Bonus terms
The headline number is the least useful part of an offer.
Two promotions advertising the same figure can be worth completely different things once you read what sits underneath. This page explains how wagering requirements are calculated, why game weighting quietly doubles or triples the work, and which clauses to check before you opt in. It describes no specific operator's promotion.
What a wagering requirement is measuring
A wagering requirement is the total amount that must be staked before bonus funds, and anything won with them, become ordinary balance. It is expressed as a multiplier — 20x, 35x, 50x — and the first thing to establish is what that multiplier applies to, because the same figure can mean two very different amounts of play.
“35x bonus” multiplies the bonus alone. “35x deposit plus bonus” multiplies both. On a £50 deposit matched with a £50 bonus, the first gives you £1,750 of required staking and the second gives you £3,500. That single word in the terms is worth more attention than the size of the offer.
Following intervention by the Competition and Markets Authority, British-licensed operators can no longer require you to play through your own deposited money before you can take it back out. Your own funds stay yours. The requirement attaches to the bonus, though the base it is calculated from can still include the deposit amount — which is precisely why the wording matters.
Game weighting, or why the same £10 counts differently
Not every stake counts fully towards the requirement. Operators set a contribution rate per game category, and the spread is wide: slots typically count at 100%, while table games and video poker often contribute 10%, 5% or nothing at all. Live dealer games are frequently excluded outright.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. If blackjack contributes at 10%, a £3,500 requirement means £35,000 of staking at the tables. Anyone planning to clear an offer on anything other than slots needs to read the weighting table before opting in, not afterwards.
There is usually an excluded-games list as well, and it tends to include the high-return, low-volatility titles that would otherwise be the sensible choice. That exclusion is deliberate.
Six clauses worth finding before you opt in
- The multiplier and its base
- The number itself, and whether it applies to the bonus alone or to the deposit and bonus together. Everything else is secondary to this.
- Contribution rates
- What each game type counts for. Look for the excluded list at the bottom of the table as well as the percentages at the top.
- Maximum stake while wagering
- Commonly a few pounds per spin. Going over it, even once and even accidentally, is grounds for voiding the bonus and everything won with it — this is the clause that catches most people out.
- The expiry clock
- Often seven, fourteen or thirty days from the moment the bonus lands. A large requirement inside a short window is a requirement designed not to be met.
- Maximum conversion
- A cap on how much of the winnings can become real balance, frequently applied to free spins. Anything above the cap disappears when the bonus completes.
- Sticky or non-sticky
- A sticky bonus stays in the account permanently and only the winnings above it can ever be released. A non-sticky bonus sits separately from your own money, which is generally the better structure for a player.
Free spins are a separate calculation
Spins come with three variables that are easy to skim past: how many, what each is worth, and what happens to whatever they produce. Fifty spins valued at 10p is £5 of play, not a figure worth building an evening around.
Winnings from spins are usually credited as bonus funds carrying their own wagering requirement, and are often capped. Occasionally they are credited as ordinary balance with no requirement at all, which is genuinely better and correspondingly rarer. The terms will say which, in one sentence, near the end.
Spins are also normally locked to specific titles chosen by the operator. If you were hoping to use them on a particular game, check the list first — this is one of the areas where the studios a casino carries makes a practical difference to what is on offer.
Opting out is a legitimate choice
Every licensed operator lets you decline a promotion, and there is a reasonable case for doing so. A bonus with a live restriction attached means playing games you did not choose, at stakes you did not pick, on a deadline you did not set. Playing your own balance with no bonus attached keeps all three decisions with you. Whichever way you go, decide before you fund the account rather than at the moment the offer appears.
Ongoing promotions follow the same logic
Reload offers, cashback, tournaments and mission-style rewards all run on the same mechanics as a welcome bonus, and the terms are usually shorter and easier to compare. Cashback is worth reading carefully in particular: cash returned with no requirement attached is a different product from cashback credited as a bonus with 30x on it, and both are advertised with the same word.
Tournaments and missions add a wrinkle of their own — they reward volume of play rather than outcome, which is a mechanism that encourages more sessions than you planned. Worth being aware of what a promotion is designed to change about your behaviour.
None of the operators compared on this site are described here with specific figures, and we do not publish bonus amounts anywhere. Promotions change often enough that any number we printed would be wrong before long, so the comparison pages record only the type of offer. The current terms live on the operator's own site.
The figures used on this page are worked examples chosen to illustrate how the arithmetic behaves. They are not offers, not descriptions of any particular operator's promotion, and not a suggestion that any bonus represents good value. Terms are set by the operator and can change without notice — always read the current version on the operator's own site before opting in.
18+ only. Bonuses do not improve the odds of any game. If gambling is causing you harm, call the National Gambling Helpline free on 0808 8020 133 or visit BeGambleAware.org.