Wagering requirements, and how to price a bonus

A wagering requirement, sometimes called a playthrough, is the total amount you must stake before bonus funds or the winnings from them can be withdrawn. It is written as a multiple: a 100 bonus with 10x wagering requires 1,000 of total stakes.

The multiple can apply to the bonus alone, or to the bonus plus the deposit that triggered it, and the difference is large. On a 100 deposit matched by a 100 bonus at 10x, wagering on the bonus alone means 1,000 staked; wagering on deposit plus bonus means 2,000. The same headline multiple describes two offers that cost very different amounts to clear.

Staking money through a game costs you the house edge on every stake, so the expected cost of clearing a requirement is the amount to be staked multiplied by the edge of the game you clear it on. Compare that cost to the bonus, and you have the value of the offer.

Take a 100 bonus at 10x on the bonus alone, cleared on a game that keeps 4% of stakes. You must stake 1,000, and the expected cost is 4% of 1,000, or 40. Against a 100 bonus, the offer carries an expected value of roughly plus 60. Now take the same bonus at 35x, a level that was routine before regulators intervened and remains common in less regulated markets. You must stake 3,500, the expected cost is 140, and the offer is worth roughly minus 40. The bonus became a reason to lose money.

The 4% figure here is an assumption, not a property of all games; substitute the edge of the game you actually intend to play and the calculation still works. What the two cases show is that the multiple, not the size of the bonus, decides whether the offer is worth anything. A large bonus with a high multiple is worse than a small one with a low multiple.

The Gambling Commission consulted in 2023 on banning wagering requirements outright or capping them, considering maximum multiples of 1, 5 and 10. It settled on a cap: incentives that require customers to play through bonus funds may not exceed a multiple of 10. The requirement came into force on 19 January 2026 and applies to bonus funds.

The Commission's stated reasoning is that high wagering requirements increase the intensity of play and the complexity of offers, and with it the risk of harm. It rejected an outright ban and the lower caps on the grounds that operators would tighten cashout restrictions instead, and that players might move to unlicensed sites.

This is a British rule, and it is worth being precise about its reach: a licence from another jurisdiction carries its own rules, and multiples of 30 to 50 remain common where no cap applies. The cap tells you what a Great Britain licence guarantees, not what a bonus anywhere will look like.

The multiple is the biggest number in the offer but rarely the only one that matters. Game contribution decides how fast you clear: many offers count slots stakes in full and table games at a fraction, or exclude them, so clearing on a low-edge table game is usually slower than the edge alone would suggest, and sometimes not permitted at all.

A maximum bet during wagering caps how quickly you can stake and voids the bonus if breached. An expiry window forces a pace, which pushes stakes up. A maximum cashout caps what you can withdraw from bonus winnings regardless of how much you win, which can make a large win largely theoretical. And where a bonus is sticky, the bonus amount itself is never withdrawable, only what it wins.

• The multiple, and whether it applies to the bonus or to deposit plus bonus
• Which games count towards it, and at what percentage
• The maximum stake allowed while wagering
• The deadline to complete it
• Any cap on what can be withdrawn from bonus winnings