If gambling has stopped being entertainment, help in Ontario is free, confidential and available right now — you do not need an appointment, a diagnosis, or a reason. Call 1-866-531-2600, text CONNEX to 247247, or use the live chat at ConnexOntario. It runs 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
The rest of this page is the practical detail: how to shut off every regulated site in the province at once, which controls an operator is obliged to give you, and how to tell a site that answers to the AGCO from one that answers to nobody.
Where to get help, today
ConnexOntario is the province’s referral line for mental health, addiction and problem gambling services. It is free, confidential, and staffed around the clock. You can call on behalf of someone else, and you do not have to give your name.
- Phone: 1-866-531-2600
- Text: CONNEX to 247247
- Live chat and email: connexontario.ca
- Hours: 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
The Responsible Gambling Council, an independent non-profit based in Toronto, runs a free self-assessment you can take privately in a few minutes. It is the same organisation behind the RG Check accreditation that every operator in this market is required to hold, and its questions are a more useful starting point than anything we could write here.
If you are in immediate crisis, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency department. Gambling harm and suicide risk travel together more often than most people realise, and that is an emergency like any other.
Shutting off every Ontario site at once: BetGuard
Until May 2026, excluding yourself from online gambling in Ontario meant contacting each operator separately, one account at a time — which put the burden on the person least able to carry it. BetGuard replaced that with a single registration that covers the whole regulated market.
It is run by iGaming Ontario, every registered operator is required to participate, and it also covers OLG’s own online platform. You do not need an account anywhere to use it.
- Where: betguard.ca, direct — not through a casino.
- Who: anyone 19 or over in Ontario.
- What it takes: about five minutes, government ID and a selfie for verification.
- How long: six months, one year, five years, or a length you choose.
- What it covers: every gaming site on the iGaming Ontario register.
The part worth knowing before you start: you can extend or renew an exclusion, but you cannot shorten or cancel one. That is deliberate, and it is the feature rather than the catch — a self-exclusion you can undo on a bad evening protects nobody. Choose the period on the assumption that you will not be able to change your mind.
BetGuard covers the regulated market. It has no reach over offshore sites, which is one of the concrete reasons the distinction below matters.
The controls every registered site owes you
These are not features an operator offers to be helpful. The Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming require them, and the gaming system has to enforce them once set. If a site makes any of this hard to find, that tells you something about the site.
- Deposit limits, over periods you pick. Operators must offer at least 24-hour, 7-day and one-month periods. Set more than one and the lowest applies, so a modest monthly cap cannot be undone by a generous daily one.
- Session and time limits. You must be able to cap how long you stay logged in, and to keep track of time passing while you play.
- Limits available from the start. They have to be easy to reach when you register, not only buried in settings afterwards.
- A 24-hour cooling-off on loosening them. Tightening a limit takes effect immediately; raising or removing one does not take effect for 24 hours. The delay exists precisely for the moment you would most want to skip it.
Set the limits when you open the account, while the decision is abstract. Setting them later, in the middle of a session, means deciding at the worst possible moment.
Why the register is a safety question, not paperwork
Ontario is one of the few places in the world where “is this site legal here?” has a plain answer: it is on the iGaming Ontario register, or it is not. The register currently holds 49 operators running 84 gaming sites, and it is public.
Playing on a site that is not on it means every protection on this page stops applying at once. There is no AGCO complaints process if a withdrawal is refused. There is no independent audit of whether the games pay what they claim. There is no RG Check accreditation, no mandatory deposit limits, and — the one that matters most here — BetGuard cannot reach it. A person who self-excludes and then finds an offshore site has excluded themselves from the sites that were protecting them and from nothing else.
Two other rules apply to every legal site in the province: you must be 19 or over, and you must be physically in Ontario when you play. Registered operators check your location, which is why a legal account stops working when you cross the border.
When it has stopped being a game
We are a comparison site, not clinicians, so we are not going to hand you a checklist and call it a diagnosis. But the questions the Responsible Gambling Council’s self-assessment asks are worth sitting with, and most of them are about behaviour rather than money.
- Betting more than you meant to, or playing longer than you planned, more often than not.
- Going back to win losses back — the single most expensive habit in gambling.
- Borrowing, selling, or using money meant for something else.
- Hiding how much or how often you play from people close to you.
- Feeling restless or irritable when you try to cut down.
- Gambling to escape stress, boredom or low mood rather than for entertainment.
If several of those sound familiar, the deposit limits above are a reasonable first step and ConnexOntario is a better one. Neither requires you to have decided that you have a problem.
If it is someone else
ConnexOntario takes calls from family and friends, not only from people who gamble. You can ask what services exist, what they cost, and how to raise it, without naming anyone. Nobody can be self-excluded by a third party: BetGuard registration has to be done by the person themselves, which is a limit worth knowing about before you count on it.
Where we stand
We should be straight about what we are, because it bears on how you read the rest of this site. We are an independent comparison site and we earn money when a reader opens an account with an operator we list, at no cost to the reader. That is a commercial interest in people gambling, and no amount of care on this page cancels it out.
What we do about it: we only list operators on the iGaming Ontario register, no operator can pay for a rank or a score, and we do not publish bonus offers, amounts or conditions anywhere on this site — Ontario’s advertising rules prohibit it, and inducements are the part of the marketing that does the most damage to the people least able to afford it. Our full method is set out in how we review casinos.
If you have self-excluded, the most useful thing this site can do is stay out of your way. Nothing here is designed to talk anyone back.
19+. You must be physically located in Ontario to play. Gambling should be entertainment, not income — free, confidential support is available around the clock from ConnexOntario on 1-866-531-2600.