The UK Gambling Commission Remote Casino Licence: What It Requires and What It Costs

What the licence allows and who must hold it

A remote casino operating licence issued by the Gambling Commission lets an operator offer casino games such as slots, roulette, blackjack, poker and similar products to customers in Great Britain through a website, app, television or any other remote channel. What triggers the requirement is where the customer is located, not where the company or its servers are based. A business anywhere in the world that takes a British customer needs the licence, and marketing to that market without one is an offence in its own right.

Most casino businesses need more than one licence. Adding sports betting to casino requires a remote general betting licence, and supplying gambling software to other operators requires a remote gambling software licence. Combined applications come with extra fees. Settle the complete list of activities before you apply, because adding one afterwards is a variation application with its own cost and review, not a simple admin change.

• Fix the list of activities before applying, not later
• A separate licence for each gambling activity
• The customer’s location creates the obligation
• Individual licences for senior staff in named roles

Application and yearly fees depend on GGY bands

Each fee is tied to a band of yearly gross gambling yield. When this guide was written, a remote casino applicant forecasting GGY under £550,000 paid £4,224 to apply. The next bands cost £10,323 for £550,000 to £5.5m, £16,235 for £5.5m to £25m and £23,834 for £25m to £100m, and the largest operators pay up to £91,686. If one application covers several activities, expect an extra £1,680 for two of them or £3,360 for three.

The yearly fee is the bigger ongoing cost: from £4,199 in the smallest band through £10,056, £14,694, £20,626 and £55,089 as GGY increases, and into six figures above £100m. The Commission has confirmed new fee levels from 1 October 2026, with increases across the bands, so any budget based on today’s figures should be checked against the current schedule before you submit. Fees are the minimum, not the total: legal advice, audits, testing and the compliance team are separate, recurring costs.

• Estimate GGY realistically, because it decides the band
• Application fee plus first yearly fee at launch
• A yearly fee that grows with GGY
• Use the schedule in force on the day you file

Fit and proper means scrutiny of people, money and control

The Commission examines the applicant company, its group structure, its owners and its key people. Expect close checks on the identity and background of beneficial owners and persons with significant control, the source of funds and of wealth behind the capital invested, regulatory and criminal records in every relevant jurisdiction, and the competence of those who will carry responsibility. People in specified roles, including money laundering reporting and overall management, need personal management licences of their own.

Money matters as much as integrity. From day one the business must prove it can meet what it owes, player payouts included. In practice the Commission wants believable forecasts, evidence of where the money behind them comes from and a stated policy on safeguarding customer balances, with the chosen protection level shown to players. Fuzzy answers on these points are what most often holds up a promising application, since the regulator cannot approve an operator it is unable to check.

• A clear map of who owns and who controls the business
• Evidence for where the funds and the wealth come from
• Knowing which people need their own licence
• Level of customer fund protection disclosed

LCCP duties apply from the very first day

The Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice set out how a licensed operator must work. They cover age and identity checks before a customer can deposit or play, anti-money-laundering controls in line with assessed risk, customer interaction when play suggests possible harm, marketing that is not misleading and does not target vulnerable people, complaints handling with access to alternative dispute resolution, and protection of customer funds. These are conditions of keeping the licence, not good intentions.

Design the operation around these duties instead of adding them later. Age checks must happen before play, not after the first deposit; AML monitoring needs set thresholds, escalation and record-keeping; and safer-gambling tools, meaning deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion and participation in the national self-exclusion scheme, must be truly easy to reach. An operator whose platform cannot prove these controls will struggle in assessment, however well its policies are written.

• Checks completed before any deposit or play
• Anti-money-laundering checks scaled to risk, with escalation
• Triggers and records for customer interaction
• Complaints process with access to ADR

Testing, technical standards and reporting last as long as the licence

The remote gambling and software technical standards cover both the games and the platform: fair games and correct RNG behaviour, accurate display of rules and return to player, session and reality-check features, and the integrity of the systems that record play. The relevant parts must be tested by an approved test house, and significant changes usually need retesting rather than a self-declaration.

Reporting never ends. Regulatory returns go in on a fixed cycle, key events have to be notified within set deadlines, such as changes of control, banking arrangements, senior staff or financial difficulty, and records must be kept and produced on request. Staff the compliance team to match. A UKGC licence carries weight with banks, payment providers and partners exactly because the obligations are tough, and that credibility lasts only as long as the operator meets them consistently.

• Sign-off from an accredited testing lab
• Retesting after significant changes
• Regulatory returns filed on time
• Key events notified within the deadlines

A practical 90-day plan

Spend days 1–30 confirming the market, reviewing the legal position, fixing scope, building the financial model and shortlisting suppliers. Days 31–60 go to integrations, design, payments and setting up compliance operations. Keep days 61–90 for end-to-end acceptance testing, training and a controlled soft launch, with licensing and payment dependencies treated as explicit go/no-go checkpoints.

Once live, check technical errors, deposit approval, withdrawal times, KYC completion, support volume, bonus spend and net revenue daily. Push for growth only when the team can explain those figures with confidence.