Methodology
How we rate.
Every bookmaker and casino on SureBets carries a single 1-10 editorial score built from four weighted sub-scores. The numbers come from our own desk, not from aggregated user votes, and an affiliate deal never moves them. Here is exactly what each score measures, the evidence behind it, and how our betting calculators arrive at their estimates.
The five scores
One headline rating, four things it is built from.
Overall
The headline 1-10 score. It is our editors' verdict on whether an account is actually worth opening, weighing the four sub-scores below against real payout and limit experience, not a simple average.
Trust
Licensing checked against the public regulator register, payout reliability, account-limit and stake-factor history from our own desk, complaint patterns, and how the operator handles KYC and withdrawals. This is the score we weight most heavily.
Markets
Breadth and depth of sports and events, odds quality and margins, the range of bet types, in-play coverage, and exchange or broker access where it is relevant. A book with thin markets or padded margins loses points here regardless of its bonus.
Bonus
The real value of the welcome offer and ongoing promotions after we read the wagering requirement, minimum odds, maximum bet and time limits, not the headline percentage. A 500% bonus with a 10x min-odds clause scores below a modest offer you can actually clear.
Support
Responsiveness and competence across live chat and email, how a payout query is handled, escalation paths, and language coverage. We contact support once as a new user and once with a withdrawal question before scoring.
The scale
What a score actually means.
Scores run from 1 to 10 and are editorial, so they reflect our hands-on judgement rather than a crowd-sourced average. As a rough guide:
- 9.0 to 10· top-tier operators we actively recommend, with verified licensing and clean payouts.
- 7.0 to 8.9· strong choices with specific caveats we spell out in the review.
- 5.0 to 6.9· usable but flawed: a weak bonus, thin markets, slow support or limited oversight.
- Below 5.0· avoid for now; the review explains the specific trust or payout problem.
When an operator changes for the worse, shaving value, stalling withdrawals or hiding wagering terms, we lower the score and say why, affiliate relationship or not.
The evidence
Every review meets the same checklist.
- · Licence verified against the public regulator register for each market served.
- · Welcome offer read end-to-end, including wagering, minimum odds, max bet and expiry.
- · Live deposit and withdrawal tested wherever it is legally possible for us to do so.
- · Stake-factor and account-limit history cross-checked with our own betting desk.
- · Support contacted twice: once as a new customer, once with a payout question.
- · Responsible-gambling tools and self-exclusion paths confirmed to exist and work.
Independence
Affiliate revenue, disclosed, and ring-fenced from the score.
We earn a commission when readers sign up through some of our links, and we mark every paid outbound link with a sponsored tag. That revenue does not move a rating, a verdict, or the red flags we raise. The score is set by the four axes above and our payout experience, then the affiliate link is attached, never the other way round. If an operator stops meeting our standard, we lower the score and remove the redirect until it is fixed.
Calculators
How our betting calculators estimate.
Our Stake VIP rank and weekly/monthly bonus calculators are estimators. Stake does not publish its exact VIP thresholds or reload formulas, so the figures are community-sourced estimates built from public VIP information. We keep them dated and label them plainly, never as official Stake numbers.
Each result shows a Min, Expected and Max band of roughly ten percent either side of the Expected figure, reflecting real-world variation from promotions, your product mix (sports versus casino) and rounding. Use them to plan, not as a guaranteed payout. The arbitrage, matched-betting and odds calculators, by contrast, are exact: they apply standard betting maths to the numbers you enter.
Keeping ratings current
Reviews are dated, and revisited when terms change.
Operator terms move constantly. Each review shows when it was last checked, and we re-verify licensing, bonus terms and payout behaviour when an operator changes something material or a reader flags a discrepancy. A stale bonus number on a money page is a trust failure, so we date what we publish.
Spot something wrong?
Tell us and we will re-check it.
If a withdrawal, bonus or term did not credit the way our review suggested, we would rather hear it from you than have other readers hit the same wall.
Safer gambling
SureBets is 18+ only and we only publish operators licensed in the markets they serve. If your betting feels out of control, stop and use your local regulator-backed support: GAMSTOP (UK), Spelpaus (Sweden), ROFUS (Denmark), Spillpaussen (Norway), Autosperre (Germany), or BeGambleAware.org internationally. No bonus is worth chasing losses.