How We Rate Sportsbooks, DFS & Prediction Markets
Every sportsbook, DFS platform, and prediction market we review on VegasInsider ends with a score. This page explains where that score comes from, what it's built on, and what it isn't.
Who Evaluates These Products, and How
Our team scores every operator against a fixed framework built specifically for its product category. Sportsbooks, DFS platforms, and prediction markets don't get evaluated the same way, because they don't carry the same risks. A sportsbook's biggest risk to you is a bad price and a slow withdrawal. A prediction market's biggest risk is a platform that resolves your contract incorrectly or doesn't segregate your funds. Our framework is built around those differences.
That said, all three frameworks share a common core:
- Payout reliability — how fast, and how reliably, you get paid
- Licensing and regulatory compliance — scored on the operator's weakest jurisdiction, not its strongest
- Bonus and promo transparency — whether the terms attached to an offer are disclosed clearly and completely
- Platform and UX quality — whether the product actually works when you need it to
From that shared core, each vertical adds the dimensions that matter specifically to it: odds competitiveness and bettor treatment for sportsbooks, contest structure and projection quality for DFS, resolution accuracy and fund safety for prediction markets. You can find the full breakdown for each on its dedicated page:
- How We Rate Sportsbooks
- How We Rate DFS Platforms
- How We Rate Prediction Markets
What We Actually Measure, and What We are Honest About Not Measuring
Not everything that matters can be verified with the same certainty. A withdrawal time is a fact — we can test it. Whether a sportsbook quietly limits winning bettors is much harder to document at scale, because there's no public dataset for it. Rather than score every dimension as if it carries the same evidentiary weight, we label each one explicitly.
- Measurable dimensions are built from direct testing, public records, or verifiable disclosures.
- Directional dimensions rely on qualitative assessment, pattern recognition, or community-sourced evidence, because the evidence base for them doesn't yet exist in a form we can verify independently.
Across our three verticals, somewhere between three-quarters and four-fifths of a typical score is built from measurable evidence at launch. The rest is directional — and we say so, on the page, next to the dimension it applies to. That's a deliberate choice. A framework that scores everything with false confidence is less honest than one that tells you which parts of the number are hard evidence and which parts are our best-informed judgment. We're also building toward converting directional dimensions into measurable ones over time, as we invest in the data collection needed to verify them independently.
How Scores Change Over Time
A rating is not a one-time verdict. Products change, promotions expire, complaints surface, and regulatory status shifts — sometimes overnight. Our review cadence is built to keep pace with that:
| Review type | Trigger | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Full re-score | Annually, or on a major product change by the operator | All dimensions for that operator |
| Penalty trigger review | Within 30 days of a documented, verified failure | The affected dimension only |
| Regulatory status update | Immediately on any material regulatory or legal action | The regulatory dimension only |
| Directional → measurable upgrade | When sufficient longitudinal or independently verifiable data exists | The specific sub-criteria affected |
A methodology page is only credible if the scores behind it stay current. We treat this cadence as a public commitment, not a guideline.
Do Commercial Relationships Affect the Scores?
VegasInsider earns revenue through affiliate partnerships with some of the operators we review. That relationship is disclosed here and on every review page, and it does not change how a score is calculated.
Our framework is built with penalty multipliers specifically designed to prevent a platform with documented failures from earning a high score regardless of its commercial relationship with us. An operator with a frozen-withdrawal history, a pattern of limiting winning bettors, or a disputed resolution record scores accordingly — whether or not it's a partner. If we've gotten something wrong, or you have documented evidence we should be tracking, we want to hear about it. That kind of input is exactly what moves a directional dimension toward measurable.
Why Depth is the Point
You'll notice these pages are long. That's deliberate. A shorter methodology page is easier to write and easier to read, but it can't tell you why a specific operator scored a 7.2 instead of an 8.0 — and that specificity is the entire value of a rating. Every dimension on every subpage is broken down into the sub-criteria, scoring bands, and penalty triggers that actually produce the number you see on a review page. If you're trying to understand a specific score, that's where to look.