Methodology: The Cashout Report
Every casino we review is scored with The Cashout Report — a 0-10 rating built from six published sub-scores, centred on the thing players care about most: getting paid. The weights are fixed and identical for every casino, so a score cannot be quietly bought.
The six sub-scores and their weights
- Licence & Safety — 25%. The licence verified against the regulator’s public register, ownership, track record, and any documented incidents (breaches, sanctions, unpaid-winnings disputes, licence changes).
- Payout / Withdrawal — 25%. Documented or aggregated withdrawal-speed evidence, KYC thresholds and known holds. This is the metric we foreground.
- Bonus Value & Terms — 15%. The real value of offers after wagering, max cashout, game weighting and expiry — read from the operator’s terms, not the promo page.
- Games & Providers — 15%. Library breadth, notable studios, live-dealer range and provably-fair availability.
- KYC & Support — 10%. Verification friction, support quality and responsiveness.
- Crypto Support — 10%. Coins and networks accepted, and deposit/withdrawal mechanics.
The overall score is the weighted average of the sub-scores you can see on every review. Expect a real spread and the occasional sub-7 verdict — uniform 9s are a sign of affiliate inflation, not quality.
Research-based vs field-tested — the integrity core
Each review states its evidence standard plainly. A research-based review verifies the licence against the register, reads the bonus terms from the operator’s terms of service, confirms supported coins, and presents withdrawal-speed as documented or aggregated player-reported evidence with a source and date. A field-tested review means a reviewer genuinely deposited real funds, timed real withdrawals and documented KYC and support first-hand. At launch, every review is research-based; we never present research as a field test, and we never fabricate a payout time, screenshot or rating.
The publishing checklist
No review publishes until: the licence is verified against the regulator’s register (or clearly flagged as unverifiable); bonus terms are confirmed from the operator’s terms of service; supported coins are confirmed; the evidence label is set; the affiliate disclosure and responsible-gambling context are present; and the desk has signed off.
Licence verification
We check the claimed licence number against the regulator’s public lookup — Curaçao (CGA), MGA, UKGC, Gibraltar and others. Where an operator blocks automated access, we pull its licensing footer from a Wayback-archived snapshot and cross-reference the register, and we attribute it as an archived footer — never as a live first-person fetch.
Independence and updates
Scores are never adjusted for affiliate revenue. A licence suspension or revocation drops the Licence & Safety sub-score immediately and is posted to the Wire within 48 hours of confirmation. Every review carries a “last verified” date and is re-reviewed at least annually. Corrections are logged publicly at corrections, and our commercial relationships are disclosed at Affiliate-Hinweis.
AI policy
Editorial body content is written and edited by humans, with AI-assisted drafting and human accountability for every published word. We do not publish AI-generated reporting passed off as first-hand work, and we do not claim our content is “100% human.”