What we like / What could be better
What we like
- Numbers come from live promo pages we read ourselves, not from press releases or affiliate copy.
- Every percentage is calculated against the full 492, not a filtered subset, so the "not stated" figures are real.
- Method and sample boundaries are published, not left implicit.
- The 40x clustering shows wagering multiples aren't a meaningful way to compare operators.
What could be better
- Wagering base, bonus-only versus deposit-plus-bonus, wasn't reliably captured for most of the 71 offers that state a multiple, so like-for-like comparison isn't fully possible from this pass.
- This is a one-week snapshot, not a tracked series. Terms change without notice.
- We counted what's stated on the promo page itself. Terms sitting deeper in a general T&Cs document weren't always captured as "stated" even where they exist.
The £5 rule most promo pages leave out
A maximum bet rule sets the highest stake you can place per spin while wagering a bonus. Where it's stated in our sample, it's usually £5. Break it, even on a single spin, and the operator can void the bonus and everything you've won from it. Not a fraction of the balance. All of it.
We found this cap stated on the promotion page itself in 22 of the 492 offers we read. That's 4% of the sample. The other 96% either don't set a cap at all, or don't put it where a player looking at the promo would actually see it.
We can't tell those two cases apart from the promo page alone. What we can say is that where the cap does exist, it sits in the general bonus terms far more often than on the offer page, and that's not somewhere most players go before they click accept.
What breaking the cap actually costs
Say a welcome bonus carries a 40x wagering requirement and a £5 maximum bet. A £100 bonus at 40x on the bonus alone means £4,000 in qualifying stakes before you can withdraw. At the £5 cap, that's 800 spins minimum, assuming every one of them counts in full toward wagering.
Stake £20 instead of £5 on a handful of spins to speed things up, and the maths changes completely. The operator isn't obliged to simply ignore the excess stakes. Under the terms that carry this rule, breaching the cap once is grounds to void the bonus balance and any winnings generated while wagering it, not just the stakes placed over the limit.
That's the asymmetry. The cap is rarely on the page that sells you the bonus. The consequence for missing it is total.
40x wagering: the industry's default, not a selling point
Casino wagering requirements tell you how many times you need to turn over a bonus, or a bonus plus your deposit, before the money is yours to withdraw. In our sample, only 71 of 492 offers state a wagering multiple anywhere on the promo page. The other 421 say nothing about it there.
Among the 71 that do, the numbers cluster hard:
| Wagering multiple stated | Offers | Share of the 71 |
|---|---|---|
| 40x | 59 | 83% |
| Other multiples | 12 | 17% |
Fifty-nine of seventy-one offers land on the same figure. That's not 49 operators independently arriving at a competitive number; it's closer to a market default. Comparing two operators on their headline wagering multiple mostly compares nothing, because most of them say the same thing.
The multiple alone is also only half the sum. Whether it applies to the bonus amount alone or to deposit plus bonus changes total turnover by a factor of two for the same "40x" printed on the page, and that detail wasn't something we could reliably read off the promo pages in this pass.
Seven days: what a casino bonus expiry actually means
A deadline to finish wagering is stated in 32 of the 492 offers, 6.5% of the sample. Of those 32, 28, seven in every eight, give exactly seven days.
Seven days looks generous until you put it next to the wagering figure above. Clear 40x on a modest £50 bonus and you need £2,000 in qualifying stakes inside a week. That's daily play, not occasional play, if you want to finish before the clock runs out.
Where no deadline is stated on the offers we read, we can't say whether none exists or whether it's written somewhere we didn't count. We're not filling that gap with a guess.
Welcome bonus caps by market
Average welcome bonus cap by market, from the same sample:
| Market | Average welcome cap |
|---|---|
| Australia | A$3,845 |
| Britain | £11,777 |
| Netherlands | €4,215 |
The single highest figure across all 492 offers is £65,000, in Britain. That number reads well on a banner. Run it through the wagering figures above and a 40x requirement on that full amount means £2,600,000 in turnover before a full withdrawal is possible. That arithmetic doesn't sit next to the headline on the page where the £65,000 is advertised.
We're not saying that figure is never cleared. We're saying the number on the banner and the number you'd actually need to stake are two different figures, and only one of them is printed.
How we built this data set
Each of the 492 entries is one operator's own description of one live promotion, read as it was published. Where an operator ran several tiers of the same welcome package, we counted that as one promotion, not several.
We visited every site from inside the market it targets, because the same brand can show different terms to a British IP and a Dutch one. A promotion read from the wrong country isn't the promotion a local player actually sees. Collection ran 2–9 August 2026 across Australia, Britain and the Netherlands.
Every percentage in this piece is a share of the full 492, not of the smaller group where a field happens to be filled in. That choice understates how often a stated rule takes one particular value. It correctly states how often the rule is simply absent from the page.
This is a one-week snapshot, not a tracked series. Operators change terms without notice, and a figure correct on 9 August can be different by the time you read it. We're not claiming operators leave the max bet rule off the page on purpose. We're reporting what was, and wasn't, on the page in front of us.
What to check before you opt in
- Open the full bonus terms, not just the promo banner. The max bet cap and the wagering base most often live there, if they're written down at all.
- Work out the wagering base. "40x" on the bonus alone and "40x" on deposit plus bonus can mean double the turnover for an identical headline number.
- Check the deadline. Seven days is the figure we saw most often, and it decides whether clearing the wagering is realistic.
- Look for a maximum bet during wagering stated in cash, not per cent. £5 is the figure that turned up most often where a cap was stated.
- Treat the top-line cap as a ceiling, not an estimate. The average welcome cap we found sits well below the headline maximum in every market we checked.
This is independent research, not financial or gambling advice. If gambling stops being entertainment, GamCare (gamcare.org.uk) offers free, confidential support, and you can add yourself to GAMSTOP to stop access to UK-licensed sites. 18+. Some links on this site earn us a commission; that arrangement doesn't change which numbers get published here.