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Casino & Slot Bonus Offers – What You Need To Know
What is a casino deposit bonus?
A casino deposit bonus is a player reward that can be claimed after depositing some of your own money at an online casino, whether it is a first deposit – welcome bonus- or a subsequent deposit – redeposit or reload bonus. You can use it to play some or all of the games at the casino, and withdraw your winnings after you’ve filled the wagering requirement.
How do casino bonuses work?
Casino deposit bonuses are normally a percentage of the deposit made, with a maximum specified, rather than a fixed sum. For example, in the case of a 50% bonus (up to £100) you’d be able to claim the offer after depositing anything from the minimum (usually £10, which would reward you with a £5 bonus) to £200 (which would reward you with the maximum £100 bonus). If you deposited more than £200 you’d still only get £100 bonus.
Bonuses can also be presented as what you’d have after making the £10 minimum deposit but this can be rather confusing for prospective players because “deposit £10 play with £50” doesn’t mean the same as “deposit £10 get £50 bonus”; the £50 in “deposit £10 play with £50” is made up of £10 deposit plus £40 bonus. Here’s the SAME offer presented in three different ways:
- Deposit £10 Get 400% Slot Bonus
- Deposit £10 Get £40 Bonus
- Deposit £10 Play With £50
Casino deposit bonuses are not real money, although they can be used like real money to play any game they are valid on. When you play with a bonus, your winnings will be paid as a bonus rather than in cash and this will continue until you’ve completed whatever wagering requirements are attached to the bonus. For example, with a wagering requirement of 50x, a £20 bonus would need to be played through 50 times before winnings turned to withdrawable cash, so you’d need to complete £1000 of play with your bonus.
You may think that sounds pretty outrageous but until this year a 50x wagering requirement has been par for the course at UK online casinos. Things are due to change radically in January 2026 after which wagering requirements of more than 10x will not be allowed. Smaller wagering requirements are almost certain to result in smaller bonuses, of course.
Not all UK slot sites give out bonuses. At No Wagering casinos, the player rewards are free of wagering requirements and usually consist of wager free spins, loyalty points that can be redeemed for cash, cashback or other no-strings freebies. Many players, however, prefer to accept the wagering requirements and other baggage that comes with a deposit bonus, because deposit bonuses are typically MUCH bigger than No Wagering offers. A bigger bonus means more play, and that means more entertainment value.
What types of casino bonus are there?
Six different types of casino welcome offer are commonly used by UK operators as we go into 2026.
Slot Bonus
As you’d expect, this type of deposit bonus is for playing slots. It’s not quite that simple though as it probably won’t be all slot games (progressive jackpots are frequently excluded and lots of other games may be too) and it may not be only slot games (Slingo and scratchcards are other types of game that may be included). Slot bonus offers used to be the commonest type of casino bonus but now, less than half the sites in our listings have an offer of this type.
Slot Spins
Slot spins offers are usually valid on one slot only. Sometimes there’s a list of a few slots to choose from and the spins play on the first one you load up. Some free spins offers pay out in cash but many free spins slots offers are really a type of casino bonus offer. Why? Because the winnings are paid as a slot bonus (although you won’t know how much bonus you’re getting until you’ve finished playing the spins) complete with wagering requirement. It may be a regular slot bonus or it may only be valid for the slot you just played the free spins on (and if that’s the case, it had better be a game you really enjoy playing!).
Live Casino Bonus
This type of bonus is for playing live dealer games and if you think that just means blackjack and roulette, you’re way behind the times! Most online casinos with a live casino area also feature non traditional live dealer games such as Dream Catcher, Mega Ball and Playtech Live Slots. Live casino bonuses are quite hard to find in the UK and are typically valid on a small selection of games only rather than on the full range of live dealer titles.
Bonus Game
By far the best known example of a bonus game is the Mega Reel at Jumpman Gaming sites; instead of getting a straightforward deposit bonus, players spin the reel after they deposit to find out what (if anything) they have won. Most of the prizes in the Jumpman offer are slot spins but some versions of the Mega Reel have slot bonus prizes.
Cash Reward
Some online casinos have tried to get round the reduction in wagering requirements by radically changing the offer so that instead of a welcome bonus, you get a cash reward after you’ve completed a play requirement in cash (possibly using more deposits than just your first one). This sort of play requirement differs from a wagering requirement in that you can take your cash winnings out any time without losing the reward.
Cashback On Losses
With this type of welcome offer, you get a percentage of your first day losses back as withdrawable cash. It has the obvious disadvantage that if you win, you don’t get anything.
What’s a good deposit bonus offer?
A few years ago when operators had to pay substantially less tax on bonuses and could prevent players from withdrawing if there was a bonus on their account, deposit bonus offers of 200% or even more were common, some giving players the opportunity to claim literally thousands of pounds worth of bonuses over several deposits.
In 2025, 100% slots bonus up to £100 remained a good benchmark and we aimed to feature offers that are at least that good on this page (including the value of any free spins that are included). You’ll also still find a few offers where a large bonus in percentage terms is valid on a deposit of £10 (or other small amount) only so while the amount that can be claimed is less than £100, it represents excellent value.
What will a good deposit bonus offer look like in 2026? We have no idea – especially as there’s a hefty tax rise coming as well! There might very well not be very many slot bonus offers going forward – many casinos have already made the switch to free spins offers for specific slots.
Are casino welcome bonuses worth it?
On the face of it, casino welcome bonuses are very worthwhile as they extend the play time you get from your deposit. But clearly not everyone agrees on this, as it’s not uncommmon for players to either opt out of bonuses, or choose casinos to play at that don’t offer them.
Why would you want to opt out of a slots offer?
Bonuses are free money, right? So why would anyone want to opt out of an online slots bonus? Well, there are a couple of reasons, both to do with play order. When you claim a slots welcome bonus, the bonus normally comes after cash in the play order and what this means is that you won’t even start to play with your bonus until there is no cash in your account. And that has consequences:
Bonuses can encourage players to spend their cash faster than intended
Slot bonuses come with an expiry date after which they will be removed if not used, and the clock usually starts ticking when you claim the bonus, not when you start to play with it. The quicker you empty your account of cash, the more time you’ll have to play with the bonus before it expires.
Bonuses can interfere with withdrawal of winnings
Gone are the days when online casinos could simply refuse any request for a withdrawal if the player had an incomplete wagering requirement. At UK slot sites, gambling regulations mean that players MUST be able to withdraw any remaining deposit and any winnings from their deposit at any time and indeed they can! But what happens to any remaining bonus when such a player makes a withdrawal? Usually, it’s forfeited. The choice is, do you take your winnings and lose your bonus? Or play through your winnings till there’s nothing left so you can play with your bonus?
Wagering requirements – the hidden drawbacks
You’ve accepted a bonus, played with it and won. Congratulations! Now, you’ve got to complete the wagering requirements in order to convert your winnings to cash. Although playing through your winnings a specified number of times may seem simple, it rarely is as there’s lots of things lurking in the terms and conditions to complicate things:
Time limits
Most slot bonuses expire if they are not used within the specified time limit, and this usually means completing the wagering requirement, not just playing through the bonus the first time.
Limits on what you can win
Many online casino bonuses and slot spins offers come with what is called a max convertible or max conversion; this is usually a multiple of the original bonus but occasionally it’s a fixed amount. The max convertible is the maximum amount of winnings you can convert to cash after playing through the wagering requirement. For example, if you accept a £50 bonus and it says “5x bonus conversion” in the terms and conditions, this means that however much you win from your bonus the maximum amount of winnings that will be added to your cash account when wagering has been completed is 5 x £50 = £250. If you won more than £250, tough – the remaining winnings will be removed from your account!
Does cash play contribute?
If cash play contributed to wagering requirements, it would be possible to complete them without ever actually playing with the bonus. In most cases these days, only bonus play counts.
Is the deposit included in the wagering?
35x wagering requirement sounds better than 50x wagering requirement, right? But what if the 35x includes the deposit? If it’s a 100% bonus offer, that effectively DOUBLES the wagering requirement; a 35 x (deposit + bonus) wagering requirement is the same as a 70 x bonus wagering requirement! If it’s a 50% bonus offer, it’s even worse – it effectively triples the requirement. It is to be hoped that the new rules which take effect in January will stop operators from including the deposit.
Game weighting
“Game weighting applies” is another item you may notice in the terms and conditions of a slots bonus offer. What it means is that different types of game fill the wagering requirement faster than others.
- Weighting on games other than slots – If games other than slot games are able to be played with bonus, they will usually contribute at a lower rate; table games (if allowed) tend to contribute at 10% or not at all and this is because of their much higher RTP. Again, it’s not clear whether this will be allowed after the January changes; it seems likely that it won’t if it makes the effective wagering requirement more than 10x so we expect to see these games excluded from bonus play. It is to be hoped that January will also see the end of the overly complex game weighting seen at Aspire Global casinos and several others in the past, with massively long lists of games that contributed at a lower rate.
- Games that contribute at 0% – these can be played with a bonus but don’t count towards the wagering requirement. They typically include:
Restrictions on bonus play
Most online casinos have rules for what you can and can’t do with a bonus, and most of them have been put in place to prevent behaviour which players have used in the past to neutralise wagering requirements. A thorough read of the terms and conditions before starting to play with a bonus can save you from running foul of any of these restrictions; in the case of some of them the casino won’t actually block you from doing the thing but will retrieve your bonus if you do, so you’ll need to be careful not to fall foul of any of them inadvertently.
- Excluded games – Not only do these games not contribute to wagering requirements, they cannot or must not be played with bonus and in some cases must not be played at all while the player has a bonus active.
- Maximum bet size – Many online casinos have a maximum allowed bet size while playing with bonus; £5 a spin or 50p a line is common (and irrelevant now due to £5 a spin becoming the maximum stake allowed at UK casinos) but if you deposited with an e-wallet such as Skrill it can be as little as 50p a spin.
- No using the gamble feature – Many slot games have a feature which allows you to gamble your winnings after a winning spin and this is often not allowed when playing with bonus.
- No switching to a game with a different weighting after a big win – Suppose you get a substantial win with your bonus while playing a game that contributes at 30%. Changing to a 100% weighted game to complete the wagering requirement would be considered as abuse.
- Bonus rounds must be played immediately – If you are playing a slot with bonus and trigger the bonus round, you must play it immediately with your bonus. What you mustn’t do is close the game before the bonus round starts and take any action (such as making a deposit) that will cause it to be played with cash instead (as you would then be able to withdraw any winnings). The same goes for any game where you collect tokens towards triggering the bonus round – what you mustn’t do is collect most of the required tokens, switch to a different game and play through the rest of your bonus, then return to the original game to trigger the bonus round with cash. As you’d imagine, most of the games where it would be possible to do this very quickly end up on lists of excluded games.
- General anti abuse clauses – A more general prohibition on irregular play and bonus abuse allows online casinos to take action against players thinking up and using new strategies to neutralise wagering requirements.
Let’s face it, casinos are businesses and are aiming to make money not lose it, so if they didn’t put clauses like this in the terms and conditions to protect themselves against this small minority of players, they might have to stop running slots offers and welcome bonuses altogether.
Indeed, wagering requirements are normally set, with the RTP of slots and other games in mind, so that the vast majority of players will run out of bonus before completing them (which is why we expect bonuses to get much smaller from January on.
What’s the point, then, of a slots welcome bonus, if there’s little hope of ever withdrawing any winnings? Well, little hope isn’t the same as no hope – and even if you aren’t that rare lucky player who manages to play through the wagering requirement and have winnings left over, you can have a lot of fun trying!
