Anjouan Gaming Licence: The Cheap Curaçao Alternative. Costs and Risks

Last updated: 31 October 2026

Curaçao used to be the cheap, fast offshore licence. Since the 2024 gaming law it costs a B2C operator a €4,592 application fee and €47,450 a year, takes four to six months, and from April 2027 needs real staff on the island. So a lot of operators, platform resellers and white-label buyers are now being pitched an Anjouan gaming license instead: roughly a third of the price, a few weeks to issue, no local office.

The price is real. What the sales pages leave out is what you give up for it. This guide sets out the fees from the Anjouan regulator’s own fee schedule, a side-by-side cost model against Curaçao, the process, and the risks that decide whether the saving is worth it: the licence’s legal standing inside the Comoros, banking and payment acceptance, affiliate and supplier acceptance, and which markets you can’t touch.

The short answer: an Anjouan gaming licence is an offshore internet gaming licence issued in the name of the Autonomous Island of Anjouan, part of the Union of the Comoros, and administered through the anjouangaming.com authority. Its published fee is €17,828 to issue a B2C or B2B licence and €17,828 for each annual renewal, plus €500 for each additional domain. That is about €34,000 less than Curaçao in year one and about €30,000 less every year after. The trade-off is weaker standing: Comoros officials have called Anjouan’s licensing bodies illegal, payment and affiliate acceptance is narrower than for Curaçao, and the licence gives you no right to serve any market that licenses gambling locally.

Anjouan gaming licence at a glance (2026)

Fees come from the Anjouan Gaming fee schedule (page last modified 1 April 2026), which says fees are subject to periodic review. Confirm the current amounts with the authority before you budget.

What is an Anjouan license?

Anjouan is one of the three islands of the Union of the Comoros, off the east coast of Africa. Its offshore framework dates from 2005, and an online gaming licence issued under it lets a company run casino, sportsbook, poker and other verticals under one permit, or supply platforms and games to licensed operators under a B2B licence.

The licence was a niche product for years. That changed when licensing was taken over by Anjouan Licensing Services in May 2023, and especially once Curaçao’s master licence system ended. A research paper funded by the University of Bristol’s gambling harms hub, Mapping the Offshore Gambling Regulators by Steve Menary and Marko Begović, counted 825 active Anjouan internet gaming licences by mid-2025 and named Anjouan the most popular of the new offshore regimes. Australia’s ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) reported in December 2025 that Anjouan Licensing Services claimed to have issued more than 1,300. By October 2026 the authority’s public register listed nearly 1,500 licensed businesses, according to Casino.org.

On paper, the structure looks like a normal regulator. The anjouangaming.com site describes a public register, licence conditions, a code of conduct, an enforcement page listing suspended and revoked licences, approved alternative dispute resolution (ADR) providers and quarterly compliance reporting. Its own pages show it suspended one licence pending investigation in February 2026. Whether that structure carries legal weight is a separate question, covered in the risks section below.

B2C and B2B licences

• B2C licence: for companies offering gaming directly to players. One licence covers multiple verticals, subject to the conditions attached to it.
• B2B licence: for “critical service suppliers” providing platform, software or technical services to B2C licensees. The fee is the same €17,828. Some agents still advertise a cheaper B2B recognition certificate; check the current position with the authority, because the official fee table lists only the €17,828 B2B fee.

How much does an Anjouan gaming license cost?

The regulator’s fee schedule is short. Everything else you will be quoted comes from agents and corporate service providers.

Fees last checked against the regulator’s schedule: 30 October 2026.

That clears up the most confusing part of the pages ranking for this keyword. Several quote “about €17,000” and then list a €1,700 due diligence fee, an €828 licensing platform fee or a €2,000 compliance officer fee on top, and at least one quotes a renewal of around €13,300 or “approx. €15,000”. The regulator’s 2026 schedule shows one issuance figure (€17,828, which matches €17,000 plus the €828 platform fee some agents list separately) and a renewal at the same €17,828. If an agent quotes a lower renewal, ask what it excludes.

Costs outside the regulator’s schedule

These are the lines that turn a €17,828 licence into a €22,000 to €30,000 first year. They vary by agent and aren’t published by the regulator, so treat these as examples to compare quotes against, not prices:

• A company to hold the licence. One agent quotes €3,750 to set up an Anjouan international business company and €3,195 a year to maintain it. Others pair the licence with companies in Belize or Costa Rica, a pattern the Bristol-funded study also describes.
• Compliance officer or key person fees. SOFTSWISS lists €2,000 a year for a compliance officer. The regulator’s standards require a designated AML/CTF compliance officer, but the fee schedule doesn’t price one.
• Agent package fees. Policy drafting, forms and filing. Packages range widely and some don’t publish prices.
• RNG and game certification. The regulator requires RNGs to be certified by an approved independent testing facility.
• ADR provider. Licence conditions require an authority-approved ADR provider named in your player terms.
• Banking and payments. Usually the biggest unknown, covered below.

Anjouan vs Curaçao: the cost model

Here’s how to calculate the licence cost for your own case: take the regulator’s fixed fees, add per-person and per-domain charges for your structure, then add the agent and company costs you’ve been quoted. The worked example below uses regulator fees only, with the same assumptions as our Curaçao gaming licence guide: a new B2C casino and sportsbook, three individual UBOs, three domains, licence granted at the start of the year.

On regulator fees alone, Anjouan saves you about €34,700 in year one and about €29,100 a year after that. Add a typical agent’s company setup and maintenance and the gap narrows by a few thousand euros, but it stays large. Curaçao also adds costs Anjouan doesn’t ask for: a resident managing director and, from 1 April 2027, local staff and an office.

For a wider frame, here is how the main offshore and hub licences compare on entry cost. Figures come from our guides to each regulator.

How do you get an Anjouan gaming licence?

The authority’s application process page sets out four stages, and says applications are reviewed in the order received and only once complete.

1. Submit the application and documents. Application forms and declarations, with the fee paid up front.
2. Review of applicant information. The authority checks completeness and accuracy and may come back with questions.
3. Regulatory due diligence. Corporate structure review, key person assessment, source of funds verification and sanctions screening.
4. Licence issuance. The licence is issued with conditions and recorded in the public register.

Documents you’ll need

• Certified incorporation certificate, articles of association and current shareholder register
• The full ownership chain to the ultimate beneficial owner if you’re part of a group
• For each director, beneficial owner and key person: government photo ID, proof of address and personal declarations, plus professional history and references if asked
• Evidence of financial standing, which may include audited accounts, bank references and source of funds

Agents add their own checklists on top: a CV, a bank reference and a professional reference covering a relationship of at least two years, documents dated within 90 days, provider agreements or RNG certificates for your games, proof of domain ownership, and player terms covering underage play, responsible gaming and KYC. Expect the authority to ask for more at any stage; its own pages say it can.

Ongoing obligations

• Key Person Authorisation for people in designated roles, and current beneficial ownership records
• An authority-approved ADR provider, named in your player terms
• Approved domains only; domain changes need approval
• AML/CTF controls: customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, suspicious activity reporting and a designated compliance officer
• Responsible gaming tools: age verification, self-exclusion, deposit and loss limits
• Player funds kept separate from operating funds
• Scheduled compliance reports (the authority set 30 April 2026 as the deadline for Q1 2026 reports) and notice of material changes

How long does it take?

The regulator doesn’t publish a timeframe. Advisers ranking for this keyword quote 2 to 4 weeks, 3 to 6 weeks, 28 to 42 business days and 6 to 8 weeks, and the Bristol-funded study recorded 2 to 3 weeks. A realistic plan is four to eight weeks from a complete file, and longer if your ownership chain or source of funds needs explaining. Treat any “guaranteed” timeline as sales copy.

The risks: what the low price buys you

This is where the pages ranking for this keyword go quiet. Most are written by agents that sell the licence. These are the four risks to price in before you commit.

1. Legal standing inside the Comoros

Update, October 2026: the Union of the Comoros government has publicly described the Anjouan licensing bodies as “fictitious”, asked the United Kingdom for help investigating the network behind them, and said it is preparing legal action, as reported by Casino.org. That moves the question below from a press investigation to an open dispute with the national government.

An investigation by Australia’s ABC, published on 31 December 2025, reported that Comoros authorities regard the bodies behind Anjouan licences as “fictitious entities” operating “illegally”. The reporting says:

• The AOFA lost its status as a recognised regulator under Comoros banking law around 2013.
• The Central Bank of the Comoros called several Anjouan regulators and the firms selling their licences “fictitious structures” in a 2023 statement, and a Central Bank official confirmed to the ABC that Anjouan Corporate Services is “operating illegally”.
• A former Comoros attorney-general told the ABC that Anjouan Licensing Services, the administrator named on anjouangaming.com, is “an illegal entity”.

The Bristol-funded study adds that a document presented as the 2005 Act is unsigned and unstamped, and cites a GIABA report saying casino and gambling activities are prohibited in the Union of the Comoros. Several of the companies and people the ABC named, including Anjouan Corporate Services, did not respond to its questions.

What this means for you: the licence is a commercial credential that some partners accept, not a licence from a regulator with clear state backing. If a bank, game studio or acquiring partner asks for a legal opinion on your licence, this is what their lawyers will find.

2. Banking and payment acceptance

Anjouan licences are accepted by fewer payment partners than Curaçao, and the ones that do accept them are mostly high-risk specialists.

• An April 2026 comparison by law firm GSS Legal says post-reform Curaçao licences are accepted by the major iGaming-specialist processors, while Anjouan is accepted by “a growing but narrower processor set”, mainly second-tier processors that already onboard high-risk gaming merchants. It advises verifying acceptance with your partners before committing.
• The ABC investigation found that two payment vendors, including MiFinity, disappeared from an Anjouan-licensed casino’s cashier within hours of the ABC asking questions. A payment route that depends on staying unnoticed is a fragile one.
• The Bristol-funded study cites an industry report that eight banks were willing to bank Anjouan licensees at the end of 2023. That is a short list, from a single LinkedIn source.

The practical consequence is that many Anjouan-licensed brands lean on crypto and on electronic money institutions. Before you sign with an agent, get written confirmation from at least two PSPs and one bank or EMI that they will onboard an Anjouan licensee in your target markets. If you can’t, the licence saving disappears into a launch you can’t fund. Our guide to starting a betting site covers how payments shape the whole budget.

3. Affiliate, supplier and platform acceptance

GSS Legal’s comparison says Curaçao has established recognition among affiliate networks, B2B platform suppliers and white-label clients, while Anjouan’s “recognition profile varies significantly by processor, affiliate, and B2B partner”. In practice that means:

• For operators: some game studios and aggregators will ask for a licence they accept before they switch on content. Ask your platform and your top three studios for their position in writing.
• For affiliates: promoting an Anjouan-licensed brand into a market that licenses locally (the UK, the Netherlands, Spain and many others) carries the same advertising risk as promoting any unlicensed operator there. Check the brand on the Anjouan register, check which markets it accepts players from, and read our guide to whether offshore betting is legal before you build traffic around it.
• For suppliers: an Anjouan B2B licence may satisfy Anjouan operators, but it carries little weight with regulated-market clients.

4. Market access and player complaints

An Anjouan licence doesn’t let you take players in any market with its own licensing regime. The authority said so itself in a June 2026 statement on LinkedIn: an Anjouan licence “is not, and has never been presented as, a universal authorisation to operate in every country in the world”, and “no licensing authority can exempt an operator from local law in jurisdictions where local authorization is required”.

The excluded-markets list published by licensing agents such as SOFTSWISS and MGL Solutions covers Australia, Austria, the Comoros, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, the USA and all FATF-blacklisted countries. We couldn’t find that list on the authority’s own pages, so treat it as the minimum to geo-block, not the full answer. Any market that licenses online gambling locally needs its own licence.

Enforcement is moving in that direction. The ABC reported that an Anjouan-licensed casino was still taking Australian deposits after Australian officials named it as illegal in early 2025. And Casino Guru data cited in the Bristol-funded study show unresolved player complaints against Anjouan-licensed operators rose 90% in 2024 to 148, with rejected complaints up 97%. Regulators in the markets you target, and the partners who answer to them, read those numbers too.

How to check an Anjouan gaming licence status

Whether you’re vetting a partner, a white-label provider or an affiliate client, check the licence on the authority’s own register rather than trusting a certificate image. Our gambling licence lookup guide covers the same checks for every major regulator.

1. Go to the Verify a Licence page and search by licence number, company name or operational domain.
2. Confirm the result shows the same registered name, licence number, licence type (B2C or B2B) and an active status.
3. Check that the domain you’re looking at is listed. The authority’s seal policy says the seal may only appear on authorised domains and must link directly to the registry verification page.
4. Check the suspended and revoked licence lists in the enforcement section.
5. If the register doesn’t return what you expect, the authority says to contact it directly; the register is updated periodically, not in real time.

Keep in mind that the register shows only what the issuing body records. It can’t tell you whether a bank, a game studio or a market regulator will accept the licence, and the Comoros government disputes the issuing body’s authority.

Who an Anjouan licence suits, and who it doesn’t

It can make sense if:

• You’re testing a crypto-first product in markets with no local licensing regime, on a budget where Curaçao’s €47,450 a year would stop you launching.
• You’ve already confirmed in writing that your platform, key game studios and payment partners will work with an Anjouan licensee.
• You treat it as a bridge licence, with a budget and timeline to move to Curaçao, Kahnawake or a regulated market once revenue proves the model.

It doesn’t suit you if:

• Your plan depends on card acquiring, tier-one PSPs or a mainstream bank.
• You want to work with established affiliate networks or regulated-market B2B partners.
• Your target markets license gambling locally, or you can’t geo-block them reliably.
• Your investors, acquirers or partners will run legal due diligence on the licence.

Your next step

Before paying any agent, run three checks: written onboarding confirmation from your PSPs and bank or EMI, written confirmation from your platform and top game studios, and a list of every market you’ll accept players from and how you’ll block the rest. If all three come back clean, compare two or three iGaming licensing consultants against the €17,828 regulator fee above and ask each what their quote excludes. If any of them come back doubtful, the €30,000 a year you save against Curaçao is probably the price of a licence your partners won’t accept. For the structural and legal questions, our guide on when you need a gambling lawyer explains which ones need counsel.

This guide is independent information, not legal or tax advice. Fees are taken from the Anjouan Gaming fee schedule (modified 1 April 2026) and the Curaçao, Kahnawake and Isle of Man regulators’ published schedules as covered in our guides; risk findings come from dated reporting and research cited above. Confirm current positions with the authority or a qualified adviser before you apply.