Guide · 6 min

How SecScore works — and what it refuses to measure

Updated 29 August 2026

SecScore is a 0.0–10.0 rating of how much protection a casino file appears to give a player who later needs to complain, withdraw, or walk away. It is not a ranking of who has the loudest welcome pack. Fun is not a factor. Neither is RTP advertised on a single slot.

The weights are public: licence 25%, ownership 10%, complaints 25%, terms 20%, payments 10%, transparency 10%. Those add to 100%. If a brand scores 9.1, it did not buy the number. CasinoSec does not sell scores. A UKGC remote licence with a searchable account number is the single largest positive we can give; a missing licence number is the single largest hole.

Licence is not a vibe. For Great Britain we cite the Commission account and the remote licence string the operator actually holds. Jumpman Gaming Limited is account 39175, licence 039175-R-319452-025. Betway Limited is account 39372, licence 039372-R-319367-029. Sister skins inherit that fact; they do not each get a new fairy-tale corporation. For Canada we usually print nothing, because inventing a Curaçao or Kahnawake number would be a different kind of lie.

Ownership is a tenth of the score and still worth the space. A named plc or a long-running group is easier to serve than a register-domain that changes every quarter. We do not treat a newspaper masthead as ownership. The Sun Play is Jumpman. Jackpot City in Britain is Betway. Jackpot City in Canada is not.

Complaints are weighted equally with the licence because a beautiful licence with a silent complaints desk is a brochure. This build does not invent case files. If we have not reviewed a dispute, the complaints index stays empty and the score assumes no fabricated recoveries. That keeps weak brands from being propped up by stories we never handled.

Terms are 20% because wagering, conversion caps, max-win-per-spin lines and ‘wager £10+’ footnotes decide whether a headline is cash or theatre. We copy the terms we were given on 29 August 2026. If a multiplier was not printed — Spin Casino UK, Jackpot City Canada — we write that it was not printed. We do not ‘helpfully’ assume 40x.

Payments and transparency share the last fifth. A UK debit-card stack with Apple Pay is ordinary and good. A dest host that does not match the brand name (Surf Casino → ethcasino.io) is a transparency failure that can drop a file into avoid. Avoid means no primary Visit button. A score is not a dare.

The bands are mechanical: 8.5–10 strong, 7.0–8.4 solid, 5.0–6.9 mixed, 3.0–4.9 weak, 0–2.9 avoid, and null for fresh files we will not guess. Default directory sort is strong, then solid, then fresh, then mixed, then weak, then avoid, and only then score descending. That is so a 7.1 licensed British skin still sits above a 6.8 offshore brand with a prettier homepage.

Read a SecScore the way you would read a lock rating, not a restaurant star. A 9.1 still loses money. A 2.4 is a warning to leave. If you only remember one line from this guide: we score the paperwork you can use when something goes wrong, not the spin that went right.