If you run merchant onboarding, ad review or supplier due diligence, you will sometimes need to ask one question: is this domain on the Gambling Commission's public register of gambling businesses? This post explains how the Actor I published answers it, what it deliberately does not do, and what it costs.
The Actor is GB Gambling Business Register: Lookup and Changes, published by Yappman Data: https://apify.com/yappman/gambling-register
It covers Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). It does not cover Northern Ireland or premises.
What it reads
The Commission publishes four business register files: businesses, licences, trading names and domain names. We refresh our copy once a day; your run does not contact the Commission. On 5 Nov 2026 it held about 8,400 register entries.
Rows are served as the register publishes them: Account Number, Licence Account Name, Licence Number, Status, Type, Activity, Start Date, End Date, Trading Name, Domain Name. Each row also carries asPublishedOn, readAt, sourceFile, sourceUrl and a notice, so you can see which publication a row came from.
If our copy is more than 3 days old, rows are marked stale. After 14 days the Actor refuses to answer, and a refused run is free.
Three modes
- lookup: up to 500 each of account numbers, licence numbers and domain names, and up to 100 trading names.
-
search: filters on the published columns, returning at most
maxItemsrows. - changes: register changes released since a date, or since your last run via your saved store.
Two inputs, both from the README. A lookup for a domain (made-up here):
{"mode":"lookup","domainNames":["example-casino.example"]}
A search by name fragment:
{"mode":"search","nameContains":"example-casino"}
A domain that is not in the extract comes back in the run summary as not found, with the text: "Not in our organisation extract; this is not evidence of being unlicensed; check the Commission's register."
Why not found is not evidence
To protect individuals, we leave out every account that our name rule cannot show to be an organisation: about a third of all accounts, many of them genuine firms as well as sole traders. That is a deliberate trade: some genuine firms are left out so that sole traders are not published. So a business missing from our results may still be licensed. Not being found here is not evidence of being unlicensed. Check the Commission's own register before relying on an entry.
Why changes wait 15 days
Changes mode lists register changes 15 days or more after we first see them. The reason, in our own summary: the register relies partly on manual processes, so an early flag can be a correction. A change reversed within the 15 days is never listed. It is not a real-time alert.
Changes start from about 17 Nov 2026. Only changes first seen after 1 Nov 2026 are released, each after a 15-day hold, so none is released before 17 Nov 2026. Until then a changes run is refused and nothing is charged.
A change means only that a register entry changed between two daily reads. It may be a correction, and it does not by itself mean a licence was granted, suspended, surrendered or revoked.
What it does not do
The Actor reports what the register lists. It does not say whether a business may lawfully operate. It does not include the premises register, individual personal licences, regulatory actions or public statements.
Pricing
Pay per event, the same on all plans:
| Event | Price | When |
|---|---|---|
run |
$0.005 | once per run, when the data has been read |
entry |
$0.002 | per entry row (lookup, search) |
change |
$0.005 | per change row (changes) |
A refused run is free. An input that is not found adds nothing beyond run.
Worked examples from the README:
- 20 domains found: $0.005 + 20 x $0.002 = $0.045.
- A search returning 1,000 entries: $2.005.
- A changes run returning 3 changes: $0.020; with none: $0.005. (From about 17 Nov 2026; before then a changes run is refused and free.)
Removal and corrections
To ask for an entry to be removed or corrected, write to info@yappman.com; we reply within one month. The privacy notice is at data.yappman.com/privacy/ (gambling section).
Attribution
Not affiliated with or endorsed by the Gambling Commission.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, reused with the Gambling Commission's written consent of 19 October 2026 for the purposes described to it. Source: Gambling Commission public register of gambling businesses; not affiliated with or endorsed by the Commission.
Check the Commission's own register before relying on an entry.
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