Cyprus has built a reputation as one of Europe's more accessible iGaming jurisdictions, thanks to EU membership, a favorable tax regime, and a regulator that moves faster than some of its Western European counterparts. But before you register a company or draft a business plan, there's one fact every founder needs to internalize: Cyprus does not license online casinos.

If you're planning to launch slots, RNG table games, or poker, Cyprus isn't your licensing jurisdiction. It can still work as a corporate or operational base, but your gaming license will need to come from elsewhere. If your model is online sports betting, however, Cyprus is genuinely worth serious consideration. This guide walks through what the license actually covers, the steps to get licensed, and what it takes to build a business that survives past launch.

What a Cyprus License Actually Covers

The Cyprus National Betting Authority (NBA) is the sole regulator for betting activity in the country, operating under the Betting Law. The NBA authorizes Class A and Class B betting licenses, and the regime is scoped specifically to sports betting rather than a broad iGaming license covering multiple verticals.

There are two license classes:

• Class A: land-based betting through licensed physical premises, excluding horse racing.
• Class B: online betting services, explicitly excluding limited-benefit slot machines, online casino games, and online horse race betting.

Cyprus's separate gaming regulator, the Cyprus Gaming and Casino Supervision Commission, has stated plainly that online casinos are illegal and unregulated in the country, with no authority licensing them. Physical casino gaming exists only through a single integrated casino resort, and that license track has no bearing on online operators.

The trend line is clear: online is where the growth is concentrated, and it's outpacing land-based by a wide margin. That's exactly the environment where the right technology partner compounds your advantage fastest, and there's more on that in Step 5.

Set Up Your Cyprus Company

You'll need either a Cyprus-incorporated company or a Cyprus branch of a foreign company, and share capital cannot fall below €500,000. Cyprus's corporate environment is a genuine advantage here: the jurisdiction is a long-established hub for regulated financial services companies, and company formation, banking, and administrative support are relatively mature compared to newer licensing markets.

Meet the Financial Requirements

Beyond share capital, licensees need a bank guarantee. Cyprus requires an additional bank guarantee of €550,000 on top of the minimum share capital, to demonstrate the operator's financial capacity.

On fees, a one-year license costs roughly €30,000, while a two-year license runs about €45,000, with these figures applying equally to Class A and Class B applicants. If you apply through a local representative, expect an additional annual fee of around €2,000, or €3,000 for a two-year term. If your application is rejected, the regulator refunds a portion of what you paid, typically 75% of the fee, which softens the cost of an unsuccessful bid.

Prepare Your Application and Technical Infrastructure

The NBA doesn't just review paperwork. It audits your systems. Key technical requirements include:

• A backup server physically located in Cyprus, linked in real time to the NBA's own systems for transaction and betting-activity monitoring.
• A dedicated .com.cy domain, registered through Cyprus's CYDNS registry.
• Platform compliance with the technical directives issued under the Betting Law, covering everything from player account funding rules to responsible gaming controls.

Applications also require detailed documentation on beneficial owners, management, and internal AML procedures. The full licensing process typically takes four to seven months from submission to approval, so factor that runway into your launch timeline and cash flow planning. This is also the stage where your platform vendor matters most: a provider with genuine compliance-ready sportsbook infrastructure can save months of custom engineering versus building the technical stack from scratch.

Build for Compliance from Day One

Cyprus takes player protection seriously, and it shows up directly in the operational rules. Licensees cannot accept a bet unless the player's account holds sufficient funds to cover it, and cash transactions are not permitted for Class B online betting at all, since every wager has to move through electronic payment. That makes your payment stack a compliance requirement as much as a product feature; a platform with instant deposits, multi-currency support, and fast withdrawals built in from the start is far easier to launch and audit than one bolted on after the fact.

On tax, operators pay a combined rate of 13% on net revenue, split between the core gambling tax and a contribution to Cyprus sport federations and gambling-harm programs. Compared to some competing jurisdictions, that's a reasonable cost of doing business, but it needs to be underwritten from the start, not retrofitted after launch.

Launch, Then Solve the Harder Problem

Getting licensed is the entry ticket. Keeping players active, funded, and loyal in a market where switching operators takes a player about thirty seconds is the actual business. This is where most new Cyprus-licensed sportsbooks either compound their early traction or quietly bleed it away.

With Class B revenue growing 27% year-on-year and online betting now pulling ahead of land-based by a wide margin, the operators capturing that growth aren't winning on acquisition alone. Player payouts also rose 9% in 2025, meaning margins are being fought for on razor-thin spreads. In a market this competitive, the technology behind the sportsbook isn't optional overhead; it's the difference between a licensed operator and a profitable one.

A few things separate operators that scale from operators that stall post-launch:

• Real-time odds and risk management, not batch-updated pricing, since live betting margins are won or lost in milliseconds.
• A player experience that holds up under load, because major sporting moments spike traffic fast and the platform needs to hold.
• Compliance-aware automation, so responsible gaming exclusions happen instantly and automatically, not as a manual afterthought.

The Real Question to Ask Before You Start

Before you spend on entity formation or legal fees, get honest about your product. A Cyprus Class B license is a strong, EU-regulated route into online sports betting with a straightforward tax structure and a jurisdiction that understands regulated finance. It is not a casino license, and no amount of legal creativity changes that. Confirm your product fits the scope first. Then everything downstream, from company formation to your technology stack, can be built once, correctly, rather than retrofitted after a costly detour.

Frequently Asked Questions