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Casino licences explained: three things that are not the same.

A provincial registration, an offshore licence and a laboratory seal get printed in the same row of footer logos, and they answer completely different questions. Only the first decides whether a site may lawfully take your money where you live.

Provincial registration: the only one that governs your account

In Ontario and Alberta a private operator needs two things, and both are public. First a registration with the regulator — AGCO in Ontario, AGLC in Alberta — which is a vetting of the company, its people and its systems against the regulator's standards. Second an operating agreement with the provincial agency that conducts and manages the games: iGaming Ontario and the Alberta iGaming Corporation respectively.

The consequence is unusual and worth understanding. Because the province conducts and manages, the games you play in Ontario are, in law, the province's games offered through a registered operator's site. That is what gives the provincial framework its teeth over your account: the verification rules, the limit and self-exclusion tools, the advertising restrictions and the complaints route are all provincial, not the operator's policy choices.

As of July 22, 2026 the Ontario register held 48 operators running 82 sites, and the Alberta live list held 27. Both are searchable, which makes brand-name matching the cheapest and most decisive check available to a reader.

Offshore licences: real, and about somewhere else

Kahnawà:ke, Malta, Curaçao, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar all issue genuine gambling licences with genuine conditions. The Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission, based in the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawà:ke in Quebec, has licensed operators since the late 1990s and predates every provincial online framework in the country.

None of them is a Canadian provincial registration, and holding one gives an operator no standing in Ontario or Alberta. What it usually indicates is history: brands that served Canadian players before the regulated markets existed often kept the offshore licence for the markets where it is still the only option. Three of the brands we track carry one alongside a provincial registration — JackpotCity, Royal Vegas, Spin Casino.

The failure mode to watch for is double-counting. A comparison page that lists "licensed by iGO and Kahnawà:ke" as two reasons to trust a site is counting one company twice. For a player in a regulated province, exactly one of those two matters.

Testing seals: a lab, not a regulator

The third row of logos is neither kind of licence. These are independent testing houses:

eCOGRA — Audits game fairness and payout percentages and certifies the random number generator.
iTech Labs — Tests and certifies RNG output. A current certificate names the operator and carries a date.
Gaming Labs — Certifies games and platforms against the technical standards a regulator requires before launch.

A current certificate is meaningful — it should name the operator and carry a date, and one that does neither is decoration. But no seal answers the question that decides whether you should open an account: who may lawfully offer this site to me, and who do I complain to. A regulator answers that. A laboratory does not.

How to check any of them in two minutes

Provincial: open the regulator's register and search the brand name. If it is not there, nothing else on the page matters.
Offshore: open the issuing commission's register, not the operator's footer. Licence numbers are published; images are copied.
Seal: click it. A real certificate links to the testing house and names the operator and a date. A decorative one links nowhere.

This is the first of the four checks we run before a brand appears on this site, and it is the one we will not trade off. A brand that fails it is not scored badly — it is absent.

The two Canadian registers

Ontario — AGCO registers, iGaming Ontario conducts and manages
Alberta — AGLC registers, Alberta iGaming Corporation conducts and manages

Questions about casino licences

What is the difference between a licence and a registration?

In Canada's regulated markets a site does not hold a licence in the Malta or Curaçao sense. It holds a registration with the provincial regulator and an operating agreement with the provincial agency that conducts and manages the games. Two documents, two bodies, both checkable on a public list.

Is a Kahnawà:ke licence valid in Canada?

It is a real licence issued by a real commission, and it is not a provincial registration. A brand can hold both — three of the brands we track do. If you are physically in Ontario playing on the registered site, the AGCO framework governs your account and the Kahnawà:ke licence governs that operator's business elsewhere.

Does an eCOGRA or iTech Labs seal mean a site is licensed?

No. Those are testing houses, not regulators. A seal tells you a lab examined the games or the random number generator; it says nothing about who may lawfully offer the site to you, whether your funds are segregated, or who hears a complaint. Both things are useful and they are not interchangeable.

How do I check a licence myself?

For the two Canadian markets, on the regulator's own register — both publish a searchable list, and matching the brand name is the whole check. For an offshore licence, the issuing commission's register. Do not accept a footer badge as evidence: an image is trivially copied and a register entry is not.