What GAMSTOP covers
GAMSTOP is a single self-exclusion request that reaches every online operator licensed in Great Britain. Participation has been compulsory for those operators since 31 March 2020, so one registration closes the whole licensed online market to you rather than one site at a time.
How long it lasts
You choose the period: six months, one year or five years. Once it starts it cannot be ended early, and when it expires access does not simply switch back on — there is a cooling-off step before accounts can be used again. That design is deliberate, because the risky moment is the impulse at the end of the exclusion, not the decision at the start.
Registering blocks the websites and apps of British-licensed businesses. Accounts you already hold are closed to you, and new ones cannot be opened with the details you registered.
The gaps worth planning around
GAMSTOP is an online scheme for licensed operators, and everything outside that description needs its own step:
- betting shops, arcades and land-based casinos, which run free multi-operator and national self-exclusion schemes of their own;
- sites with no British licence, which are outside the regulator’s reach altogether;
- payments, which are best closed off with a bank card gambling block on top.
Used together, those three cover the routes that a single tool leaves open. The bank block is the one people skip, and it is the one that stops a deposit at the last step.
Where to get help
The National Gambling Helpline is free and confidential on 0808 8020 133, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, for England, Scotland and Wales. Talking to it costs nothing and does not commit you to anything.
If you are not ready for a five-year decision, the lighter tools sit in the account itself — deposit limits, reality checks and time-outs — and our safer gambling page lists the support services in one place.
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