White label, turnkey, or API
Three names, two products and a delivery option. What each term actually means here, why vendors use them interchangeably, and which decision you are really making.
The words are not doing the work you think
There is no settled definition of either word, and we could not find one to cite. We went looking for a definition of turnkey and of white label that a buyer could hold a vendor to — a standards body, a trade association, an industry glossary with any authority behind it. There is none. What there is instead is vendors using the two words interchangeably, in opposite senses, and occasionally for an API integration with no front end anywhere in it.
That is an observation about what we see in this category rather than a finding with a source behind it, and we are stating it as one. But it has a practical consequence you can act on: a buyer collecting three quotes for white label is not comparing like with like, and the first question to ask each vendor is not what their price is but what their word means.
There is no standards body for this vocabulary. The word on a proposal means whatever the vendor writing it decided it means, and the only way to find out is to ask them.
The decision that actually matters
Two questions, not three words.
- Who holds the player ledger — you, or your supplier?
- Who operates the platform day to day?
Answer those and you have chosen your route. Everything the industry's vocabulary is arguing about sits downstream of them, and none of it changes the answer to either. A delivered launch is the managed platform with more of the first weeks done for you; it is not a third thing that holds the ledger differently. The full split, capability by capability, is on the product overview.
What changes between the two routes
Five differences that decide a route. There are more, and they are documented elsewhere — these are the ones a buying decision turns on.
| API integration | Managed platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Who is wallet of record | You are. Both balances live in your ledger. | We are. The balances live with us.The one difference everything else follows from, and the one prospects most often get wrong. Documented here. |
| Who runs the redemption engine | You do. The policy values are configured with us; nothing in our systems acts on a redemption. | We do. The engine enforces your policy and keeps the audit record.The policy is yours either way. What differs is what enforces it and who holds the evidence afterwards. Documented here. |
| What we can see | Nothing about a purchase. It never touches us. | Whether a purchase completed and the coins were granted — not why one failed.Decides who you call when the numbers look wrong, and it is not a small operational difference. Documented here. |
| The commercial shape | A share of revenue. | A platform fee, plus a share of revenue.There is a platform to operate on one route and not on the other, and the shape follows that rather than following how much you buy. Documented here. |
| What you have to staff | A platform team. The ledger is yours to run and keep running. | A commercial team. Nobody has to be awake for a failed round at three in the morning.The honest version of the choice for most founders, and the one that rarely appears on a comparison page because it is about you rather than about the product. |
What packaging changes, and what it does not
A delivered launch changes three things:
- How much of the first weeks somebody else does: the front end, the lobby, the marketing site, the content selection and the state configuration.
- Whether you need a front-end team at launch.
- A one-off delivery fee on top of the running shape.
And leaves these exactly as they were:
- Who holds the ledger. A delivery sits on the managed platform, so we are wallet of record either way.
- Every capability answer. The split is identical to the managed platform's, row for row, because it is the managed platform.
- What you hold: acquiring, the reserve, legal, marketing and identity verification, on every route without exception.
- The policy decisions. Coin pricing, thresholds, holds, offers and which states you open stay yours; a delivery means we set them with you at launch, not that we make them.
Which is the sentence worth reading twice if you are choosing a delivery to make the hard parts go away. It does not make them go away. It does the parts that are ours to do, faster.
What each costs you in shape, not in number
API integration You run the platform
A share of revenueManaged platform We run the platform
A platform fee, plus a share of revenueThe packaging decision moves your cost lines more than it moves ours. The difference between the two routes shows up in our line of your model. The difference between building your own front end and having one delivered shows up in yours — an engineering hire or an agency, the weeks before you can open, and whoever maintains it afterwards. Those are usually larger than the delivery fee and they are entirely absent from most comparisons of this kind, because they are the buyer's costs rather than the vendor's.
The whole budget, with who sets each line, is set out in the cost guide. We are one line of five on either route. What a launch costs sets out all five lines and who sets each one. Our own shape, and what moves it, is on pricing.
Choosing
Six questions, and they are pointed at us too
The fourth and the fifth are the ones worth asking every supplier you are talking to, including this one.
- Do you already hold a player ledger, and can it represent two currencies?
- If it can, what would you gain by moving off it — and is that gain worth being second in line for your own data?
- Who on your team would be awake at three in the morning when a round fails, and have you asked them?
- Are you buying a delivery because you need one, or because the alternative involves a hire you are avoiding?
- What happens to your front end if you leave us — and have you asked us that, in writing, before signing?
- Which of the things you are hoping to hand over are actually ours to take, and which are yours on every route?
What we offer
Plainly, so nothing here is a hint. Two products: an API integration where you hold the ledger, and a managed platform where we do. One delivery option on top of the managed platform, which we call turnkey and which other people would call white label, and which includes a branded front end and lobby, content selection, state configuration, a marketing site with the domain live, go-live support and a handover. The front-end code is licensed rather than transferred, with a source handover negotiable separately. That is the whole product surface, and there is no fourth thing.
How much of the launch a delivery actually does, and what it deliberately does not, is set out on the delivery page.
Reviewed . Corrections are made visibly rather than silently.
Comparisons on this site name no competitor, and say so. If you want us compared with somebody specific, send the comparison you have been given and we will tell you which parts of it we would dispute.