How We Review Competition Sites

Let's be straight with you from the start.

There are hundreds of prize competition sites in the UK, and almost every one of them will tell you it's brilliant, trustworthy and totally fair. Of course they will — it's their own site. We're not them. PrizeDrawsDaily doesn't run any competitions, we're not owned by anyone who does, and we don't take a penny to bump a site up our rankings. Our only job is to tell you, honestly, which sites look like a fair shot and which ones we'd think twice about.

This page explains exactly how we decide. No secret sauce, no vague "trusted reviews" badge — just the actual things we look at and the rules we hold ourselves to. If you ever think we've got a site wrong, this is the page that lets you check our working.

Our score is about risk to you — not how loud the cheering is

Here's the part most review sites won't admit. A site can have a wall of five-star reviews and still not be the safest place for your money — and we'll score it accordingly.

That's because our rating isn't an average of how happy people are. It's our read on how much risk there is for you, the person handing over a few quid for a ticket. Winners are, naturally, delighted, and they leave glowing reviews. That tells you people enjoy winning. It doesn't always tell you whether the draws are transparent, whether there's a genuine free way to enter, whether a "subscription" will quietly keep charging you, or whether the whole thing is edging into gambling territory.

So now and again you'll see us land a bit below a site's Trustpilot score. When we do, it's almost never about a few grumpy customers — it's about something structural: hard-to-cancel subscriptions, draws you can't verify, slot-machine-style mechanics, missing free-entry routes, or a company that's hard to pin down. We'll always say plainly why.

What we actually look at

Every score comes down to a handful of honest questions. We weigh them together — there's no robotic points machine, because real life doesn't work like that — but these are the things on the table for every single site.

• Is there a real, accountable company behind it? We check Companies House for the registered business, who runs it, and how long it's been going. A named company with a track record is reassuring. A site with no findable owner and no company details is a flag — not proof of anything bad, but a reason for caution.
• Can you actually trust the draw? This is the big one. Do they show ticket numbers and odds, or just a vague percentage? Are draws live-streamed or independently verifiable, or do they happen behind closed doors? Do they publish entry lists or a winners wall you can actually look at? The more a site shows its working, the more we trust it.
• Do real people win — and get paid? We look for evidence of genuine, verifiable winners and prompt payouts: live draws, named winners, payout times that reviewers consistently back up. Promises are cheap; evidence isn't.
• What are customers really saying? We read Trustpilot properly — not just the headline score, but how many reviews there are and what they actually say. Ten reviews and a five-star average tells us far less than three thousand. And we read the one- and two-star reviews carefully, because that's where the real problems show up.
• Is there a genuine free way in? By law, UK prize competitions have to offer a free entry route that's no harder and no more expensive than paying. We check it exists, and whether it's easy to find and use — or buried where they hope you won't look. A clear, fair free route is a strong trust signal.
• Is the site built properly and safe to use? Secure checkout, a professional, working site, sensible terms. Basic stuff — but if a site can't get the basics right, that tells you something.
• Does it look after its players? Some of these sites — especially ones with instant wins, daily leaderboards, top-up bonuses or subscriptions — start to feel a lot like gambling. For those, we look for spending controls, self-exclusion options and responsible-play messaging, and we'll say so clearly in the review. If a site uses those mechanics but offers no protection, that pulls the score down.

How we research each site

Every review is built from fresh research at the time we write it — we don't recycle a template and swap the name. For each site we'll typically check its Trustpilot profile (score, volume and the actual reviews), its Companies House record, its own website and terms and conditions, and any news or media coverage we can find. Where we can, we look at how the site actually behaves — how draws are run, how winners are announced, how the free route works.

We're guided throughout by the rules that actually govern this space: the Gambling Act's requirements around free entry, and the ASA/CAP advertising codes. Where something is a matter of law or licensing, we go to the primary source rather than guess.

The rules we never break

• We never invent a rating, a review count or a company detail. If we can't verify something, we say it's unverified — we don't make it up to fill a gap.
• We never call a site a “scam”, “rigged” or “fixed” without solid evidence. Serious accusations get treated seriously. If there's a genuine dispute, we lay out both sides and let you decide.
• We don't trust automated “scam-checker” websites. Those tools routinely flag brand-new or small sites as dangerous purely because they're new — which is useless and unfair. We do our own homework instead.
• A score cannot be bought. No site, advertiser or affiliate partner has ever paid for a better rating, and they never will. If that ever changed, we'd tell you on this page.

How to read a score

We rate out of five. As a rough guide:

• 4.4 and up — among the strongest sites we've looked at: transparent, well-run, genuine track record.
• 4.0 to 4.3 — solid and trustworthy, with maybe a small caveat or two.
• 3.5 to 3.9 — generally fine, but with something worth knowing first, or simply too new for us to be sure yet.
• Below 3.5 — proceed with real care. There's usually a specific, structural reason, and the review will spell it out.

One thing worth knowing: when a site is brand new or very small, we cap its score rather than crater it. A short track record isn't a crime — it just means there isn't enough evidence yet to score it as highly as a proven name. As more verifiable history builds up, the score can rise.

How we make our money (and why it doesn't change the score)

We need to be upfront about this, because pretending otherwise would undermine the whole point of the site. Some of the links on PrizeDrawsDaily are affiliate links, which means if you click through and enter a competition, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. That's how we keep the lights on.

What it does not do is influence our ratings or our rankings. We score sites the same way whether we have an affiliate arrangement with them or not, and a paying partner gets no special treatment. Our reviews are only worth reading if they're honest — so they are.

We keep this current

Competition sites change. Companies fold, terms get rewritten, subscriptions appear, a brilliant site slips or a shaky one cleans up its act. So our reviews carry a "last updated" date, and we revisit them — especially when something material changes. This methodology itself is dated and versioned at the top of the page; when we change how we work, you'll see the version change too.

Think we've got something wrong?

We'd genuinely rather know. If you've spotted an error, or you run a site and think we've been unfair or missed an update, get in touch — we read every message and we'll correct anything we've got wrong. Being willing to be corrected is, we think, the whole point of being independent.

Frequently asked questions