If you need help right now

The National Gambling Helpline is free, confidential and open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, on0808 8020 133. You do not have to be in crisis to call it.

The rules worth keeping

  • Only ever stake money you can afford to lose entirely.
  • Decide the amount before you start, and treat it as the price of the entertainment rather than an investment.
  • Never gamble to recover a loss. Chasing is the single most reliable way a manageable habit becomes a problem.
  • Do not gamble while drinking, upset, or trying to distract yourself from something else.
  • Set a time limit as well as a money limit, and stop when either runs out.
  • Never borrow to gamble, and never use money that belongs to someone else.

Warning signs

Any of these is worth taking seriously, and more than one is worth acting on today:

Controls every UK operator must give you

These are not favours. Under UK Gambling Commission rules every licensed operator has to provide them, and using them is free and immediate.

Deposit limits
Cap what you can pay in per day, week or month. Every UK-licensed operator must offer this. Increases are subject to a cooling-off period, decreases take effect immediately.
Loss and time limits
Set a ceiling on net losses or session length. Useful because time spent is a better early warning than money lost.
Reality checks
A periodic on-screen reminder of how long you have been playing and what you are up or down.
Time-out
A short break of 24 hours up to six weeks. The account locks and marketing stops.
Self-exclusion
A minimum six month block on a single operator. Use GAMSTOP to apply the same block across every UK-licensed site at once.

Where to get help

All of the following are free, confidential and independent of any gambling operator.

Under 18

Gambling is illegal for anyone under 18 in the UK. Nothing on this site is intended for under-18s. If children have access to your devices, free filtering software such asGamBlock andGamban can block gambling sites at the device level.

A note on this site

We only list operators licensed by the UK Gambling Commission, which means every site here is required to block accounts registered with GAMSTOP. We do not list, review or link to any operator that accepts self-excluded players, and we never will.