Anjouan Gaming License in 2026: Cost, Process & Legitimacy

If you are scanning fresh offshore options in 2026, Panama’s new KUNAISA regime is the newest low-cost entrant — but the Anjouan gaming license is still the fastest and cheapest way to put an online gambling business on a legal footing. One permit covers casino, sportsbook, poker and crypto gaming, gross gaming revenue is taxed at 0%, and when we last pulled the public register in June 2026 it listed roughly 1,400 active holders. It is also an offshore licence with real limits — and a legitimacy debate that most guides quietly skip.

This guide covers all of it: the official fee schedule and how to tell it apart from an agent’s mark-up, a realistic timeline, exactly where the licence lets you operate and where it does not, and a straight answer on legitimacy — including how to check any Anjouan licence against the official register in under a minute. The numbers here come from our own desk — 100+ Anjouan licences obtained for operators — not from recycling other agents’ marketing.

What is the Anjouan gaming license?

The Anjouan gaming license is a single B2C permit issued under the Computer Gaming Licensing Act 007 of 2005. One licence authorises every major online gambling vertical at once — casino, sports betting, poker, lotteries and crypto gaming — so you do not license each product separately. Cryptocurrency operations are explicitly accepted rather than merely tolerated, which is unusual among offshore regimes.

Anjouan is an autonomous island of the Union of the Comoros, off the East African coast. Its licensing framework dates to the 2005 Act, and permits are issued through Anjouan Licensing Services Inc. (ALSI) under the island’s gaming authority.

In practice the operators who use it fall into three groups: startups that cannot justify a six-figure Malta budget, crypto-first casinos that established regulators still treat awkwardly, and operators serving markets where no local licensing regime exists at all. If your business plan depends on entering the UK, US or EU regulated markets, this is the wrong licence — more on that below.

How many operators actually hold it

When we pulled the official public register in June 2026 it listed 1,398 licence holders — and because the register is public, you can check the current figure yourself. Each entry shows the company name, licence number, status, issue and expiry dates, and authorised domains.

The regime that a dozen operators treated as an experiment five years ago is now one of the highest-volume offshore licensing jurisdictions in iGaming. That matters because much of what is written about Anjouan is badly out of date — one widely-read guide still cites “19 licensees as of April 2024.” One pattern from our own analysis: 191 of those ~1,400 holders are tied to a single Costa Rica corporate ID. Pairing an Anjouan licence with a Costa Rica operating company is the standard structure, not a coincidence.

Real cost: the official fee schedule

The official licence fee is €17,828 — that is what the regulator’s own schedule states for issuance, and the same amount renews it each year. The schedule is refreshingly short:

The ongoing tax posture is the headline advantage: 0% tax on gross gaming revenue, no VAT, and no corporate income tax on the licensed entity for international operations. That says nothing about tax where you and your holding structure are resident — a structuring question, not a feature of the licence.

The honest timeline

Advertised: 2–4 weeks. Realistic end-to-end: 4–8 weeks. Both figures are true — they simply measure different things. The short one covers the regulator processing a clean application; the longer one is what operators actually experience from “let’s do this” to “we can accept deposits,” because the licence is only one dependency in the chain.

The step that slips timelines is document readiness, not regulator speed: one incomplete UBO file, or one policy that needs redrafting, adds a week each round. Get the paperwork right the first time and the advertised window becomes achievable.

Requirements and ongoing compliance

There is no local office, no local director and no local staff requirement — but the obligations that do exist are real, and non-compliance is the one reliable way to lose the licence.

At application you will need corporate documents for the applying entity, KYC files for every UBO and key person, a business plan describing products and target markets, and AML/KYC policies drafted to the regulator’s expectations rather than template filler. After issuance you carry annual key-person authorisation and compliance renewals — and, crucially, the obligation to actually operate the AML programme you filed, not just to have written it.

Where you can (and can’t) operate

An Anjouan licence is authorisation to run a gambling business — it is not market access. No offshore licence is. As standard practice, Anjouan-licensed operators geoblock at minimum the United States, United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Australia, plus FATF-blacklisted countries.

Is it legitimate? How to verify yours

Yes — it is a real, working regime: a statutory basis (Act 007 of 2005), an official public register where any genuine licence can be looked up in under a minute, and roughly 1,400 companies operating on it as of mid-2026. The practical test is industry acceptance: game studios, platforms and payment processors onboard Anjouan-licensed operators every day.

The risk that actually burns operators is counterfeits — fake “licences” sold outside the official channel, and lookalike “regulator” websites. Almost every real horror story is someone who paid for paper that was never in the register. Protect yourself in one minute:

1. Open the official register. Use the ABGB’s own site — not a link inside the certificate you were sent.
2. Search the company or licence number. A genuine entry shows status, issue and expiry dates, and authorised domains.
3. Match the domains. The site you are dealing with should be one of the authorised URLs on the record.

Anjouan vs Curaçao vs Kahnawake

Among the three offshore regimes operators actually shortlist, Anjouan wins on cost and speed; the trade-off is reputational weight and, for some counterparties, banking friction.

Banking and payments after licensing

The licence is the easy part. The genuinely hard part is banking and payment infrastructure — accounts get declined not because the licence is invalid, but because gambling is a high-risk category everywhere, and offshore gambling doubly so.

Plan the payment stack before the licence, not after: which PSPs accept Anjouan-licensed merchants, where settlement accounts sit, and how crypto rails fit. Getting that sequence right is the difference between launching in weeks and stalling for months. It is also the single reason to work with a partner who has done it repeatedly rather than a broker who only sells the paper.

Ready to license — or want a second opinion on a licence you have been offered? Our team handles the full Anjouan process end to end, and we will check any licence against the register for free. See the Anjouan gaming licence service.

This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before acting.