The law

How to check that an online casino is registered in Alberta

Checking a site takes about a minute, and almost nobody does it. The method below uses nothing but the province's own list and the site itself, and it catches the three things that go wrong most often: a site that was never registered, a copy of one that was, and a registration that belongs to a different company.

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Check one: the list, opened by hand

Open the AiGC list of registered sites by typing the address or using a bookmark, never by clicking a "verified" badge on the site being checked (a badge is a picture that can link anywhere). Then look for the name, remembering that the list is written by clerks and that a brand may appear with "Alberta" in front of it (as five Casino Rewards brands do), or in one word where its logo uses two.

When we read the list on November 12, 2026 it held fifty-one sites. If the name is not there, stop: the site is not authorized in Alberta, whatever it says about a licence from Malta, Curaçao or Kahnawake; the protections described on this site do not apply to it.

Check two: the Details button

Each entry on the list has a "Details" button, and the window it opens (a small panel over the list) gives the line that matters most, "Operated by". That is the company that registered with AGLC and signed with AiGC, and it is the company that answers for the site.

Write it down, or keep the window open, because the next check compares it with what the site says about itself; a mismatch between the two is either a clerical slip (which happens, and which AiGC will want to hear about) or the sign of a copy.

Check three: the address in the browser

The same window gives the address of the registered site, and here precision matters more than anywhere else. The registered sites in Alberta use a handful of patterns: a folder such as "/alberta/" or "/ab/" on a Canadian domain, or a subdomain beginning with "ab." (as several brands on this site do), and a page at any other address is not the registered site, however faithful the copy.

Copies of registered brands tend to differ by a letter, a hyphen or an extra word ("alberta-casino-bonus" stuck onto a famous name), and they tend to be reached through advertisements and messages rather than typed, which is how they avoid the one check that would expose them. The habit that defeats them is to type the address by hand, once, and use a bookmark afterwards!

Three addresses that should make you stop

A ".com" version of a brand whose Alberta site is on ".ca". A domain with extra words such as "bonus", "promo" or "alberta" inserted into the brand name. Any address reached from a direct message, a text or a social media post rather than typed or bookmarked.

A registered site names its operator in the footer and in its terms, and the name should match the "Operated by" line of the list, allowing for small differences of punctuation (we have seen the same company written with and without "Ltd." on two rows of the list). The footer should also carry the official AiGC logo, which the corporation tells players to look for, and, as accreditations arrive, the seal of the Responsible Gambling Council.

The footer is where copies are often lazy, since they reproduce the colours and the games and forget the company (the one detail a copy cannot borrow without being caught). A footer that names a company registered in another country, or no company at all, settles the question (and saves you a deposit).

Check five: what the site asks of you

A registered site will ask for proof of age and identity, will check that the player is in Alberta before accepting a bet, will offer deposit, loss and time limits when the account is opened, and will not accept cryptocurrency. Each of those is a requirement of AGLC's standards, which means a site that skips them is either not registered or not behaving as a registered site must.

It sounds odd to treat friction as a good sign; it is, however, the most reliable sign there is. The identity check that annoys a player at sign-up is the same check that stops a thief from emptying the account, and the location check that refuses a bet on holiday is the one that tells you the province's rules are actually running.

When the checks disagree

If the list says one thing and the site another, believe the list, and write to AiGC through its contact page with the address you found and what it showed, since the corporation keeps the list and is, as we read its role, the body best placed to act on it. A copy of a registered brand harms the operator as much as the player (it takes the operator's customers and its reputation), so it is in everyone's interest (the operator's included) that such copies are reported quickly.

The whole list, as we read it, is printed at the foot of the full index, with the company behind each of the fifty-one rows, so that a reader can run the first two checks without leaving this site. Our own cards print the row and the date for every site we write about, precisely so that these five checks can be made against something other than our word.

By the Alberta Casinos Online editorial team · Last updated: November 13, 2026 · Online since 2026