Key takeaways
Cryptorino has ten complaints on file and has settled none of them.
Before you deposit, check the resolved column on the casino's complaint file. Complaints with nothing settled is the worst sign there is.
A falling score is not always bad news. Scores drift down on their own as old reviews age.
Compare the review count with the score. If the score dropped and the count barely moved, nothing happened.
No Canadian regulator covers these casinos. If one refuses to pay you, there is nobody to appeal to.
You are about to put $200 into a casino you have not used before. The badge on the page says 4.3 out of 5. It is probably the only independent number you will see before you pay.
Here is why that number is carrying more weight than it can bear. No provincial regulator stands behind these casinos. Not one of the 31 we track holds a licence from Ontario's AGCO, Alberta's AGLC or any other provincial body. If your withdrawal is refused, no Canadian regulator will take your complaint. The score and the public complaint file are the whole of the public record.
And the score can hide a lot. One casino we track, Cryptorino, has ten complaints on its public file and has settled none of them. Ten filed, ten still open. Its score will not tell you that.
The check that takes one minute
A trust score is an average of public reviews, weighted so that recent reviews count for far more than old ones. Do this before you deposit anywhere.
- Look at the number of reviews, not just the score. A 4.5 from 40 reviews and a 4.5 from 40,000 are not the same claim.
- Write the review count down. If you checked this casino before, compare it with last time. A score that has dropped while the count has barely moved is not a warning. A score that has dropped while hundreds of new reviews arrived is.
- Read only the one-star reviews from the last month. That is the part of the profile the score is actually weighting.
- Open the casino's complaint file and find the resolved column. Complaints on file with nothing settled is the worst signal here, and it is the one the score never shows you.
That is the whole check. The rest of this piece is the evidence behind it, from reading the same figures for 31 casinos twice, four weeks apart.
A score can fall when nothing is wrong
The clearest thing we found this month is that a trust score sinks on its own. It does not need bad news.
Wild.io is the proof. Between late July and 20 August it received exactly one new review. That review was a five-star. Its score still fell, from 3.7 to 3.5.
Nothing bad happened to Wild.io in those 24 days. Its old positive reviews simply got older, and the scoring weights them down as they age.
Look at the longer run and the gap gets wider. Over 52 days the published score fell 0.8. The plain average of all 687 reviews on the profile fell 0.026. The badge moved about thirty times further than the reviews behind it, and in the final month the two moved in opposite directions.
A trust score is a clock, not a ledger. It falls as reviews age, whether or not anything is wrong.
This works in your favour too. A high score on a quiet profile is fragile, because it rests on reviews that are ageing out. A poor score can recover in weeks without the casino fixing anything.
A score can also fall because something is wrong
Thunderpick fell further than Wild.io, from 3.3 to 2.7 in 23 days. That fall was real.
The difference shows in the review count. Wild.io gained one review. Thunderpick gained 91, and 53 of those were one-star. Players were arriving and complaining.
So two casinos posted similar drops in the same month for opposite reasons. You cannot tell them apart from the score. You can tell them apart from the review count, in about ten seconds, which is why that is step two of the check.
It runs the other way as well. Cloudbet rose from 3.6 to 3.8 on 59 new reviews, 55 of them five-star. Its reply rate, meaning the share of reviews it answers in public, went from 92% to 99%.
The complaint file can disagree with the score
The score measures what reviewers feel. A complaint file is different: these are formal disputes, and each one has an outcome recorded against it. The resolution rate is the share that have been settled.
The two can point opposite ways, and Cloudbet is the example. It was the month's biggest riser on score. Over the same weeks it took two new complaints and settled none of them. Its open complaints went from 10 to 12, and its resolution rate slipped from 88.4% to 86.6%. A casino can be winning on reviews and losing on disputes at the same time.
Which brings back the one that should stop you. Cryptorino's file shows ten complaints, none settled and none rejected. We read it three times over five weeks and it did not change. A casino with complaints and a high resolution rate is dealing with its problems. A casino with an empty resolved column is not producing outcomes at all. If you are owed money by that operator, you are looking at your own future.
Shuffle shows what the opposite looks like: it settled three more complaints, cut its open count from 10 to 8, and lifted its resolution rate from 81.2% to 84.3%.
What the 19 casinos did this month
Every pair below is three to four weeks apart. Reply rate is the share of reviews the casino answers in public.
| Casino | Score | Reviews | Reply rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thunderpick | 3.3 → 2.7 | 327 → 418 | 93% → 100% |
| Cryptocasino | 3.4 → 3.1 | 36 → 40 | 100% → 100% |
| Wild.io | 3.7 → 3.5 | 686 → 687 | 92% → 93% |
| Dexsport | 3.0 → 2.8 | 205 → 210 | 100% → 100% |
| Jack.com | 3.0 → 2.8 | 15 → 25 | 100% → 94% |
| Thrill | 2.3 → 2.2 | 117 → 121 | 59% → 54% |
| Metaspins | 2.1 → 2.0 | not comparable | 58% → 76% |
| Cloudbet | 3.6 → 3.8 | 2,536 → 2,595 | 92% → 99% |
| Stake | 3.9 → 4.0 | 17,354 → 17,775 | 99% → 99% |
| Dailyspins | 2.4 → 2.5 | 19 → 19 | 0% → 0% |
| BitStarz | 4.3 → 4.3 | 5,300 → 5,351 | 96% → 95% |
| 7Bit Casino | 4.3 → 4.3 | 2,330 → 2,401 | 100% → 100% |
| Katsubet | 4.2 → 4.2 | 682 → 700 | 100% → 100% |
| Lucky Ones | 3.7 → 3.7 | 1,102 → 1,106 | 0% → 0% |
| Flush Casino | 3.2 → 3.2 | not comparable | 10% → 12% |
| Wolf.io | 1.9 → 1.9 | 17 → 17 | not published |
| CoinCasino | 1.8 → 1.8 | 204 → 208 | not published |
| SkyCrown | 1.6 → 1.6 | 343 → 343 | 100% → 100% |
| Sportsbet.io | 1.2 → 1.2 | 276 → 276 | 0% → 0% |
Note the bottom of that list. A reply rate of 0% means the casino answers nobody in public. Three of these do that, and one of them has been sitting at 1.2 out of 5 for 52 days.
What we left out, and why
Twelve of the 31 casinos are missing from the table. We only publish a change when we have read the figure twice and both readings agree with themselves, and those twelve failed that test.
Two of them are worth naming, because the fault is ours rather than the casino's. Flush Casino and Metaspins each showed a review count that fell and then rose again. That cannot happen, so we show no count for them rather than a number we do not trust.
Do this before you deposit
Open the casino's complaint file and look at the resolved column. Not the score, not the star rating, the resolved column. It takes under a minute, and it is the one number that tells you what happens when a casino owes you money and does not want to pay.
The score tells you how people felt last month. It does not tell you whether you will get paid. That is a different question, and we answered it separately in which casinos actually pay out.
If gambling has stopped being fun, the free provincial helplines are listed on our responsible gambling page.
Frequently asked questions
What should I check before depositing at a casino I do not know?
Open its public complaint file and look at the resolved column, which shows how many formal disputes the casino has actually settled. Complaints on file with nothing settled is the strongest warning you can get, and the trust score will not show it to you. Then check the number of reviews behind the score. The whole check takes about a minute.
Why did a casino's trust score fall when it got no bad reviews?
Because a trust score counts recent reviews far more heavily than old ones, so it describes the last few weeks rather than the casino's whole history. Wild.io gained a single five-star review across 24 days and its score still fell 0.2, because its older positive reviews were ageing out faster than new ones arrived. The plain average of every review on the profile actually went up slightly.
How do I tell a real decline from a score just drifting down?
Look at the review count next to the score. If the score has fallen and the count has barely moved, the score is drifting down as older reviews age. If the score has fallen and the count has jumped, read the recent one-star reviews, because something has happened. Two casinos fell by similar amounts this month for these two opposite reasons.
Is a high trust score enough to pick a casino?
No. The score reflects how reviewers felt recently. It does not tell you whether the casino pays out, what its bonus terms cost, or whether its licence can be verified. One casino here had the biggest score rise of the month while its unsettled complaints were going up.
Who can I complain to about these casinos in Canada?
No Canadian body. None of these casinos holds a licence from a provincial regulator such as the AGCO in Ontario or the AGLC in Alberta, so there is no provincial complaints process behind them. You are left with the casino's own support desk, and after that a public review or complaints platform.
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