Safe, Secure & Legal Gambling Sites

by James Carter on February 19th 2015. Updated on October 4th, 2019.

We’ve already helped more than 100,000 visitors find the best online gambling site for their needs. All of these sites are reliable and treat their customers fairly on top of providing a top-class online gambling experience. We paid extra attention to how reliable, safe and honest these websites are because none of the other qualities matter unless the site is trustworthy.

How We Rank Online Gambling Websites

You can see our top recommendations above (for the location you’ve accessed our site from). You might wonder why we rank these sites above all others and we’ll happily tell you more about it.

Our first gambling site ranking criteria is safety and reliability of the site. If the site is not safe or reliable (perhaps even both), it makes little sense to look at other details. If a sportsbook fails to respect its customers, that’s an immediate dealbreaker for us. We have no intentions of ever listings sites with poor track records, subpar customer support, questionable licenses or payment issues. Additionally, we keep track of online gaming sites accused of scams and fraud.

Once we’ve determined that a site treats its customers with respect, fairness and honesty, we move on to other criteria, such as software quality, game selection and promotions. All the top gambling sites do well at these areas but we want you to have all the good in online gambling and none of the bad, which is why we’ve done such extensive research.

One particular area we’ve focused on is how beneficial playing at a certain site is for the player, considering house edge and bonuses. Comparing betting lines and bonus offers is especially important when betting on sports–in fact, one of the most important things a winning sports bettor must do is to compare betting lines between several sports betting sites to find the best one.

Not only have we ranked these real-money gambling sites in order, we’ve written reviews for each of them. All of the sites listed at Gaming the Odds are the cream of the crop, but by reading the reviews, you will find out which of them suits you the best.

Tips for Finding Top Gambling Websites

One day you may play at one of the real-money gaming sites we haven’t recommended. In that case, it’s essential to have a basic understanding of how to determine a trustable website for real money play–while there are plenty of legitimate & safe gambling sites, there are even more of them looking to cheat you out of your hard-earned money.

The first two details to check are if the site is a part of any group or network of internet gambling properties, where the site has gotten its license from and which testing agency checks if the games are fair. Then you need to check all the various online blacklists (here’s ours) to see if the group, network or the individual site belongs to one of them (always a bad sign), and additionally, find out how credible the licensing authority and the testing agency are.

When comparing bonus offers, pay more attention to bonus terms than the size of the bonus. Some gambling bonuses are ten times easier to clear, or in other words, while certain sites give you a fair chance to get something out of their bonus offers, others have no intensions of ever allowing you to clear the bonus. Offering a sizeable bonus is easy if the bonus is almost impossible to clear.

Finally, we recommend signing-up at multiple sites (three is a good amount) to be able to take an advantage of great opportunities. Getting the best odds is especially important when betting on sports, however, being in the right place at the right time is important for poker players and casino gamblers alike.