Two kinds of control, and the difference between them

The tools below fall into two sorts, and the distinction matters more than the order they are usually listed in: some are rules imposed on a company, enforced by that company's regulator rather than by anybody's resolve, and the rest are people who answer a telephone, which this trade calls a "helpline" (one number, one conversation, and no record of it anywhere). The first sort works while you are asleep!

A "deposit limit" (a ceiling on what an account may take in, set by the account holder) belongs to the first sort, and so does "self-exclusion" (a recorded request to be refused service, filed where the operator is obliged to look). Both become obligations on the house the moment they exist, and neither depends on being remembered at the hour it is wanted.

What follows is the service for each of our seven markets, with its address as it stood on 20 October 2026. Where no telephone number could be read on the service's own page, none is printed here, because an unreachable number is worse than a blank space.

Spain, where the limits are written into a decree

The regulator publishes its safer-gambling material at ordenacionjuego.es under "Juego seguro" (safe play), and the two sections to open first are the "límites de depósito" (deposit limits) and the self-exclusion register. The ceilings at each operator are 600 euros a day, 1,500 a week and 3,000 a month, and a player may set lower ones expressly, which the operator must honour at once.

A second system sits above those, approved by Real Decreto 520/2026 of 24 June 2026, and it adds a player's deposits together across every operator instead of counting each account alone: 700 euros a day, 1,750 a week and 3,300 in any four weeks, with each operator obliged to consult the regulator's system before taking a deposit. It applies from 25 March 2027, after a six-month window for operators to connect, so the two sets of figures today are a rule in force beside a rule on its way.

Spanish self-exclusion is the "Registro General de Interdicciones de Acceso al Juego" (the general register of gambling prohibitions), which blocks online play and, where a game's rules require the player to be identified first, the lotteries sold in person too, enforceable at the moment a prize is paid. An entry is passed to the "comunidades autónomas" (the regions, each of which keeps a register of its own), and a cancellation can be asked for only through the national register. FEJAR (the federation of rehabilitated gamblers' associations), at fejar.org, publishes a line it calls anonymous, free and confidential: 900 200 225.

Great Britain, where the block is national

GAMSTOP, at gamstop.co.uk, blocks a registrant's access to accounts on gambling websites and apps, free, and the "registration" (an entry in the scheme, which is not an account with anybody) can be extended from the account itself. Its own contact line, which we read on its contact page, is 0800 138 6518, open from ten in the morning until eight at night, seven days a week.

GambleAware, at gambleaware.org, carries the "National Gambling Helpline" on 0808 8020 133, open at every hour of every day of the year. That page states the service is delivered by GamCare and covers England and Scotland, with a separate "NHS Wales" line for readers there, which is the sort of boundary a list of addresses usually flattens away.

Three Canadian provinces, which do not answer alike

Ontario has "ConnexOntario" (a referral service for mental health, addiction and gambling) at connexontario.ca, reachable on 1-866-531-2600 around the clock and every day of the year, or by sending the word CONNEX to 247247. The Responsible Gambling Council, at responsiblegambling.org, is an independent non-profit working on prevention, "accreditation" (its own audit of an operator's practices) and research, and the number on its site is an office line rather than a "crisis line" (one answered at any hour by somebody trained for it); we say so rather than let it be dialled at the wrong hour.

Alberta has "GameSense" at gamesenseab.ca, which that page describes as a trademark of the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, used under licence by the provincial authority. No telephone number appears on the page we read, so we print none, and the route to support is the one that page offers.

Québec has "Jeu: aide et référence" (gambling: help and referral) at aidejeu.ca, which publishes two numbers, 514 527-0140 for Montréal and the area around it and 1 800 461-0140 for the rest of the province, and states that its telephone service answers at any hour, on any day of the week.

Australia and the United States

Gambling Help Online, at gamblinghelponline.org.au, publishes 1800 858 858 and calls it free and confidential (its words, which we have not improved on), saying a counsellor can be reached at any hour, anywhere in the country. No operator written about on our pages holds an Australian licence, so for a reader there this page is the only one here worth opening.

In the United States, America's National Council on Problem Gambling runs the "National Problem Gambling Helpline", at ncpgambling.org, published as 1-800-MY-RESET and, in digits, as 1-800-697-3738, with a chat route and a text route beside it. The lettered form is the one the organisation leads with, and we read both on its own pages rather than in a directory.

Two addresses that no longer exist

Two of the names most often printed answer nothing at all. On 20 October 2026 neither jugarbien.es nor gamesense.ab.ca held a "DNS record" (the entry that tells a browser where a name lives), so there is no site behind either and no error page either, and both are still copied onto pages that call themselves authoritative!

That matters more than the list, because it is a habit. Before trusting an address on a page of help services, this page included, open it yourself: a line that rings and a register that loads are the only versions of either that count, and a name printed with confidence proves nothing whatever about whether it resolves.

What a guide cannot do

We hold no accounts, move no money and have no access to any balance, so nobody here can set a limit, record an exclusion, reverse one or lift one early. Those acts belong to the operator and to the "scheme" (the register the market runs, where it runs one).

It follows that the useful order is the reverse of the usual one; the limit and the exclusion come first, because they bind somebody else; the telephone number comes next, because a person answers it; and reading about either comes last, which is an odd thing for a page of reading to admit.

If you are reading this for somebody else

Much of the traffic to a page like this arrives on behalf of a third person, and most of the services above take that call. The British helpline, ConnexOntario, the Québec service and the Spanish federation all say they speak to family and friends, which is the part of their work advertised least.

What can be done without anybody's permission is small and not nothing: find the operator's limit setting before the conversation rather than during it, note which national scheme covers that market, and keep the number where you will not have to search for it.

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