Editorial Policy, Funding and Corrections
This page explains how SpinCompass makes money, who decides what appears where, and what happens when we get something wrong. It is written to be read before you trust a ranking, not after.
18+ only. Support is free and confidential at BeGambleAware.org and through the National Gambling Helpline.
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1. Affiliate disclosure, stated plainly
SpinCompass earns commission. When you follow a link from this site to a casino operator, open an account and deposit, we may be paid by that operator or by its affiliate programme. That payment may be a share of the operator's revenue from your account, a one-off fee, or a combination. It costs you nothing and it does not change the offer you receive.
How this appears on the site:
- Every outbound commercial link runs through our own redirect at
/go/and carriesrel="sponsored nofollow". - Every page containing commercial links carries a disclosure at the top, not only in the footer.
- Where an operator in a list is not a commercial partner, the entry says so. We include non-paying operators when they score well, because a list that contains only partners is an advertisement, not a ranking.
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2. What commission does not buy
- It does not buy a position. Order in every ranked list is the Compass Score, descending. Where two operators tie to one decimal place, the tie is broken by the withdrawal criterion, then alphabetically. Never by commercial value.
- It does not buy a score. Criteria and weights are fixed for all operators and published in full in our Methodology.
- It does not buy silence. A commercial partner that triggers a disqualifier is removed from lists and the reason is published. This has direct financial cost to us and we accept it as the price of the ranking being worth anything.
- It does not buy inclusion. Being a partner is not sufficient to be listed. An operator that has not been tested is not listed, however attractive the terms.
Commercial negotiations are handled separately from scoring. The person who sets a score does not see the commercial terms attached to that operator while the score is being set.
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3. Who decides
Editorial decisions, which operators are tested, what scores they receive, what is written about them, and whether an operator is removed, are made by Imogen Hartley, who is editorially responsible for everything published under the SpinCompass name. There is no separate commercial veto over editorial output. If a commercial partner asks for a score to be changed, the request is refused; if the partner supplies evidence that a factual input to the score was wrong, we re-test and republish, and the review notes that a re-test took place.
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4. Advertising standards
We write to the CAP and BCAP codes as they apply to gambling advertising in the UK. In practice that means:
- No use of "free bet", "free spins" or "bonus" without the material conditions attached in the same place;
- The words "risk-free" and "no risk" do not appear on this site in relation to any offer;
- No content, imagery, characters or language with strong appeal to under-18s;
- No suggestion that gambling can solve financial difficulty, provide income, or improve social or sexual standing;
- No urgency devices, countdowns, or messaging that pressures a reader to act quickly;
- No claim about licensing that is not verified against the UK Gambling Commission register;
- 18+ marking and a link to BeGambleAware on every page.
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5. Sourcing rules
- Licensing comes from the UKGC public register only. An operator's own website is never accepted as evidence of its licensing status, because offshore brands are known to publish false licence claims on their own pages and satellites. Repeating such a claim would make it ours.
- Terms and bonuses are read from the operator's published terms and conditions, with the version date recorded in our notes.
- Timings, friction and support quality come only from our own account testing. We do not source these from press releases, affiliate managers or other affiliate sites.
- Numbers we have not measured are not published. Where a test has not been run, the review says so.
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6. AI use
We use software to help with formatting, tables and language editing. We do not publish machine-generated reviews, scores or test results. Every score is the output of the published formula applied to inputs a person recorded. Every review is read and signed off by the named editor before publication.
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7. Corrections
We make mistakes: terms change, registers update, tests get repeated with different results.
- Factual errors are fixed as soon as they are confirmed, and the page carries a dated correction note at the foot describing what changed.
- Score changes resulting from re-testing are shown as a change log on the review: previous score, new score, date, and the criterion that moved.
- We do not silently edit a score. A number that changes without a note is a number no one can audit.
- Pages that are no longer maintained are marked stale and removed from ranked lists rather than left to rot at the top of a table.
If you believe something here is wrong, the correction routes that matter are the operator's own licensed complaints procedure, and, for disputes about your account or money, the operator's UKGC-approved alternative dispute resolution provider. Those routes have legal force. We do not hold your account and cannot act on it.
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8. Independence and limits
SpinCompass is not a regulator, an adviser or a guarantor. Nothing on this site is financial, legal or tax advice. Terms change, and the terms on the operator's site at the moment you deposit are the ones that bind you, always read them.
Gambling has a negative expected return over time. No ranking on this site changes that, and no article here should be read as encouragement to gamble more, faster, or with money you need for something else. If gambling has stopped being entertainment, free and confidential help is available at BeGambleAware.org and through the National Gambling Helpline. GAMSTOP allows you to self-exclude from all UK-licensed online operators at once.