How We Rank
The board sorts on one thing: how long the casino took to approve a withdrawal we actually submitted. Everything else on the row is context.
The Measurement
For each site we time, we open an account, complete verification on the day we register, deposit our own money, play enough to make the balance withdrawable with no bonus attached, and request a withdrawal on a weekday. The clock starts at submission and stops when the cashier reports the request approved.
That is the casino's half of the transaction and the only half it controls. What the payment rail does afterwards is recorded separately on the withdrawal times pages, because a nine minute approval paid to a debit card still takes days and that is not the casino's doing.
Why Verification Happens First
Because otherwise we would be timing our own paperwork. A first withdrawal at an unverified account can take three days at a site that clears in twenty minutes once documents are approved. Verifying on registration day removes the largest variable and makes the sites comparable with each other, which is the whole point of a board.
What Untimed Means
Ten of the fifteen sites carry no recorded time. It means we have not run the test, and nothing more than that. It is not a judgement about the operator, and we do not fill the gap with the figure the site advertises or with an average from similar sites. A number in a column headed approval time is read as a measurement, so it stays blank until it is one.
Untimed sites sort below timed ones and are ordered on offer value. That ordering is a convenience, not a ranking claim.
What We Do Not Do
- No score. No stars, no rating out of ten. There is no data behind such a number, and a score invented to win a rich result in search is exactly the thing that gets a site penalised.
- No paid placement. Commission does not move a site up the board. It cannot: the board sorts on a recorded time, and the time is a fact rather than an opinion we could revise.
- No claims we have not tested. Where a figure comes from an operator's terms rather than our own test, the page says so.
What Commission Does Affect
Which sites are here at all. We can only list operators running an affiliate programme, so the board is a comparison of the sites we can cover rather than of every casino in existence. That is a real limitation and it belongs on this page rather than in the small print. The advertising disclosure has the detail.
Corrections
If you have measured something different at one of these sites, or you operate one and think a figure is wrong, write to editor@signpost-online.co.uk. We retest rather than argue, and a retested figure replaces the old one with the date changed.