How Trust Scores work

Why I built this

I started cashing out from these sites because nobody reviewing them had. The going rate for a "review" in this corner of the internet is an affiliate link and a thumbs-up. So the numbers here come from what actually happened when I deposited, ran KYC, and asked for my money back, not from an operator's press kit. Where I haven't tested something myself, the page says so instead of guessing.

The seven factors and their weights

How scoring works

• TRUSTED70–100
• CAUTION50–69
• AVOID0–49

Each factor gets a 0–100 score from documented evidence. Weight those by the table above and you have the base score, also 0–100.

Two adjustments can pull the base down: a freshness decay and a complaint penalty, both defined in the next section. Subtract them, clamp the result to 0–100, and that's the published score, the number stamped on the operator's page.

Tiers come straight off that number. 70 and above is trusted, 50–69 is caution, anything below 50 is avoid. Those map to the TRUSTED, CAUTION, and AVOID stamps on operator pages. No one nudges a score after the math runs: there's no manual override, which is also why an operator can't sit in the trusted tier at 64.

Adjustments: freshness decay and complaint penalty

The base score measures the operator on the seven factors. Two things the factors don't capture on their own can pull the published score below the base, by formula. Every operator page that carries an adjustment shows the arithmetic next to its score breakdown: base, minus each adjustment, equals the published score.

Freshness decay

Evidence goes stale. If a score hasn't been re-verified for more than 180 days, it loses 1 point for every 30 days past that mark, to a maximum of −10. A score re-verified within the last six months carries no decay; one untouched for a year sits near the floor. Re-verifying an operator resets it to zero. The decay is recomputed for every operator on a schedule (below), and each change is written to the changelog.

Complaint penalty

When a documented legal event names an operator, that operator takes a penalty scaled to severity:

• −5 a filed lawsuit
• −10 a regulatory action (state attorney general, cease-and-desist)
• −15 an exit-scam alert

Penalties from multiple events add up, capped at −25 in total. Each penalty eases by 1 point every 90 days, so a single lawsuit's hit is mostly gone after about 15 months unless something new is filed. The penalty is recomputed the moment a legal event is recorded and on the weekly schedule; the source event is linked from the operator's page and the legal tracker.

Cadence

Both adjustments are recomputed automatically every Monday at 04:00 UTC, and the complaint penalty is also recomputed immediately whenever a new legal event is recorded. Nothing here is hand-applied. The formulas run on a schedule, and every resulting change to a published score lands in the changelog with its reason.

Related: our operator-by-operator payout study shows how this plays out in practice: which operators have actually paid, how fast, and where the receipts came from.

State adjustments: the same operator, scored by where you live

The published score is a national number. But a sweepstakes operator that is sound in Texas can be a worse bet in a state that bans the redeemable-coin model, sets a higher minimum age, or has an open lawsuit against it. On every operator page you can pick a state above the score; we re-derive that operator's score for that state from the law and the operator's own terms. The factor breakdown lower on the page always reflects the national base score. The state layer adjusts that base; it doesn't re-run the seven factors.

Five conditions can change the picture. Each one shows its source on the page; nothing is applied without a citation you can check.

Not available in the state

If the operator's terms exclude the state (we record this per state in operator_states), there is no score. We say so and link to operators that do serve the state. Operator opt-out takes precedence over every other adjustment.

Recent state exit

If the operator pulled out of the state within the last 90 days, the score reads N/A for that state, dated to the exit. A balance you still hold there is a support question, not a rating.

Sweeps Coins not redeemable (cap at 50)

In a state where sweepstakes are banned or a ban is enacted and pending (12 states as of this writing: the engine deny-list plus Maine, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Indiana), the redeemable-currency model is broken: you can't cash out. We cap the state score at 50 (the top of the Caution band) rather than zeroing it, because free Gold-Coin play can still be legitimate. The cap cites the state's statute.

Minimum-age conflict (−10)

If the operator's terms set a minimum age below the state's legal floor for sweepstakes play (for example terms that allow 18+ in a state that requires 21), a resident at that age is non-compliant even though the sign-up would go through. That is a real risk to the player, so the state score drops 10 points, citing the state age statute. See minimum age for how the floor is set.

Active state action against the operator (−15)

If there is an open, operator-named state action in that state (a lawsuit, cease-and-desist, or attorney-general action recorded in legal_events), the state score drops 15 points, citing the filing. This is on top of any national complaint penalty already in the base score; the state layer reflects that the heat is concentrated where the action was filed.

The arithmetic

The point adjustments stack, then the cap (if any) applies, then the result is clamped to 0–100:

state score = clamp_0–100( min( base − age − action , 50 if SC-banned ) )

If none of the five conditions apply, the state score equals the national score and we say so plainly.

Assumptions and privacy

Two honest caveats. First, some per-state availability is inferred from an operator's published restricted-territories list rather than from a first-hand sign-up, and the page labels those rows as inferred. Second, we never auto-detect your location: the state is shown only when you choose it. The choice is remembered in the page URL (?state=CA) so a state-specific view is shareable, and nothing about your location leaves your browser.

Freshness: how current a score is

Every operator page shows a freshness badge so you know how recently the score was checked. There are two states. If I've individually re-verified the operator by hand, the badge reads “Reviewed N days ago by Noah Rafkin”. If the score is the rubric's, it reads “Auto-scored from rubric · N days since last update”. Either way, the number is honest about its own age.

A score doesn't stay fresh forever. Once it goes more than 180 days without re-verification, it starts to lose freshness: the badge turns amber, and the published score takes the freshness decay defined under adjustments. Re-verifying the operator clears the amber and resets the clock.

Score history: every change, charted

Every operator page carries a 90-day mini-chart of its published score. Each point on that chart is a logged change (a re-verification, an adjustment, a new factor reading), and each one records the reason it was made. The full permanent record, all the way back, is the public changelog; the mini-chart is just the recent window of it.

The chart is reconstructed from the same append-only history rows that feed the changelog, and it's anchored to the live published score. That means it can never disagree with the number stamped on the page. The line ends exactly where the current score sits, by construction.

What feeds the factors

Four kinds of evidence: the operator's own terms documents, first-hand redemption tests where I've performed them, state legal records, and player reports filed on review pages. Negative findings link to their source. When the evidence is thin, the score reflects that rather than guessing.

First-hand credit: how depth of testing earns points

When I test an operator in person (a real account, a real deposit, real cash-outs), that evidence feeds the score by formula, the same way every other signal does. Four kinds of first-hand observation each add points, each capped, and each idempotent (logging the same thing twice never counts twice). Every credit lands in the changelog with its reason.

• +5 each delivered redemption → Track Record, up to +20 (four cash-outs = full credit)
• +2 an in-depth session (a first purchase, or a daily-bonus week) → Track Record, up to +10
• +3 a session with 3+ tracked first-purchase offers, confirming the advertised promo was honored → ToS Honesty, once per operator
• +2 a logged daily-bonus week (5+ distinct days) → Reviews, once per operator per month, up to +10

Redemption credit and depth credit sit under separate caps, so first-hand evidence can lift Track Record by at most +30 combined. Only positive evidence is credited today: a failed KYC or an unrecovered cash-out is documented on the operator's page but does not subtract here yet. Nothing is credited that I can't show: the promo-honesty credit is withheld where an operator's terms couldn't be read, rather than assumed.

Daily-bonus value: turning free coins into a dollar figure

Most review sites quote a daily bonus as a coin count (“1,000 GC + 0.30 SC daily”), which tells you almost nothing about what it's worth. A daily bonus is free play; its real value depends on how hard the coins are to clear and whether the operator actually pays out. Every operator page with daily-bonus data carries a value-over-time table, and the daily-bonus leaderboard ranks operators by it.

The formula

We start from the redeemable coin, Sweeps Coins (SC), the currency you can cash out, at a per-day figure, project it forward, and take a small haircut for the slot return-to-player you can't recover. This is the value the operator offers; it does not depend on how reliably it pays:

potential cash = (daily SC × days) ÷ playthrough × RTP haircut × $1/SC

• ÷ playthrough = 1× by default. Sweepstakes operators almost universally use 1× playthrough (you wager your SC once before redeeming), so we default to 1× and only divide by more when we've actually measured a higher requirement, first-hand or in unambiguous ToS. We never infer it from a score.
• × RTP haircut = 0.95. A ~5% trim for the slot house edge you can't claw back: most sweeps slots run roughly 96% RTP and we round down for conservatism. Applied to every operator.

Playthrough as a trust signal, not a cash discount

Our f_playthrough factor no longer drives the cash number. It tracks a TRUST signal: does the operator promise a clean 1× playthrough, or reserve the right to crank it up? We found the factor was really measuring ToS language, not the wagering you face: an explicit “1×” scores 89–100, a silent ToS defaults to 83 (about 45% of operators), a discretionary clause 50, and an honest “up to 20×” lands at 20–40. Folding that into the dollar figure punished the many operators who are 1× in practice but whose ToS simply doesn't spell it out. So the factor now drives a separate badge on the daily-bonus leaderboard (Clean 1×, ToS allows discretion, or up to 20×), while the cash math stays at 1× unless we've measured otherwise.

It's still a deliberate simplification: real playthrough varies by game and bonus terms, and a 1× assumption can flatter an operator that quietly enforces more. That's exactly why the ToS-language badge sits right next to the value: a reserve-the-right clause is shown, not hidden.

Where the daily figure comes from

I prefer my own first-hand daily-bonus log (the coins actually credited over a real test week) to the operator's marketing claim. When I have several days, I average them and show the testing window; a streak-escalating bonus (more coins on day 7 than day 1) is drawn as a small bar chart. If all I have is the operator's own promotions page, I use that and label it. A daily bonus quoted only in Gold Coins, with no SC, has no cash value (GC is promotional play), so those operators are kept off the cash ranking.

Assumptions

Two honest caveats, disclosed on every table. The dollar figure assumes 1 SC ≈ $1 at redemption (the standard prize-coin convention) and that you claim the bonus every single day: miss days and your real total is lower. The annualized number is a projection, not a promise: it assumes the operator's bonus structure stays stable, when daily bonuses in fact change frequently. Each table is stamped with the date its underlying figure was observed (“as of …”), so you can see how current it is.

Minimum age: state floor vs. operator terms

How old you have to be to play isn't a single number. Two rules stack, and the stricter one wins. Every state sets a statutory minimum age for sweepstakes play (the state floor); separately, each operator sets its own minimum in its terms of service (the operator floor). The age that actually binds you is the higher of the two:

effective minimum age = max(state floor, operator ToS age)

Most states' floor is 18; Alabama and Nebraska are 19. Many operators set their own floor at 18, but a number set 21 in their terms regardless of where you live, and a few set 19 in specific states. So a 21+ operator is 21+ everywhere it accepts players, while an 18+ operator is still 19+ for a resident of a 19+ state. We surface the operator's own ToS age on each review page (when we have sourced it) and the state floor on each state page, and where the two differ we flag the higher number as the one that governs.

One honesty rule, same as everywhere else on the site: if we could not source an operator's stated minimum age from its own terms, the review shows no age claim rather than defaulting to “18+”. An age badge on a review page means we read that number in the operator's terms and link them; its absence means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's 18.

Where a score comes from: baseline vs. reviewed

Every score carries a provenance label so you can tell a rubric-computed baseline apart from one a person has individually verified. Both are computed from real evidence with the same formula. The difference is whether a named reviewer has signed off on it.

Baseline

The score was computed by the rubric on this page from documented public evidence (the operator's terms, state legal records, and player reports), but no individual has re-verified it by hand. Its stamp reads BASELINE and the page carries no named reviewer. Most operators sit here while I work through the catalog. A baseline score is a measurement from evidence, not a guess; it just hasn't had a person's individual sign-off yet.

Reviewed

An operator I've worked by hand: I read the actual terms, recorded the redemption evidence I could obtain (including first-hand cashouts where I ran them), and published a written verdict. These pages carry a “Reviewed by Noah Rafkin” line next to the score breakdown with the date the score was verified. A minority of operators (18 at the time of writing) have cleared that bar.

The distinction matters for honesty: I never attach my name as reviewer to a baseline row. If a page doesn't say a person reviewed it, a person hasn't. The score is the rubric's, computed transparently from the formula above.

Versioning

The formula is versioned. Any change to a weight creates a new version id, and the change is logged in the public changelog. The version in force right now is v1 (June 2026) (e9a89dbe). Old scores keep a reference to the version they were computed under, so a weight change can never silently rewrite history.

Independence

Some operators pay this site commissions (disclosure). Those relationships have zero input here: there is no affiliate factor, no affiliate weight, and no way for a commission to move a number. Operators can't pay for placement, score, or removal.

Analytics and your privacy

We collect anonymous, aggregate traffic data (pageviews, referrers, and which pages get read) via Cloudflare Web Analytics and Plausible. No cookies, no personal data, no cross-site tracking, no advertising profiles. Nothing that identifies you, and nothing that follows you to other sites.

We also count anonymous events that tell us whether the site is useful, for example that an outbound affiliate link was clicked, or that a player report was submitted, never tied to who you are. Both tools are privacy-first and cookieless by design, which is why you don't see a cookie banner. Read their policies: Plausible's data policy and Cloudflare Web Analytics.

The newsletter

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What we send: new operator launches, state-law changes, and operator-side terms-of-service edits: the same vetted intel as the site, once a week. We never sell your address, and every email has a one-click unsubscribe in the footer. Unsubscribing removes you immediately and for good.

What's not in the score yet

Two honest gaps. First, bulk complaint-sentiment mining (aggregating Reddit and Trustpilot at scale) is not yet a scored input. (This is distinct from the complaint penalty above, which fires on documented legal events, not on aggregated chatter.) The player reviews factor is currently scored from the evidence I can document directly. Player reports are collected on every review page and feed the redemption stats as they verify. When sentiment aggregation becomes a scored input, the version id above will change.

Second, state-availability tracking is rolling out and not yet complete, so some operator pages don't have verified availability data for every state.