How We Rate and Test Gambling Sites
Five weighted criteria, what each one measures, and what disqualifies an operator outright.
Why the weighting is what it is
Arizona has no state licence for online casino play, which means no Arizona body will intervene if an operator withholds a balance. That single fact drives the weighting. In a licensed market you can afford to weight game selection heavily, because a regulator stands behind the money. Here the money is the whole question, so payout terms carry the most weight and everything else follows.
The five criteria
30% Payout terms
Which withdrawal rails the operator supports and their stated processing windows. Maximum cashout on bonus-derived winnings. Monthly or weekly withdrawal ceilings. What documents the cashier demands before releasing a first payout, and whether that requirement appears before you deposit or after you win. An undisclosed monthly cap costs an operator more here than a slow bank transfer does.
25% Bonus value against rollover
We score the welcome offer as the cap divided by the turnover required to release it, not as a headline percentage. Game contribution rates feed into this, because a 40x requirement on a category contributing twenty percent of stake behaves like a 200x requirement. An offer with a large multiplier and a punishing rollover scores below a modest offer that can actually be cleared.
20% Licensing and transparency
Which jurisdiction issued the licence, and whether the licence number resolves to a live register entry. Whether the site names an independent testing house against its game library rather than displaying a generic fairness badge. Whether the full terms are reachable without registering. Whether the corporate entity behind the brand is identifiable.
15% Game library and live dealer
Breadth of slots and the studios behind them. Table game depth, including the roulette and craps variants Arizona players had no local access to before 2021. Live dealer table availability across the hours Arizona players actually play, which is complicated here by the state staying on Mountain Standard Time all year. How the library behaves in a mobile browser rather than on a desktop.
10% Support responsiveness
We send a specific written question about withdrawal limits and time the reply. A specific written answer scores well. A generic reply that restates the terms page scores as no reply, because an operator that will not answer a direct question before you deposit is unlikely to answer one after.
What disqualifies an operator
Two conditions remove a site from the ranking rather than costing it points.
- Published terms that contradict the promotional copy. If the promotions page advertises one wagering multiple and the terms state another, the operator is excluded. This is not a scoring matter.
- Terms that restrict promotion in Arizona. Where an operator's own affiliate terms bar promotion to this state, we remove it from the lineup instead of ranking it. Bovada is absent from our Arizona ranking for exactly this reason, although it appears on comparable lists for other states.
How ratings are refreshed
Bonus figures are checked against operator terms on the date shown at the top of each page. Offers change without notice, and a figure that was accurate last month may not be today, which is why every page carries the verification date rather than implying it is permanently current. Where an operator materially worsens its terms, the rating moves at the next review.
Independence
This site earns commission when a reader opens an account through one of our links. That arrangement is disclosed at the foot of every page. It does not affect rank order, and no operator can pay for a position, a rating or a mention. Rank order is produced by the weighted criteria above, applied to the same evidence for every site.
We also do not accept operator-supplied review copy. Every assessment on this site is written from the operator's own published terms and from testing, and where we lack evidence for a claim we say so rather than filling the gap.