Canadian Online Casinos

Canada’s lax gambling laws and affluent population fuel a healthy casino industry in that country. Online casinos cannot legally exist on Canadian soil, but many international sites do advertise in Canada and readily accept new customers. If you’re looking for a place to gamble online, you won’t have any problems finding a real money website in Canada.

Some casino sites cater specifically to Canadians by accepting deposits in CAD and handling all currency exchanges for you. Some of these casinos even spread games that let you gamble with Canadian dollars right at the table. It’s the little details like these that make all the difference to us when we rank casinos.

In our search for online casinos for Canadians, we searched far and wide for gambling sites that work with CAD deposits and withdrawals. It wasn’t long before we had a list of dozens of gambling sites. From there, we were able to narrow it down even further by looking at the safety, jackpots, promotions and game selection of each casino.

Legality of Gambling Online in Canada

Gambling law in Canada is unclear on many issues related to gambling. We’re not going to try to dig deep into the law and give you actual legal advice, but here’s the deal: millions of Canadians have gambled online in recent years and nobody has ever gotten in trouble for placing a bet online.

Online casinos run massive ad campaigns in Canada and still, there is no outrage. It looks like most people are willing to just shrug it off and worry about more important things. In other words, there’s nothing to worry about.

The main thing you would want to avoid in Canada is going out and starting your own online casino. You would definitely get in trouble if you tried to open a gambling site headquartered somewhere in Canada. If you look closely, you’ll see that all the biggest “Canadian” casinos are actually located either overseas or on tribal land.

Deposits and Withdrawals

Online casinos in Canada are able to work with numerous deposit and withdrawal methods. You can deposit with a credit card or debit card for instant access. Or if you plan on trying a few different casinos, you may want to sign up for an account with one of the big e-wallets such as Neteller and Skrill. You can also use prepaid gift cards and bank transfers to fund your account.

When you withdraw, you’ll also have a few options. Some people (although not many) can get their credit cards credited with the full withdrawal amount. Other options include credits to your e-wallet account, direct bank transfers, cash transfers and checks in the mail.

As long as you play at reputable casinos, the deposit and withdrawal process should be easy and fast. The best Canadian sites are known for processing both deposits and withdrawals on the same day.

Download vs. Instant Play

We noticed that most of the top Canadian online casinos have both downloadable software and an instant play option. Everyone has their own preference, but most people seem to prefer to download the casino software when playing on a personal computer.

Downloadable software tends to run a little faster and look a little better than playing games in a web browser. Plus, the downloadable software almost always has a bigger game selection. It seems that most game developers release games for the software version first, which means casino sites must go through extra work to port them over to the instant play format.

However, there are times when the instant play casino is the way to go. If you want to play on your mobile device or iPad, you’ll have to choose the instant play option. All you need to play instant play games for real money is a web browser and internet access.