A one-page explanation of who we are, how the shortlist is researched, how it is funded, and what our partner links do and do not change. Short enough to read standing up in the kitchen.
The NonGamStop Shortlist is a two-person editorial desk based in Manchester. Between us we have a decade of experience covering UK online gambling for consumer publications, a corresponding decade of actual deposits-and-withdrawals testing behind that coverage, and the scars that come from closing accounts at operators that should never have taken our money in the first place. We are not a lead-generation farm. We are not a comparison aggregator. We write one page about seven casinos and we re-test the seven every sixty days.
Every brand on this shortlist went through the same five-stage process before earning a slot. First, a licence check: we pull the regulator’s public roster and cross-reference the licence number printed in the operator footer against what the Anjouan, Curaçao or Kahnawake authority actually lists. Logos get ignored; numbers get verified. Second, a bonus plain-text test: we read the welcome terms in full and ask whether the wagering multiplier, game weighting and maximum bet can be summarised in a paragraph a GCSE-literate reader can follow. If they cannot, the brand is cut regardless of its headline figure.
Third, a withdrawal stopwatch. We time the request from confirmation to funds-in-account on two separate rails: one fiat (Visa, Trustly, or Skrill) and one crypto (Bitcoin or Ethereum). The timing runs from six evening tests across weekdays and weekends so the median is not skewed by a single lucky run. Fourth, a support stress-test: three live-chat tickets at different hours of the UK evening, counting first-response time and whether the agent actually reads the question or deflects. Fifth, a sanity pass on the game library: we look for provider breadth, up-to-date catalogue coverage, and whether the search and filter tools behave as a player expects.
The scores you see on each review page are weighted rather than averaged. Payout speed and licence integrity each carry roughly 25%. Bonus clarity and banking options carry 20% apiece. Library breadth and desktop design round out the remaining 10%. A thinner slot catalogue with faster cashouts will almost always rank ahead of a glossier operator whose e-wallet withdrawals sit for 36 hours in internal review.
Honest answer: affiliate commission. The “Visit casino” buttons on this site route through a partner tracking link at traff-aff.org, and if a reader signs up and funds an account we receive a percentage of the operator’s gross revenue from that player. That commercial relationship is identical across all seven brands on the shortlist, which is deliberate: no operator can pay us more than another to climb the list. Rank order is set by the test scores, not by commission rate. The disclosures on every CTA use the standard rel attributes (nofollow, sponsored) and the shortlist editor’s choice tag reflects testing, not sales performance.
We do not run a VIP concierge service. We do not sell data. We do not operate paid review slots. If a reader contacts us about a dispute with a casino on this list, we will try to facilitate a response from the operator’s support team but we are not a regulator and we cannot settle the dispute. For that, the operator’s eCOGRA or ThePOGG arbitration channel (both verified on the brands we shortlist) is the correct route.
Each brand on the shortlist is retested every sixty days. Any regression — a slower cashout, a reworded bonus term, a changed licence number — is noted on the relevant review page and may change the ranking at the next refresh. Timestamps are on each page. If you spot a factual error, email corrections at this domain (fill in the address from the privacy page contact line) and we will investigate. Most of our corrections historically have been payout-time updates after operators changed their internal processing windows; those are usually turned around within a week.
18+ only. Please gamble responsibly — BeGambleAware and GamCare.