How we rank, in full
One number, from one published formula, applied the same way to every operator. Here is the formula, what feeds it, and — just as important — what it deliberately leaves out.
The ProvenPayouts Score is an editorial judgement from verifiable public data — licence records, published terms and independent complaint records — expressed on a 0–10 scale. It is not a first-hand withdrawal test. We do not deposit money, do not time our own cashouts, and publish no test logs. Anyone telling you a comparison site personally timed hundreds of withdrawals is describing work almost nobody does; we would rather say what we actually did.
The weighting
Fixed for every operator on the crypto arm. It is published here so a reader can disagree with the weighting itself rather than having to guess at it.
What each dimension is built from
- Payout reputation
- The public record of whether the operator actually pays: complaint volume scaled against operator size, the proportion resolved, whether unresolved cases share a pattern, and whether withdrawal limits or maximum-cashout clauses make a large win practically unpayable. Not a timing we measured.
- Trust & licence
- Regime and register verification, the operating company and its jurisdiction, how long it has run, what recourse a player actually has if something goes wrong, and whether the terms contain clauses permitting unilateral confiscation.
- Games & library
- Breadth and provider quality rather than a headline title count, since counts are inflated routinely and rarely verifiable. Live provision, in-house originals, and whether a sportsbook exists.
- Support
- Channels genuinely available, hours, languages, and — weighted more heavily than the first three — what the independent record says about support quality at the moment it matters, which is a disputed withdrawal rather than a pre-sales question.
Why a word as well as a number
Every score carries a band — Excellent, Strong, Solid, Fair, Mixed, Weak — because a decimal implies a precision an editorial judgement does not have. Strong and Strong are the same verdict; presenting 8.4 and 8.1 as meaningfully different would be false precision. The band is the honest unit; the decimal only orders the list.
The process
Licence first
Before anything is scored, the operator's licence claim is checked against the regulator's own register rather than the badge in its footer. On the Brazilian arm that means federal authorisation from the SPA/MF; on the crypto arm it usually means Curaçao, which is a permissive regime and is described as such rather than presented as a guarantee. An operator with no verifiable licence is not ranked low — it is not listed, or it goes on the avoid list.
Only verifiable, public facts
What goes into a review is what can be checked: the licence and operating company, accepted methods and coins, minimum deposit, when KYC is triggered, published bonus terms, and stated withdrawal times. Where a figure comes from the operator's own terms we say so and quote it. Where it comes from an independent complaint-mediation record or a review database, we name that too.
A fixed, published weighting
The score combines the dimensions below at weights that never change between operators and are never negotiated. No operator supplies a number, sees a score before publication, or can pay to move one.
Independence, structurally
We may earn commission when a reader signs up through our link. It never changes a score or an ordering. Operators whose affiliate terms would compromise that — exclusivity clauses, positive-representation clauses — are listed for readers and deliberately carry no sign-up link at all, which is a commercial cost we accept rather than a claim we make.
Re-checked, with the date shown
Licences lapse, terms are rewritten, payout behaviour changes. Every review shows when it was last checked, and where a figure is quoted from an archived capture the snapshot date is shown next to it, because a casino can revise its terms silently while a live link still resolves.
The weighting above governs the crypto arm. The Brazilian arm at /metodologia uses a different one: trust and licence 30%, withdrawal speed 25%, games 20%, support 15%, bonus terms 10%.
That is not an oversight. In Brazil every listed operator holds the same federal licence, so licence status separates them far less and PIX makes withdrawal speed directly comparable in a way it is not across a dozen blockchains. On the crypto arm the licence regime varies enormously and payout reputation is the thing most likely to cost a reader money, so it carries the most weight.
The consequence worth stating plainly: scores are comparable within an arm and not across them. An 8.4 on the crypto arm and an 8.4 on the Brazilian arm are two different measurements wearing the same name.
- No first-hand withdrawal testing. No deposits, no timed cashouts, no test logs.
- No user ratings. There is no aggregate rating anywhere on this site, because we have not collected one and inventing it is the standard trick of the category.
- No named reviewers. The byline is the organisation. A fictional expert with a stock photograph is worse than no byline.
- No paid placement. Ordering is not for sale, and the operators we cannot monetise stay in the ranking anyway.
If a figure here is wrong we want to know, and we would rather hear it from you than leave it standing. Write to us at our contact page with the page and the figure; corrections are made to the page itself with its last-checked date updated rather than issued quietly.
18+ only. ProvenPayouts is a comparison publisher, not an operator: it takes no bets and holds no gambling licence of its own.