GamStop Explained: How It Works, How Long It Lasts and How to Come Off It

GamStop is the national online self-exclusion scheme for Great Britain. Register once, and every gambling website and app licensed by the Gambling Commission must stop you opening an account, logging in or being sent marketing for as long as your exclusion runs. It is free, it is run by a not-for-profit company, and participation is a licence condition for operators, not an optional courtesy.

This guide covers the parts people most often get wrong: how long it really lasts, why you cannot cancel it, what happens at the end, and what it does not cover.

The scheme is operated by The National Online Self Exclusion Scheme Limited, a not-for-profit company based in Harrogate, launched in 2018. In November 2025 it rebranded its online service as Gamstop Online and brought the betting-shop scheme formerly known as MOSES under the same umbrella as Gamstop Betting Shops. Funding comes from the gambling industry; the scheme itself does not charge users anything.

Registration is online at gamstop.co.uk and takes a few minutes. You will be asked for your full name and title, date of birth, home address including postcode, every email address and every mobile number you have used with gambling operators. The scheme matches those details against operators' customer records, so the more complete they are, the fewer gaps there are. A new email address or phone number registered later with an operator may not be caught if it was not supplied.

You then choose a minimum exclusion period: six months, one year, five years, or five years with automatic renewal. The exclusion generally takes effect within 24 hours, though GamStop does not guarantee a specific time, and operators you already hold accounts with will close or suspend access once the match is made.

Every operator holding a Gambling Commission licence to offer online or other remote gambling to customers in Great Britain must take part. That includes online bookmakers, casinos, poker, bingo and betting exchanges, and since April 2024 telephone and email betting as well. Under the Commission's licence conditions, a participating operator must not let an excluded person gamble and must not send them marketing.

It does not cover:

The six-month, one-year and five-year options are minimum periods. Two rules follow from that, and both are set out in GamStop's terms of use.

First, once registration is complete you cannot deactivate the exclusion until the minimum period has ended. There is no appeal, no exception for a change of mind, and operators are not permitted to override it.

Second, the exclusion does not switch off automatically when the period expires. It continues, for up to a further seven years, until you contact GamStop and ask to be removed. People are often surprised to find themselves still blocked years after a six-month exclusion. That is the design, not a fault.

After your minimum period has passed, contact the GamStop contact centre and ask for your self-exclusion to be deactivated. GamStop will not remove it within a 24-hour cooling-off period that begins when your request is complete; some articles claim seven days, which is wrong. After that, operators are notified and you can open accounts again. If you want to stay excluded, you can instead extend for a further six months, one year or five years at any time.

The cooling-off period exists because most requests to come off GamStop are made at the moment the urge to gamble is strongest. If you are reading this because you want to cancel early, the honest answer is that it cannot be done, and the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 is free, confidential and open 24 hours.

GamStop's half-year report for 2026, published in July, put the number of people currently self-excluded at 614,738. Registrations in the first half of 2026 were 16% higher than a year earlier, with a record 12,236 in May 2026. Under-25s were the fastest-growing group, up 26% and accounting for about a third of sign-ups, and roughly half of all registrants chose the five-year option. Around 70% of users are men.

GamStop is strongest as one layer of several, and its own support page says as much. The combination it recommends:

Every licensed operator must also offer its own self-exclusion, which covers only that operator, and account tools such as deposit limits, time-outs and reality checks. Since 30 September 2026 operators must offer a gross deposit limit under that name, with equal prominence to other financial limits. These tools are useful for managing play; GamStop is for stopping it across the whole market. They are not alternatives to each other.

No. The minimum period is binding on you and on every operator.

Yes, by contacting GamStop to request removal, followed by a 24-hour cooling-off period. It does not end on its own.

No. It is free to register, extend and remove.

No. It is not reported to credit reference agencies.

No. Lottery products are outside the scheme. Use the lottery operator's own limits and exclusion tools.

Participating operators receive a match when you try to register or log in, which is how the block works. They do not receive your wider history.

Related reading: our responsible gambling page lists support organisations by country, and our guide to the UK deposit-limit rules explains the account-level tools operators must now provide. This site does not list or link to operators that are not licensed in Great Britain.

Sources: GamStop, Terms of Use (updated 20 May 2026; durations, data, cooling-off and removal rules); GamStop, Support (recommended complementary tools and helpline); GamStop, half-year data 2026 (registration statistics, July 2026); Gambling Commission, LCCP social responsibility code 3.5.5 (licence condition requiring participation); and Gambling Commission, "Online operators required to participate in GAMSTOP from March 2020" (official announcement). If gambling is causing you harm, call the National Gambling Helpline free on 0808 8020 133.