About Us

We are an independent, UK-based editorial team dedicated to helping gamblers make informed decisions about casinos not on Gamstop. Every review, rating, and recommendation on this site comes from real testing, honest analysis, and zero commercial influence. We are not affiliated with any casino. We do not accept commissions, referral fees, or payments of any kind from operators.

This page tells you who we are, what drives us, and why you can trust what you read here.

Who We Are

CasinosNotOnGamstop.review was founded in 2022 by two experienced gambling journalists who grew frustrated with the state of online casino content. Affiliate-driven review sites dominated the search results, all rating casinos they had a financial relationship with. The ratings were meaningless. The advice was shaped by commissions, not accuracy.

We built this site to be the opposite of that. No casino pays us. No operator influences our ratings. We fund our research ourselves — through deposits made with our own money, withdrawals processed through our own accounts, and hundreds of hours of direct platform testing every year.

Our team is based in the UK. We understand the specific concerns of British players navigating the non-Gamstop casino space: licensing questions, payment reliability, responsible gambling tools, and the genuine risks that come with gambling outside the UKGC’s oversight framework. We cover all of it — including the uncomfortable parts.

Meet the Team

James Whitfield – Co-Founder & Lead Casino Analyst

James has worked in gambling journalism for over eleven years, beginning his career as a staff writer for a print-based gaming magazine before moving exclusively online in 2015. He specialises in licensing analysis, bonus term evaluation, and long-form platform testing. His background in consumer rights journalism shapes how he approaches every review — with scepticism first and praise only when it’s genuinely earned.

James leads all individual casino reviews on this site. Every platform you read about in our guides has been tested by James personally, with real deposits and real withdrawal requests. He is particularly focused on how non-Gamstop casinos handle disputes, KYC verification, and edge-case scenarios that most review sites never investigate.

Rachel Okafor – Co-Founder & Responsible Gambling Editor

Rachel brings a different perspective to the team. Before co-founding this site, she spent seven years working in harm reduction communications, including two years advising a UK-based problem gambling charity on digital content strategy. She knows better than anyone that the non-Gamstop casino space carries specific risks for vulnerable players — and she ensures those risks are never glossed over in the name of engagement or traffic.

Rachel oversees all responsible gambling content on the site, reviews our editorial standards quarterly, and has final say on how we present risk-related information throughout every article. She also manages our relationships with third-party support organisations including GamCare and BeGambleAware, ensuring the resources we signpost are always current and accurate.

Our Mission

Our mission is straightforward: to be the most honest, most thoroughly researched source of information about casinos not on Gamstop available to UK players.

That means telling you when a platform is excellent. It also means telling you when a platform has slow withdrawals, buried terms, or a complaint history worth knowing about. We do not soften negative findings to protect commercial relationships we do not have. We do not inflate ratings to drive sign-ups. We test, we analyse, and we report what we find.

We also believe that honest information about non-Gamstop casinos has to include honest information about risk. Playing outside the UKGC-regulated market is legal, but it comes with real trade-offs in consumer protection. We cover those trade-offs in every relevant piece of content on this site — not as a disclaimer, but as a genuine part of the analysis.

Our Editorial Independence

This site operates with complete editorial independence. No casino has ever paid us to write a review, positive or otherwise. No operator has ever been shown a draft of a review before publication. We do not accept free credits, complimentary VIP accounts, or any other form of in-kind benefit from the platforms we review. We do not remove or amend negative coverage in response to operator requests. Our ratings are determined entirely by our own testing methodology, documented in full on our How We Rate page.

If an operator believes a factual error exists in our coverage, we will investigate and correct genuine mistakes. We will not alter accurate negative coverage simply because an operator disagrees with our conclusions.

Our Research Process

Every casino reviewed on this site goes through the same testing process. We begin with background research: licence verification with the issuing regulatory authority, a review of publicly available complaint history on platforms like AskGamblers and Casinomeister, and a thorough examination of the operator’s full terms and conditions document.

We then make a real-money deposit using a personal account — not a test account provided by the operator. We play, trigger bonus terms, and test the support team with specific, technical questions designed to assess their knowledge and honesty. We then request a withdrawal and document the full process from request to receipt.

Only after completing this full cycle do we write the review. Our ratings are applied after the review is written, not before — to prevent the score from shaping how we describe the experience. Testing typically takes between seven and fourteen days per platform. We do not publish reviews based on incomplete testing.

Our Commitment to Responsible Gambling

We take our responsibility here seriously. This site covers casinos not on Gamstop — platforms that, by definition, are accessible to players who have self-excluded via GamStop. That creates a specific obligation for us to present responsible gambling information clearly and prominently, not buried in footers.

Every casino review on this site includes a dedicated assessment of the platform’s responsible gambling tools. Our site-wide content consistently signposts free support services for players who may be struggling. And we will never present access to non-Gamstop casinos as a recommended workaround for players who are actively addressing a gambling problem.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please contact GamCare or BeGambleAware. Both services are free, confidential, and staffed by people who can help.