Licensed sites
Regulated by: Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries
Licensed betting · Canada
Canadian betting is decided province by province
There is no national online betting licence in Canada. Two provinces run open markets where private sportsbooks and casinos hold a registration: Ontario, regulated by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, and Alberta, which opened to private operators on 13 July 2026. The other eight provinces offer one government run site instead, so the legal choice depends entirely on where you live.
19+
Minimum age in most provinces, 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec
2
Provinces with open markets: Ontario and Alberta
CAD
Every legal account runs in Canadian dollars
What we check on every Canadian site
- A current provincial registration or a provincial lottery corporation behind the site
- The company that actually holds the registration, not just the brand name
- Identity and location checks before a first bet, with payouts in Canadian dollars
- Deposit limits, time limits and self exclusion, including BetGuard in Ontario
Why these are registrations, not licences
Section 207(1)(a) of the Criminal Code allows only a provincial government to conduct and manage a lottery scheme. A private company cannot be licensed to run gambling in its own right anywhere in Canada.
Ontario works around this by having iGaming Ontario, a Crown agency, conduct and manage the market while private operators act as its suppliers under a commercial agreement, with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario registering them. That is why every card on this page shows a registration and an operating company rather than a licence number.
Alberta adopted the same structure when it opened in July 2026, with the Alberta iGaming Corporation in the conducting role and Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis as regulator.
What the law says about players
The Criminal Code provisions on gambling are aimed at who may conduct and manage a lottery scheme, not at who may place a bet. There is no offence in Canada for an individual placing a bet, with any operator, licensed or not.
“Is it legal for me to play” and “is this site legally allowed to offer me a bet” are two different questions, and most comparison sites blur them. This page answers the second.
Kahnawà:ke, the third regulator
Canada's licensing map has one more piece that provincial guides tend to leave out. The Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission has licensed online gambling since 1999 from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawà:ke, just outside Montréal, under its own Kahnawà:ke Gaming Law rather than any provincial statute. It describes the territory as a sovereign jurisdiction, and its authority rests on Indigenous sovereignty rather than a provincial grant.
Canada has never successfully challenged it in court, and a number of established operators hold its licence. But a Kahnawà:ke licence is not a provincial registration. It does not place a site on the iGaming Ontario register, and it carries none of the protections a province attaches to its own market. There is no provincial dispute route, no BetGuard, and no provincial deposit or advertising rules.
It belongs in a category of its own, neither offshore nor provincially regulated. We describe it here because a licensing page that covers only the provincial system is incomplete, not because we are recommending it.