Online Gambling License: What It Is and How to Choose One

An online gambling license is a regulator's permission for a company to take real-money bets over the internet, on conditions the regulator keeps checking for as long as the license runs. This guide covers what a license allows and what it does not, how B2C and B2B licenses differ, how eight licenses compare on fees, tax, term and timeline as of October 2026, and how to choose between them.

What an Online Gambling License Is

An online gambling license is an authorization from a national or territorial regulator that lets a company offer games of chance for money over the internet, such as casino games, slots, sports betting and poker. It is issued to a legal entity, usually one incorporated in the licensing jurisdiction, and it comes with conditions the regulator supervises for the life of the license.

Those conditions look much the same everywhere. The operator identifies and verifies its players, runs anti-money laundering checks, uses tested games and random number generators, reports to the regulator and keeps player money apart from company money. Curaçao's license conditions, for example, require sufficient funds at all times to pay out prize money and player funds held in a segregated account.

What a License Lets You Do

With a license, a company can lawfully take bets from players in the markets its regulator and those markets' laws allow. It can open accounts with banks and payment providers that ask for one, and sign with platforms and game studios that only supply licensed operators.

What a License Does Not Do

A license does not override the law of the country a player sits in. Curaçao's conditions make the licensee adhere to "the applicable laws and regulations of the jurisdictions in which they offer remote games of chance" (Art. 3(1)), and in Great Britain offering gambling to consumers is reserved by law for holders of a UK Gambling Commission license, as the Gambling Commission puts it.

Nor does a foreign license cover operating from a country with its own regime. Georgia's gambling law requires a Georgian permit to organise online games on Georgian territory (Art. 5(1)), so a company that runs its casino from Tbilisi needs the Georgian permit whatever it holds elsewhere.

B2C and B2B Licenses

A B2C license is for the operator, the company whose brand takes players' deposits and bets. A B2B license is for suppliers: platform providers, game studios, aggregators and others whose products run the games. Regulators increasingly tie the two together, so an operator may only use suppliers that hold their own license or approval.

Curaçao's licensees need the regulator's prior approval before contracting a platform, game or payment supplier (Art. 2(6)), and a Curaçao B2B license becomes mandatory for those suppliers from 24 December 2026. Anjouan's licensees must show that their platform and content suppliers hold an Anjouan B2B license or recognition certificate. In Georgia, an operator may use games and essential products only from a holder of the Georgian supply permit (gambling law Art. 29(4)).

Georgia's supply permit covers supply to a Georgian operator and to a person outside Georgia, so a studio or platform that serves foreign brands from Tbilisi falls inside the Georgian B2B supply permit too.

What One License Covers: Verticals and Domains

Some regulators issue one license for every vertical. A Curaçao B2C license, an Anjouan B2C license, an Isle of Man full license and a Kahnawake Client Provider Authorization each cover casino games and sports betting together.

Others license by product. Georgia issues separate international permits for casino games, slot games and sports betting, about €34,400 a year each. Malta issues one license but counts game types: share capital is €100,000 each for casino-type games and fixed-odds betting, cumulative up to €240,000, and the compliance contribution is worked out per type.

Domains matter as much as verticals. A Curaçao license covers the domains "owned or controlled by the licensee" that the regulator has approved (Art. 2(4)), and each added domain costs €250. Anjouan charges €500 per additional domain per licensing cycle. Each Georgian permit covers one website on one domain, so a second brand needs a second permit.

The Main Online Gambling Licenses Compared

The table sets eight licenses side by side on government and regulator charges only, in euros, as read on each regulator's own pages in October 2026. Professional fees, company running costs and the platform are extra.

Profit tax comes on top in most places. Curaçao taxes company profit at 15% to 22% on a territorial basis and Malta at a 35% headline rate that shareholder refunds bring down to between 0% and 10%, while the Isle of Man's standard company rate is 0%. In Georgia the 5% on gross gaming revenue replaces corporate tax on profit kept in the business, but dividends paid abroad carry 5% withholding unless one of Georgia's 58 tax treaties lowers it, so Georgia against Curaçao and Malta has to be compared on total tax, not on fees alone.

Curaçao, Anjouan and Tobique

Curaçao has licensed under the National Ordinance on Games of Chance since 24 December 2024. Its fee document splits the annual €47,450 between the Treasury and the Gaming Authority, and one license covers all games. The company must be incorporated in Curaçao with a local director and keep critical data on a server in a Tier IV data center on the island; the local substance rule is deferred to 1 April 2027.

Anjouan's regulator publishes €17,828 for issuance and the same for each renewal, B2C and B2B alike, with no local company rule. The Central Bank of the Comoros warned on 8 December 2025 that it does not recognise the authority behind these licenses, which banks weigh when they onboard a licensee. Tobique, a First Nation commission in New Brunswick, Canada, publishes no fees, so its row in the table rests on licensing firms' quotes.

Malta, the Isle of Man and Estonia

Malta's B2C license needs a company established in the EEA and €100,000 of share capital for casino or betting, and its compliance contribution is paid monthly on gaming revenue. The Isle of Man adds duty of 1.5% on yield up to about €23.9 million a year to its application and annual fees of about €6,300 and €43,900, and asks for a Manx company with two resident directors, servers on the island and player funds in a Manx bank. Estonia's activity license costs €47,940 for casino or €31,960 for betting and needs €1,000,000 of share capital for casino, in a company whose sole business is gambling.

Kahnawake and Costa Rica

Kahnawake's Client Provider Authorization costs about €35,700 including the first year's fee and one key person permit; after that it costs about €17,900 a year plus about €900 per key person, with no gaming tax, and the operator must run from the licensed co-location facility in Kahnawà:ke. Costa Rica issues no gambling license at all. Operators take a municipal license for data processing, and Law 9050 taxes them by headcount, 57 base salaries a year for up to 50 employees.

Georgia's International Permits

Since 3 July 2026 Georgia's Revenue Service, the state tax authority under the Ministry of Finance, has issued international online permits for casino games, slot games and sports betting offered to players who are not Georgian citizens. Each costs about €34,400 a year under Georgia's permit fees law, runs five years and covers one website, and the Revenue Service must decide an application within 20 days or the permit is deemed issued.

The applicant is a Georgian company with a management address and servers in Georgia, and there is no minimum capital. Tbilisi is already Evolution's largest live-casino hub, with 4,813 staff in Georgia at the end of 2025, according to its 2025 annual report. A Georgian online casino and slots license takes two to four months in our planning, most of it the platform audit and integration with the state's control system.

How to Choose an Online Gambling License

Start from your players and your business model, then work through these questions in order.

• Where your players are. A market with its own licensing regime needs that license. An offshore or international license is for the markets without one, and every regulator here expects you to follow the law of the countries you serve.
• Total charge on revenue. Add gaming tax, levies and profit tax together. Georgia charges 6% of gross gaming revenue and no corporate tax on retained profit; Curaçao charges no gaming tax but taxes profit at 15% to 22%.
• Banking and the regulator's standing. A bank or payment provider onboarding you asks for the license and looks at the authority behind it. Anjouan's dispute with the Central Bank of the Comoros is the case in point. Visa's rules require an online gambling merchant to hold a license and its acquirer to take merchants from its own country, so a license in the country where the company sits fits how card payments are set up.
• Substance you can put on the ground. The Isle of Man wants two resident directors and servers on the island, Curaçao a local director and a Tier IV server, Georgia a management address and servers. Anjouan and Tobique publish no local rule.
• Capital. Malta asks €100,000 of share capital per casino or betting type and Estonia €1,000,000 for casino. Curaçao, Kahnawake and Georgia publish no minimum.

Georgia's international permit is the right license for:

• Brands that want a national tax authority as regulator. The Revenue Service issues the permit under national law, Law No. 1822 of 25 June 2026, for five years.
• Operators building a team in Tbilisi. The permit needs a Georgian company, management address and servers, so license, company and staff sit in one country.
• Operators who want the license, company and banks in one country. Domestic Georgian operators such as Adjarabet already take Visa and Mastercard deposits with channels at TBC Bank, Bank of Georgia and Liberty Bank, and Georgia's 2021 ban on gambling card payments applies only to foreign gambling companies and residents' payments.
• Operators who plan around a flat rate on revenue. Tax and monitoring come to 6% of gross gaming revenue a month, with no corporate tax on profit kept in the business; dividends paid abroad carry 5% unless a treaty lowers it.
• B2B suppliers serving foreign operators from Georgia. The supply permit covers supply abroad, at about €34,400 a year.

It is the wrong license if:

• You need players in Georgia: international permits exclude Georgian citizens, and the domestic permits are priced and taxed differently.
• You want many brands or verticals under one license: each Georgian permit covers one vertical and one website.
• Your margins cannot carry a charge on revenue: the 6% is owed in loss-making months too, while Curaçao and Kahnawake charge none.
• You need crypto deposits now: Georgian law sets no crypto route yet, while Curaçao, Anjouan, Tobique and the Isle of Man allow crypto under conditions.

What You Need Before You Apply

Before the application, you form the company, appoint directors and key persons who pass fit-and-proper checks, write the policies the regulator reviews, and get your platform and games tested. The sequence is the same everywhere, and the time it takes to get a gambling license depends mostly on the platform audit and the regulator's review.

What an Online Gambling License Costs

The cost comes in layers: fixed government fees, charges on revenue that grow with the business (gaming tax, levies such as Malta's compliance contribution or Georgia's 1% monitoring fee, and profit tax), and the setup around the license, from the company and local directors to servers and platform certification.

Year one is when the layers land together, so gambling license costs by country compare best on a year-one total and a year-two run rate. In Georgia the one-off charges belong to Random Systems Georgia, the company that runs the state's control system, and they are caps set by Government resolution, with the exact amount fixed in each operator's contract.

Where a License Lets You Take Players

No license opens every country. Anjouan's October 2026 conditions name excluded territories its licensees must not knowingly target, among them Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, and expect geo-IP blocking. Curaçao publishes no list but makes the licensee follow the law of each country it serves.

Georgia's international permits exclude Georgian citizens by law and leave the choice of foreign markets to the operator, which makes restricted countries under each license a question for the business plan rather than the application form.

Your Own License or a White Label

A white label lets a brand run on a provider's license and platform instead of its own. It is faster and cheaper to start, but the license, and with it control of payments and compliance, stays with the provider. In Great Britain a white label partner works under a business-to-business contract with a licensed operator, and one that deals with customers directly without its own license commits an offence; a Curaçao license covers only domains the licensee owns or controls.

Georgia's one-website rule means a Georgian permit cannot carry partner brands; each brand needs its own permit. The trade-off between speed and control is what decides a white label against your own license, and moving later means a new license, a platform contract and a plan for taking players across.

Online Gambling License FAQ