty until we run it.

  • A · Archive

    Snapshot of the published desk file (licences, RG, payout copy) at the score date.

Payments above 70 require a cashier test (C). Until C is logged, that category is capped at 70 and the Gauge is recomputed. Register (R) and desk (D) are on for published reviews. Archive (A) fills when we snapshot T&Cs at a score move.

What we will not do

  • Sell a #1 ranking.
  • Hide a 43 behind a “featured review” strip.
  • Use one T&Cs URL for every brand.
  • Treat Ontario and Alberta as the same country.

Score moves are logged on the changelog and the public audit trail.