At present, India does not have its own regulated online casino market, so there are currently no domestic online casino operators within India. This has not stopped operators from other countries around the world from targeting the Indian market. The enormous country of 1.3 billion people has become an intense focus for some of the larger online casino groups during the last few years, with some even having launched new sites specifically targeting the Indian gambler.
Despite this, finding the best online casino India is still difficult, just as it is in almost every country of the world. Every online casino will boast of being the best – after all, why wouldn’t they? They want your business! But how do you know who you can trust?
The ZoaSlots directory has your back here – we have created an exhaustive list of all the casinos we can find that serve the Indian market, and our team of professionals has a combined total of over a century of online gaming experience within Asia’s iGaming industry
🏆 Best Real Money Online Casinos India
- 22Bet
- Betwinner
- HappyLuke
- Bitstarz
- Bitcasino.io
- 10Cric
📝 Guide to Online Casino Sites in India
In terms of official population figures, only China beats India in the league table of the world’s most populous countries. It’s a very close thing, too, at least by the official statistics – India’s population sits at 95.9% that of China’s stated number of 1,439,323,776 citizens.
When Indian President Modi made a sudden crackdown on tax evasion and money laundering roughly five years ago, one side effect of his decision to withdraw much of the existing paper money from circulation was that it forced hundreds of millions of citizens who had previously been completely unbanked to either apply for a bank account or register with one of the numerous electronic or mobile payment services that are available in the country. Where Indians are most fortunate is with regards to online gambling – most of the large European online casinos happily accept Indian players.
🔏 How do Create an Account at Casino Sites as an Indian Player?
Signing up to play at an online casino from inside India is much the same as anywhere else in the world, although because there is no India-specific regulation or legislation relating to playing casino games online, you may find that you won’t be asked to complete some of the steps that players based in, for example, Europe might run into. We can break the procedure down into a handful of straightforward, simple steps which should take just a few minutes to complete:
Step One: Select a casino
In much of Europe, most online casinos now available to players are very similar in most respects – the functionality of their website, quality of customer support including withdrawal times, and the rules attached to their bonuses are often the only differentiating factors. For Indian players, you may also have to consider:
- Does the casino offer the games you want to play?
- Does their website appear to function satisfactorily on your device?
- Is India available as a selectable country?
- Assuming Indians ARE permitted to play, is your home state also allowed to participate? Telangana and Andhra Pradesh both banned all online gambling for those living within their borders in January 2020, so many sites do not allow new signups from these locations.
- Are suitable deposit and withdrawal options supported that will allow you to get money in and out of the casino?
Step Two: Find the Registration Feature
Usually, this will be right on the homepage of the casino you wish to play at, but occasionally you may have to choose to “Log in” before you are presented with the option of creating a new account.
Step Three: Complete the Registration Form
This step should be no different from the dozens or even hundreds of other websites you have signed up with in the past – a list of fields for you to complete.
Casinos will usually need to verify your identity to ensure you are old enough to gamble legally in your country. For Indians, the minimum legal age to gamble is 21. Whilst there is no national identity card in India, documents such as driving licenses, passports, ration cards, land certificates, and marriage certificates are common enough that almost every citizen should hold at least one such document. Most Indians who have the disposable income to gamble online should be able to complete the registration procedure satisfactorily to begin playing.
Step Four: Make a Deposit & Claim Your Bonus
Just before you make your deposit, you should make sure that your intended deposit method is eligible for any bonus you wish to claim. Also, be sure to read the terms and conditions of the bonus carefully – the last thing you want to do is unknowingly play an ineligible game or place a bet that invalidates your winnings once it is time to make a withdrawal.
🔎 What to Look for in the best Online Casino India?
- First, never forget that you are playing in an unregulated market, so sticking to casinos based in other jurisdictions where there are rules, regulations, and most importantly, laws that can protect you is of paramount importance. The UKGC, for example, requires that any casino holding its license treats all of its customers the same way, even if they are not citizens of the UK. Bottom line: stay away from any site that is not licensed by a reputable gaming authority, such as:
- UK Gambling Commission (UKGC)
- Malta Gaming Authority (MGA)
- Government of Gibraltar, Gaming Division
- Isle of Man Supervision Commission
These are the most common regulators serving Europe and are the safest bet for Indian gamblers. Every online casino with a valid license will display the logos of their licensing authorities on their homepage, and these logos will link directly to that casino’s page within the regulator’s database.
- Customer support in a language you can easily understand should also be considered essential. Live chat is preferable to all other kinds of support, especially when available 24 hours a day.
⚖️ Gambling Laws in India
India has many ancient laws related to gambling which the courts have generally chosen to apply to online gambling in the same way they would any other instance of gambling without a license. The Information Technology Act (2000) did not mention gambling or betting at all, and only a single state – Maharashtra – has created a law specifically to ban online gambling.
The result is a legal environment where players from both countries are not breaking the law by participating in online gambling – whether that be sports betting, online casinos, or poker – yet there are numerous obstacles in the way which prevent companies from offering such a service domestically.
When the UIGEA was introduced in 2006, American banks were forced to stop processing deposits and withdrawals from American online casinos too, and from, their customers. As prohibition always does, a black market appeared almost overnight, with companies set up specifically for “transaction processing”.
In India, a similar situation exists for a very different reason. The old laws we mentioned previously make it illegal for Indian gambling companies to set up their domestic casino websites, despite a prior attempt by Sikkim (a state with legal land-based casinos) to legalize online gambling within its borders back in 2010. It is not illegal for Indians to play at offshore sites, however – provided the casino they choose accepts Indian rupees as a payment method.
💯 Pros and Cons of Playing Online Casino India
Indian players are, in many ways, extremely lucky; they can choose to play with the huge number of online casinos based in and around Asia, provided they accept rupees as a payment method, and they also have access to the online casino industry of Europe and much of the Western world. Whichever side you choose to go for, you should make sure that the site you intend to play with has a license from a respected authority.
Not all Western casinos will have the full range of Eastern games such as Teen Patti, Pai Gow, Mahjong, Fan-Tan, Chinese Poker, Sic Bo, etc. On the other hand, as we mentioned briefly earlier, some of the larger casino groups have already set up new brands that are intended to cater especially to the Indian consumer.
Sites which have been created specifically for the Indian market are likely to use different color schemes and styles compared to those which target Western audiences, yet Indian players are in a unique position in that they are welcome to play at both.
On the downside, casino bonuses have been drying up of late in response to both an increased number of advantage players and the recent problem of bonus terms and conditions getting completely out of hand. Online casinos have responded by switching to offering alternative types of promotion, although this is not a problem that is strictly limited to Indian players, so it is difficult to regard this as a con of being an indian online casino India player.
As always, we recommend checking our directory before deciding on which online casino to try next.
♦️ What are the most played casino games in India?
Modern multi-platform browser-based online casinos feature hundreds or even thousands of games from up to several dozen different software providers. Let’s talk a little more about a few particular games which will be of particular interest to Indian players:
- Andar Bahar – This Indian gambling game is said to have originated in Bengaluru (modern Bangalore) in the Southern state of Karnataka. It is sometimes called by its Tamil name of Mangatha or Ullae Veliyae. It is a game of pure chance in which the dealer places their card face up, and the players on one of two piles: the Andar (inside) pile or Bahar (outside) pile. The dealer will then deal cards alternately between the two piles until the value of the next card matches the initial dealer card. The pile where the matching card lands is the winning pile. This game has been played for centuries throughout India and across Asia, but in modern times has become a staple of online casinos serving the Indian market. Katti is another game that is somewhat similar to Andar Bahar, so you might wish to try that game too if you enjoy this one.
- Sic-Bo – The game of Sic-Bo may have originated as a spin-off of craps at some point in the distant past, as they are both dice games with lots of similar wages. In Sic-Bo, three dice are used rather than two for Craps, and there is no shooter or even large table – instead, the dealer uses a chest to determine the result by shaking it vividly until all three dice come to rest in their slots within the box. If the combination he reveals after opening the chest matches your wager(s) you win, otherwise, you lose.
- Dragon Tiger – In recent years, the Baccarat-like game Dragon Tiger has found a new audience worldwide thanks to Evolution Studios, who have created a live dealer version of the game which can be found at just about every casino serving Indian Players.
- Teen Patti – We couldn’t possibly list Indian casino games without mentioning Teen Patti, which translates as “Three Cards” in English. Teen Patti originated on the Indian subcontinent but is popular throughout much of Southern Asia today. Whenever there is a Hindu celebration in India, you are likely to find people playing Teen Patti in a social context. Of all the Hindu festivals, it is most frequently played during Diwali.
- Pai Gow – Pai Gow and its descendants such as Pai Gow Poker are one such game that reaches directly across any political divisions, with more and more Indian players getting hooked on this great Chinese gambling game month by month. The name “Pai Gow” translates literally as “Make Nine” after the normal maximum hand. This isn’t a game to just sit down and play immediately without any prior research; it has many stages and a complex strategy, all of which you will need to understand to do well.
- Mahjong – The classic tile game of Mahjong is perfectly suited to be played on a computer, as it avoids the somewhat tedious task of setting up the tiles from scratch – this needs to be done in a very specific way to ensure that each pile is beatable, whilst also making it tough by punishing the player and potentially making the remaining stack impossible to clear if a mistake is made. When Mahjong is played in India, characters from Bengali, Hindi, or Urdu are most commonly used, although you may encounter several other Indian or Asian languages depending on the host country of the online casino you are playing at.
- Blackjack – Just as popular in the East as it is in the West, making it strange that some Asian casinos have been slow to add the game to their catalogs. There is a mathematically correct basic strategy for every variant of Blackjack, and for every subset of the rules, too.
- Roulette – This game has been present at Asian casinos for centuries now, just like in the rest of the world. Roulette is a completely random game. The American versions have a house edge of 5.4% as a result of the two green zero pockets on the wheel, compared to 2.7% for the European version which does away with one of the green pockets. For this reason, always stick to the European tables.
🎁 Online Casino Bonuses and Promotions
An online casino bonus gives you additional funds to play with, but whether it is a good idea to take such a bonus depends on your idea of what constitutes a good night playing at an online casino. If you intend to spend the remainder of your evening playing online casino games, and plan on making another deposit should you go broke anyway, then there is no reason not to accept a casino bonus on almost any occasion. The traditional casino bonus has fallen out of favor in recent years, with more and more casinos preferring to give players a batch of free spins as a welcome bonus instead.
⁉️ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Yes, you absolutely can win real money whilst playing at an online casino. The best way to protect yourself is to only play with casinos that hold a license from a trustworthy authority.
It’s difficult to say why governments make the decisions that they do – the United States made the bizarre decision not to ban online gambling, but rather to ban the processing of online gambling transactions. The Indian government may indeed pass similar legislation in the future, but it is unlikely they will try and prohibit online gambling entirely.
Live casino games use a multitude of technologies such as chipped cards, card scanners, automatic shufflers, live video streaming, and many more, to recreate the experience of being at a real casino when you are sitting at home playing via your laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
Yes, every site which offers both sports betting and casino gaming will have a settings page where you can disable the “Mini-games” whilst you are trying to concentrate on your sports betting.
This all depends on the casino you intend to play at. Some payment methods do not support withdrawals, so this is a fair reason to ask. Most of the mobile and digital payment methods offer ways to withdraw your funds from online casinos, and many of them will also supply you with a pre-paid debit card allowing you to withdraw or spend the money in your casino balance without needing to move the money to your bank account.