The three bonus terms that decide whether an offer is worth taking

A casino bonus is a headline followed by a page of terms, and the headline is the part that matters least. Three clauses decide whether an offer is worth taking, and none of them is usually in the marketing. Here they are, in the order they will cost you.

The wagering requirement

This is how many times you must bet the bonus before you can withdraw it. A 100 euro bonus at 40x wagering means 4,000 euros of bets before the balance is yours. Most bonuses are never cleared, which is the point. Anything from 35x is at the reasonable end of the offshore market; 45x is demanding. But the multiple hides a second cost: game weighting. Slots usually count fully toward the requirement, table games often count 10 percent or nothing, so clearing a bonus on blackjack can take many times the stated turnover. The full explanation is on the wagering requirement page.

Two more details change what a wagering number really costs you. The first is whether the requirement applies to the bonus alone or to the deposit plus the bonus, sometimes written as D+B. A 40x requirement on a 100 euro bonus is 4,000 euros of turnover; the same 40x on a 100 euro deposit plus a 100 euro bonus is 8,000 euros, twice the work for the same headline. The second is the clearing window. Many bonuses must be wagered inside a fixed number of days, often 7 to 30, and anything left unwagered when the clock runs out is removed along with the winnings tied to it. A high multiple with a short window can be effectively impossible to clear at sensible stakes, which is worth working out before you opt in rather than discovering it on day six.

It helps to see the turnover as real money passing through the games. Every bet you place chips away at the house edge, so 4,000 euros of slot spins does not come back to you intact even in an average run; the requirement is designed so the expected loss during clearing eats into the bonus you are trying to free. That is why weighting matters so much. If table games count 10 percent, then 4,000 euros of required turnover becomes 40,000 euros of blackjack bets, and no realistic bankroll clears that before the balance is gone. Read the weighting table as carefully as the multiple, because the two together decide whether an offer is workable at all.

The maximum bet

While a bonus is active, there is usually a cap on how much you can stake per bet. Exceed it, even once, even by accident, and the entire bonus balance is typically voided. This is the most common way players lose a balance they thought they had won, and offshore sites enforce it strictly because no regulator is watching. If the cap is 5 euros, a single 6 euro spin can end the whole thing. Note the number before you play, not after.

The cap is easy to breach without meaning to. A slot with a bonus-buy feature, a raised stake after a losing streak, or a per-line bet that adds up across many lines can all push a single spin over the limit while you think you are betting small. Some sites also fold specific bet types into the rule, for example counting a doubled blackjack hand or a covered roulette layout as one large stake. Because the penalty is total, not proportional, the safe habit is to set your stake below the cap and leave it there for the whole time the bonus is live, rather than betting up to the line and hoping every wager lands under it. If you are unsure whether a feature counts as one bet or several, treat it as one large bet and stay well clear of the number.

The maximum cashout

This is the one that catches players after they think they have won. A maximum cashout caps how much you can withdraw from bonus winnings, often at a multiple of your deposit. Clear the wagering, build a 900 euro balance, and a ten-times-deposit cap on a 20 euro deposit lets you withdraw 200 euros. The rest is voided. A generous match with a low maximum cashout can be worth far less than a smaller match with none. The detail is on the maximum cashout page.

The cap interacts with your deposit size in a way that rewards reading it first. Because the limit is usually a multiple of what you put in, a larger qualifying deposit raises the ceiling on what you can keep, so a 10x cap that lets you withdraw 200 euros on a 20 euro deposit lets you withdraw 500 euros on a 50 euro deposit. That does not make the bonus generous, it just moves the cap, and the right move depends on how you actually play. If you are chasing a big win from a small stake, a low cashout cap quietly deletes exactly the outcome you were hoping for. Work the number out for your own deposit before you opt in: multiply the cap by what you plan to deposit, and if the result is lower than the win you are realistically playing toward, the bonus is capping away the only version of the session that would have been worth it.

Putting it together

Read all three before you opt in, because they interact. A low wagering requirement is no comfort if a low maximum cashout waits at the end, and a fair cashout cap is no help if the maximum bet voids your balance first. We record all three on every review where they apply, because the headline percentage tells you almost nothing on its own.

The simplest rule remains the safest: if you value your deposit more than the promotion, decline the bonus and play with cash, which has no wagering, no maximum bet rule, and no cashout cap. Take the bonus only when you have read the three clauses and decided the maths still works for how you play.