Are Competition Sites Legit? How to Check Any UK Site

Most UK prize competition sites are legally run. That doesn't stop a legally run site taking your money and giving you a bad deal. Two separate questions: the law that makes paid competitions legal, and the ten-minute check that tells you whether a site is worth your money.

By Joanne Jones · Last reviewed 8 September 2026

Full disclosure: we run one of these sites. Every check below is one we'd want you to run on us.

On this page: Why the suspicion is reasonable · The check, in short · Are UK competition sites legal? · Why aren't they regulated by the Gambling Commission? · Legal but still a bad deal · The ten-minute check in full · The Companies House check · How we handle it · If you think you've been scammed · FAQs

Why the suspicion is reasonable

You pay a few quid for a ticket. Weeks later, a name you've never heard of turns up as the winner on Instagram. You don't know whether there were 500 tickets or 50,000. You don't know whether the draw happened. You don't, if you're honest, know whether the winner exists.

That's a lot of trust to hand a website you found in an advert. Anyone telling you the doubt is unreasonable is selling something.

The honest version: this industry is legal, lightly regulated and easy to get into. That mix attracts good operators and bad ones, and from the homepage they look identical. So you check.

The check, in short

If you've got two minutes:

1. Company name and number on the site
2. That company looked up on Companies House
3. The site on the government's voluntary code signatory list
4. A free entry route you can find without hunting
5. Total ticket count published before you buy
6. Terms that say what happens if the draw does not sell out
7. A winners page with real names, photos and recent dates
8. A named method for how winners are picked
9. The brand name searched alongside "scam" and "not paid"

Are UK competition sites legal?

Yes, when they are set up properly. They sit outside the lottery licensing regime of the Gambling Act 2005, which is what people are really asking about.

A lottery is broadly a game where you pay to enter and winners are chosen wholly by chance. Lotteries need a licence. Run one without and you have committed a crime, not a technicality. There are two ways out of being a lottery, and the law is stricter about both than most sites let on.

A genuine skill element. Section 14(5) sets the bar. The question has to be hard enough that it could reasonably be expected to stop a significant number of people entering, or a significant number of entrants winning. A question you can answer from the page it is printed on does not do that. Most skill questions on UK sites would struggle to meet this test, which is why the free route usually carries the legal weight.

A free entry route. Schedule 2, paragraph 8 sets four conditions, and all four must be met:

• You get a genuine choice between paying and entering free
• The free route costs no more and is no harder to use than paying, which usually means ordinary post
• It's publicised clearly enough that people know about it before they enter
• Free entries go into the same draw with the same chance of winning

That third one is the giveaway. A free route buried three clicks deep in the terms arguably fails the publicity condition, and that puts the whole competition back inside lottery licensing as an unlicensed lottery.

Worth knowing

The Gambling Commission uses two terms where the industry uses one. A competition that escapes lottery status through skill is a prize competition. One that escapes through a free entry route is a free draw. Most sites, including this one, say "prize competition" for both. Worth knowing if you ever read the Commission's own guidance.

One detail from that guidance is worth carrying with you. A free entry route has to be genuinely free at the normal rate, which for post means first or second class. An operator demanding recorded or special delivery has made the free route more expensive than it should be, and that's exactly what the four conditions exist to prevent.

Why aren't competition sites regulated by the Gambling Commission?

This comes up constantly. Usually as an accusation. Legitimate operators aren't licensed by the Gambling Commission because what they run is not licensable gambling. No licence is the normal state of affairs, not evidence of anything.

What it does mean: nobody audits the draws, and nobody can force a payout. Your protection comes from elsewhere, and there's more of it than there used to be:

• Consumer law. Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 replaced the old unfair trading regulations on 6 April 2025. The Competition and Markets Authority can now fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover directly, without going to court first.
• Advertising rules. The ASA enforces the CAP Code, which sets specific requirements for how prize promotions describe prizes, odds and closing dates.
• A voluntary code. In November 2025 the government published a Voluntary Code of Good Practice for Prize Draw Operators, which signatories had to implement in full by 20 May 2026. It covers free entry, draw transparency, prize fulfilment and responsible play.
• Your card issuer, if something goes wrong.

The code's useful to you for one practical reason: the government publishes the signatory list, so you can check any site in thirty seconds. Treat it as a signal, not a guarantee. Nobody audits compliance, and operators come off the list as well as going on. The September 2026 update added two names and removed ten.

How can a site be legal and still a bad deal?

Scams get the attention. Spotting those is a separate job. The everyday disappointments are far more common, and every one of these is perfectly legal:

• Ticket totals that are never published. If you don't know the denominator, you don't know your odds. "1 in 50 chance" means nothing without it.
• Draws extended when tickets don't sell. Your odds quietly get worse after you've paid.
• A cash alternative substituted for the prize, at a value well below what the prize was advertised at.
• Prizes valued at RRP when nobody's paid RRP for that item in two years.
• Winners announced with no evidence. A first name and a blurred photo isn't proof.
• Autoplay subscriptions that keep charging after the competition you wanted has ended.

None of that is fraud. All of it is a reason to spend your money somewhere else.

How to check a competition site in ten minutes

Run this on any site before you spend anything. Including this one.

1. Find the company behind it. There should be a registered company name and number in the footer or on the About page. No company details is where you stop.

2. Look it up on Companies House. Walkthrough below. Check it exists, when it was set up, and whether its filings are up to date.

3. Check the voluntary code signatory list. The government publishes every operator that has signed the Voluntary Code of Good Practice. Absence proves nothing, since the code is voluntary and newer operators may not have joined. Presence means they've publicly committed to standards on free entry and draw transparency, which gives you something to hold them to.

4. Find the free entry route. It has to exist, be findable without hunting, and give the same odds as a paid entry. Read how many free entries you're allowed and what the deadline is. If you had to search the terms to find it, the site may not be meeting the publicity condition the law sets.

5. Check the ticket total is published before you buy, not after. If it isn't shown anywhere, your odds are unknowable by design.

6. Read what happens if the competition doesn't sell out. Does the draw go ahead, or does it roll on indefinitely? The terms will say. If they don't, that's your answer.

7. Look at the winners page. Real names, real photos, dates, prize details, and ideally footage of the draw. Check whether the most recent entry is from this month or from eighteen months ago.

8. Check how winners are selected. A named method, a third-party tool, a recorded or streamed draw, or a published verification method you can check yourself. "Randomly selected" on its own isn't a method.

9. Search the brand name plus "scam" or "not paid". Read the complaints, then read how the company answered them. A company that answers criticism in public is usually safer than one with no criticism at all.

A site that passes all nine has no visible red flags, on the evidence you can see. That is not a guarantee. It says nothing about value either, and whether the odds are worth the ticket price is a separate question that depends entirely on the one number the site may still not be publishing.

How to check the company on Companies House

The step most people skip. It takes about ninety seconds, and it is the single most useful thing on this page, because a company that will not tell you who it is has already answered your question. Search the name from the site's footer on the Companies House register.

1. Check it exists and the name matches exactly. A trading name that's nowhere on the register is worth a question.
2. Check when it was set up. A company registered three weeks ago running a car competition isn't automatically a scam, but it's a reason to start small.
3. Check the status reads "Active". "Dissolved", "Liquidation" or "Proposal to strike off" means stop.
4. Check the filing history. Overdue accounts suggest a company that isn't being run carefully. Whether that bothers you is your call, but know it before you enter.
5. Check the address and officers. One director at a virtual office running high-value draws is a different risk from an established company with real premises.

How does NetCompetitions handle this?

NetCompetitions opens later this year. Until then we're building to those standards, and to the requirements of the industry's voluntary code for prize draw operators.

In practice that means:

• The total ticket count published on every competition, before you enter
• The free postal route linked from every competition page, with the same chance of winning as a paid entry
• Draws held on the published date, whether or not a competition sells out
• Our company number in the footer, against a live Companies House record

When we open, run the nine checks on us. You can read how it works in the meantime.

What to do if you think you've been scammed

• Report it. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Report Fraud replaced Action Fraud as the national reporting service in December 2025, reachable online or on 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, report to Police Scotland on 101. Reports feed intelligence even when your own case isn't investigated.
• Ring your card issuer today. A chargeback for goods you never received is usually the fastest way to get your money back, and there are time limits. Section 75 protection, which makes the card company jointly liable, only applies to credit card purchases over £100, so it won't cover most ticket prices. Chargeback is the one that matters here.
• Complain to the ASA if the advertising was misleading. The CAP Code sets specific rules on how prizes and odds must be described.
• Keep everything. The advert, the terms as they were when you entered, your payment confirmation, every message. Terms pages get edited.

The bottom line

Most UK competition sites are legal, and the ones that aren't usually give themselves away the moment you go looking for the free entry route. The harder problem is the legal ones. Plenty of them are still poor value, no law protects you from that, and the only defence you have is the ten minutes it takes to look. So spend them. Treat a missing ticket total as a dealbreaker, start small with anywhere you haven't used before, and if a site makes checking it difficult, that's the finding.