Anjouan Gaming License in 2026: The Complete Guide (Cost, Process, Legitimacy)

In this guide: What the license is · Registry data · Official fees · Process & timeline · Requirements · Where you can operate · Is it legitimate? · vs Curaçao & Kahnawake · Banking · FAQ

The Anjouan gaming license is the fastest and cheapest way to license an online gambling business in 2026: one license covers casino, sportsbook, poker, and crypto gaming, gross gaming revenue is taxed at 0%, and the public register listed roughly 1,400 active license holders when we last pulled it in June 2026. It is also an offshore license with real limitations — and a noisy controversy around its legal status that most guides pretend doesn’t exist.

This guide covers all of it: the official fee schedule (and how to tell it apart from an agent’s markup), the realistic timeline (not the advertised one), exactly where the license does and doesn’t let you operate, and a straight answer on legitimacy — including how to verify any Anjouan license against the official register in under a minute. The numbers and timelines below come from our own practice — 83 Anjouan licenses obtained for operators to date — not from recycling other agents’ marketing.

What Is the Anjouan Gaming License?

The Anjouan gaming license is a single B2C license issued under the Computer Gaming Licensing Act 007 of 2005 that authorizes every major online gambling vertical at once: casino, sports betting, poker, lotteries, and crypto gaming. You don’t license each product separately — one license, one fee schedule, all verticals, and cryptocurrency operations are explicitly accepted rather than tolerated.

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

Who actually uses it: startups that can’t justify a six-figure Malta budget, crypto-first casinos that established regulators still handle awkwardly, and operators serving markets where no local licensing regime exists. If your business plan depends on entering the UK, US, or EU regulated markets, this is not your license — more on that in the restrictions and legitimacy sections.

How Many Operators Actually Hold It (Registry Data)

When we pulled the official public register in June 2026, it listed 1,398 license holders — and the register is public, so you can check the current count yourself in the Anjouan Gaming license register (it shows each licensee’s company name, license number, status, issue and expiry dates, and domains).

That number matters because much of what’s written about Anjouan is stale. One widely-read 2026 guide still cites “19 licensees as of April 2024.” The regime a dozen operators used as an experiment five years ago is now one of the highest-volume offshore licensing jurisdictions in iGaming — which is precisely why both serious B2B platforms and serious critics now pay attention to it.

One pattern from our own analysis of that register pull: 191 of those ~1,400 licensees are named by a Costa Rica corporate ID. Pairing an Anjouan license with a Costa Rica operating company is the standard structure — we break down why in our guide to corporate structure for Anjouan operators.

Real Cost: The Official Fee Schedule

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

The official schedule is refreshingly short:

Application fees are non-refundable, and the Authority notes it may charge separately for additional administrative services.

Here’s why this matters when you’re comparing quotes: older guides still circulate a different composition — “€17,000 application + €2,000 key person + €1,700 compliance,” or a “€13,300 renewal.” None of that matches the current official schedule. Everything a provider charges you above €17,828 plus your extra domains is their service fee — company formation, document drafting, banking support — and a serious provider itemizes it as exactly that. If a quote blends it all into “government fees,” ask them to point at the official schedule.

On top of the license itself, a real launch budget includes company formation, banking/PSP setup, and policy drafting. Full breakdown with current numbers: Anjouan gaming license cost. Want an exact all-in quote for your setup instead of ranges? Get it from our team — it takes one call.

The ongoing tax posture is the headline advantage: 0% tax on gross gaming revenue, no VAT, no corporate income tax on the licensed entity. Note that this says nothing about tax obligations where you and your holding structure are resident — that’s a structuring question, not a license feature.

Application Process and the Honest Timeline

Advertised: 2–4 weeks. Realistic end-to-end: 4–8 weeks. Both numbers are true — they just measure different things.

The 2–4 week figure covers the regulator’s processing of a complete, clean application. The 4–8 week figure is what operators actually experience from “let’s do this” to “we can accept deposits,” because the license is only one dependency in the chain:

1. Company formation — the licensed entity (and usually an operating company; see corporate structure).
2. Document collection — KYC on every UBO and key person (passport, proof of address, clean criminal record), a business plan, and AML/KYC policies. This step, not the regulator, is where most timelines slip: one incomplete UBO file or one policy document that needs redrafting adds a week each round.
3. Application submission and due diligence — the regulator’s questions come back in rounds; answering them same-week keeps you inside the advertised window.
4. Post-approval setup — banking and payment rails, which deserve their own planning and rarely fit inside the license timeline (see banking below).

Working document checklist and launch sequence: the ultimate launch checklist for Anjouan.

Requirements and Ongoing Compliance

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

At application you’ll 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, not template filler). After issuance: annual key-person authorization and compliance/due-diligence renewals, plus the obligation to actually operate the AML program you filed — non-compliance with your own filed policies is the one reliable way to put the license at risk.

Current details: Anjouan gaming license requirements in 2026.

Where You Can (and Can’t) Operate

An Anjouan license is authorization to run a gambling business — it is not market access. No offshore license is.

As standard practice, Anjouan-licensed operators geoblock at minimum: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, and Australia — plus FATF-blacklisted countries. The regulator sets exclusions through your individual licence conditions rather than one public list, so the exact set is confirmed during the application; treat any fixed list you see in agent guides (some name nine or more countries) as indicative, not official. Current list and geoblocking practice: restricted countries for the Anjouan license.

Everywhere else splits into two categories you should understand before buying any offshore license:

• Regulated markets (Malta-, UKGC-, state-licensed territories): an Anjouan license does not open these. Operating into them anyway is how licenses — and payment relationships — get terminated.
• Grey markets (no local online-gambling regime): this is where Anjouan-licensed operators actually run. The license gives your PSPs, platform providers, and B2B partners a real, verifiable credential to attach to your account.

Practical market map: where you can operate with an Anjouan license.

Is the Anjouan License Legitimate? (And How to Verify Yours Is Real)

Yes — it’s a real, working licensing regime: a statutory basis (Act 007 of 2005), an official public register where any genuine license can be looked up in under a minute, and roughly 1,400 companies operating on it as of mid-2026. If you’ve run into articles calling it a “scam,” here’s what’s actually going on — and the one risk you genuinely need to protect against.

The practical test is industry acceptance. Game studios, platform providers, and payment processors onboard Anjouan-licensed operators every day. Your counterparties don’t debate island politics — they check the register, run their KYC, and connect you. A credential the entire supply chain accepts, and that anyone can verify against an official register, is not a fiction.

About the political noise. Anjouan is an autonomous island within the Union of the Comoros, and the island’s licensing bodies and federal authorities have publicly disagreed about offshore licensing for years. The dispute is not new — it has accompanied the regime the whole time the register grew from a few dozen names to ~1,400. For an operator, the question that matters isn’t constitutional politics; it’s whether your license is genuine, current, and issued through the official channel.

The risk that actually burns operators: counterfeits. The jurisdiction’s popularity has attracted imposters — fake “licenses” sold outside the official channel and lookalike “regulator” websites. Nearly every real horror story behind the scam headlines is someone who paid for paper that was never in the register at all. Protect yourself in one minute:

1. Open the official register at anjouangaming.com → License Register.
2. Search the company name.
3. Match the license number and status.

If it’s not in the register, it does not exist — no matter how official the certificate looks.

What you’re buying — and not buying. An Anjouan license is not an MGA or UKGC equivalent and doesn’t open regulated markets (see where you can operate). What it does deliver: licensed in weeks instead of a year, ~€18k first year instead of €300k+, every vertical including crypto on one license, and a verifiable credential your PSPs and platform partners will accept. For a crypto-first or grey-market operation, that is exactly the right tool for the money.

How we keep it clean. Legarithm files through the official ALSI channel, and every license we obtain appears in the public register — you can verify it yourself before you pay the balance, not just take our word for it. And if someone else has already offered you an Anjouan license and you want certainty it’s real — send it to us and we’ll check it against the register, free. Full walkthrough with screenshots: how to check an Anjouan gaming license.

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.

Deeper dives: Anjouan vs Curaçao vs Kahnawake · why operators switch from Curaçao to Anjouan · migrating from Curaçao in 30 days.

Banking and Payments After You’re Licensed

The license is the easy part. The genuinely hard part of running an Anjouan-licensed operation is banking and payment infrastructure — accounts get declined not because the license is invalid but because gambling is a high-risk category everywhere and offshore gambling doubly so.

Plan the payment stack before the license, not after: which PSPs accept Anjouan-licensed merchants, where settlement accounts sit, and how crypto rails fit. We cover the working setups in payments for Anjouan operators and crypto payments in Anjouan.

FAQ

How many companies hold an Anjouan gaming license?

The official public register listed 1,398 license holders when we pulled it in June 2026. The register is public — anyone can check the current number at anjouangaming.com.

How do I verify that an Anjouan license is genuine?

Search the company name in the official register at anjouangaming.com and match the license number and status. A genuine license is issued through ALSI and appears in the register; anything that can’t be found there is not a real license, whatever the certificate looks like.

Why do some articles call the Anjouan license a scam?

Because three different things get blended together: political friction between Comoros’ federal authorities and the island’s licensing bodies, a real wave of counterfeit licenses sold by imposters, and generic skepticism about offshore licensing. The regime itself is real and verifiable — the fastest way to cut through the noise is the official register: a genuine license is always in it.

How long does it really take to get an Anjouan license?

The regulator processes a complete application in 2–4 weeks. End-to-end — company formation, KYC collection, due-diligence rounds, banking setup — plan for 4–8 weeks. The gap is document readiness, not regulator speed.

Is an Anjouan license enough to get banking and payment processing?

It’s a necessary credential, not a sufficient one. PSPs and banks treat offshore gambling as high-risk regardless of jurisdiction; expect enhanced due diligence and build the payment stack deliberately.

What does renewal cost?

€17,828 annually — the official fee schedule sets renewal at the same amount as issuance, plus €500 per additional domain. Figures beyond that in older guides reflect outdated schedules or bundled agent fees.

Ready to license? Our team handles the full Anjouan process — entity, documents, application, and the banking that comes after. Start with the Anjouan gambling license service or message us for a consultation.