On this page, you’ll find casino bonuses on offer from trusted online casinos. All of these offers are exclusive to new players and are often referred to as casino welcome bonuses or sign up bonuses (SUB). Many of the casinos will also have ongoing promotions for existing players, but you’ll need to be new to the casino to claim the ones listed on this page.
Best Casino Sign Up Offers For 2024
Casino Bonuses Explained
For most players, one of the main attractions of an online casino over it’s land based counterparts is in the bonus money that it offers. Playing with a casino bonus gives you a bigger arsenal, allowing for more spins or hands than you would have been able to play with your deposit alone. However they also come with terms and conditions attached, which can sometimes be confusing. This article will help you decipher the bonus terms and guide you in finding the casino bonus that is right for you.
Types Of Bonus
Not all casino bonus offers are the same, in fact there are a number of different types of bonus available. Luckily they usually fit into one of three categories, each of which contain a few sub-categories.
Free Spins
Free spins are quickly becoming one of the most common forms of introductory casino offer and they straddle both of the two bonus types discussed in the rest of the section. Free spins can be awarded with no deposit, or after you’ve made a qualifying deposit. There are also plenty of offers that award free spins in addition to another bonus – so your 100% match could also have a handful of free spins thrown in as well.
You don’t just find this is casino bonuses either, you’ll often find that welcome bonuses for sports and bingo often have free spins added in as an extra perk as well.
For reasons that you can probably deduce, you’re more likely to get a higher number of more valuable free spins from a bonus that requires a deposit and a lower number of less valuable free spins when they’re awarded without a deposit.
No Deposit Bonus
A no deposit bonus is just that, a bonus you receive without having to first make a deposit. No deposit bonuses sometimes have a maximum cashout amount and you will often find that if you win and wish to make a withdrawal that you first have to make a real money deposit – this is just to prove that you’re a real person, and to reduce fraud. Both of these conditions should be clearly stated in the terms and conditions of the bonus offer. If you are unsure of the terms, send an e-mail to the casino customer service and ask them for clarification.
There are three types of no deposit bonus:
- Free Chips: Free chips appear in your casino account which you can play with to win real money. Free chip offers are usually quite modest in value (less than £100), but they are an excellent way of trying out a casino. If you are new to online casinos, this is where I would recommend you start.
- Free Play Offers: Free play offers are a relatively new addition to the world of online casino bonuses and involve a set length of free play. This free play may be time based, where you have an hour to try out the casino games with the casinos money, or activity based, such as 10 free spins on a roulette wheel. In both cases, when the free play session is over you are able to transfer any winnings to a real money account. The amount you can transfer is usually capped, with any winnings over this amount being forfeited. To make the transfer you may have to make a token deposit (such as £20) and your bonus winning will have a wagering requirement attached to them. After you have met the requirements, your balance is available to be withdrawn.
Deposit Bonus
Once you’ve dipped your feet into the water of no deposit bonuses, the next step is a deposit bonus. A deposit bonus is awarded after making a qualifying deposit with your own money and, like the no deposit bonuses, will have terms and conditions attached.
There are currently two forms of deposit bonus – fully cashable bonuses and non-withdrawable (“sticky”) bonuses.
- Fully Cashable Bonuses: A fully cashable bonus is as good as cash, meaning that after you have met the wagering requirements attached to the bonus you are free to withdraw your entire balance. Fully cashable bonuses are usually a straight chip for chip match, meaning if you deposit £100 you receive £100 in bonus chips, giving you £200 to play with. If you were to win £1000, you would be able to withdraw the full £1000 which is made up of your deposit, your bonus and your winnings.
- Non-withdrawable (‘Sticky’) Bonuses: A ‘sticky’ bonus is a bonus that you can play with for as long as you like, but when you decide to withdraw your winnings, the bonus is first removed from your balance. Sticky bonuses are usually a much higher percentage match, giving you 2, 3 or even 4 bonus chips for every chip that you deposit. For example, you may deposit £100 and receive £200 in bonus chips, giving you £300 to play with. If you were to get your balance up to £1000 and requested a withdrawal, the £200 in bonus chips would first be removed resulting in a cashout of £800. To put them simply, you get to keep your winnings, but not the bonus.
Casino Wagering Requirements
Most casino bonus offers come with a wagering requirement, with the exception of “true free spins” which are awarded without any strings attached – meaning that whatever you win from the spins is cold hard cash and you can do what you like with it. These are relatively uncommon in sign up bonuses, however, and more commonly found in loyalty schemes in small amounts.
For pretty much all other bonuses, you’re going to need to play through the funds a certain number of times before you can make a withdrawal. This amount varies by casino and there are no hard and fast rules as to what a WR should be and you’ll find offers that vary from 10x the bonus through to 60x, or more!
So how does this affect your bonus? The higher the wagering requirement, the more you need to play through the bonus funds and the bigger chance the casino has of clawing it back.
- Example 1: If you have a £100 bonus at a 10x WR, you need to play through £1,000 in the casino before withdrawing. If you were spinning £5 per spin on a slot machine this would mean you would need to make 200 spins.
- Example 2: If you have the same £100 bonus but at a 50 WR, then you would need to play through £5,000 before withdrawing. At the same £5 per spin stakes you would need to make 1,000 spins.
That’s not to say that lower WR is always better as it will depend on the bonus. A 10x WR on a 50% bonus is probably less attractive than a 50x WR on a 500% bonus as the latter involves a much larger pot of ammunition to play with.
Wagering Requirements Vary By Game
It’s important to note that when a WR is stated, that doesn’t mean that it’s the same for all games. Some games will have a higher wagering requirement, often administered through a game weighting systems. In other cases, you may find some games excluded entirely – especially low house edge ones such as blackjack and video poker.
Below you’ll find an example of game weighting from a casino that has a £10 bonus with a 20x wagering requirement. As you can see, the 20x rate only applies to slots whilst other games would require significantly higher wagers before the playthrough is completed:
| Game | Weighting | Wagering Requirements | WR on £10 Bonus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slots | 100% | 20x | £200 |
| Baccarat | 50% | 40x | £400 |
| Roulette | 25% | 80x | £800 |
| Blackjack | 20% | 100x | £1,000 |
| Video Poker | 10% | 200x | £2,000 |
| Craps | 0% | N/A | N/A |
In the case of craps at this casino, the weighting is 0% meaning that none if your wagers on craps count towards the WR. It is important, however, to realise that there is a difference between a 0% weighted game and one that is excluded. In the above example you could play craps if you like, you’ll just not be contributing to the WR. If the game were excluded, however, it may mean that the bonus is voided.
Multipliers Often Include the Deposit
One of the most important things to pay attention to in the terms of a bonus is whether the wagering requirements apply to the bonus alone or to the deposit and bonus together. Since the ASA brought in tougher rules on how gambling offers should be marketed some casinos have opted to specify the total amount of wager required to release the bonus – such as £500 on a £25 bonus – but most stick to the more traditional multiplier of “times X”.
When it is stated as a multiplier, such as x20, it makes a huge difference to what figure is used for that multiplier.
- Example 1: You deposit £100 and receive a £100 bonus with a 20x WR that is applied to the bonus only. Your wagering requirement is therefore £2,000.
- Example 2: You deposit £100 and receive a £100 bonus with a 20x WR that is applied to bonus the deposit and bonus. your wagering requirement here is £4,000.
This is becomes especially important when the bonus is less than 100% as the deposit part of the calculation starts to become disproportionately large:
- Example 3: You claim a 50% match on a £200 deposit for a bonus of £100. The bonus has a 20x WR that applies to the bonus only. The wagering requirement is £2,000.
- Example 4: You claim the same 50% match on a £200 deposit, giving you a bonus of £100. However this time the 20x WR applies to both the deposit and bonus making your wagering requirement £6,000.
- Example 5: You claim a 25% match on a £400 deposit, giving you a bonus of £100. Again here the 20x WR applies to both the deposit and bonus giving you wagering requirements of £10,000.
As you can see, when the WR is applied to the deposit as well as the bonus, the percentage match significantly changes the wagering requirements for the same bonus amount.
The below table compares the wagering requirements of a bonus awarded on a £100 deposit with a base WR of 20x:
| Match | Bonus | WR Bonus + Deposit | How Many Times Bonus |
|---|---|---|---|
| 400% | £400 | £10,000 | 25x |
| 200% | £200 | £6,000 | 30x |
| 100% | £100 | £4,000 | 40x |
| 50% | £50 | £3,000 | 60x |
| 25% | £25 | £2,500 | 100x |
Whilst the amount of the bonus itself will also change as the match percentage changes, the figure to really pay attention to is the one on the right which shows how many times the bonus is having to be turned over.
Cheat Sheet: Understanding Casino Bonus T&Cs
In the early days of online casinos, a bonus was often given with little or no playthrough requirements attached to it. But as people discovered how to take advantage of offers that were too generous, bonus terms & conditions mutated into the complex monsters they are today. They aren’t actually that hard to understand, but can be overwhelming if you’ve never come across one before. Keep the following questions in mind as you read through the terms and conditions:
- What Type Of Bonus Is It? As we discussed above, casino bonus offers come in a number of different forms. It should be clear from the terms and conditions what type of bonus it is. Phrases such as ‘play bonus money’ are used to refer to ‘sticky’ bonuses. If in doubt, contact customer services before you claim the bonus.
- What Are The Wagering Requirements? Wagering Requirements, often called Playthrough Requirements are the amount, in wagers, you have to make before you can request a withdrawal. Usually specified as a multiplier, this can be as low as 10x the amount of the bonus received although somewhere in the region of 30x – 50x the bonus is much more common.
- Are There Any Wagering Limits? Some casino bonus offers require you to not place bets higher than a set level before you have met your wagering requirements. This could be a specific value, such as no bets higher than £10, or a percentage, such as no bets higher than 50% of the bonus awarded. On the flip side, some casinos require you to make bets no lower than a minimum value.
- What Games Can You Play? Not all games are equal when it comes to casino bonus offers. Some casinos will exclude wagers placed on certain games (such as blackjack) from contributing towards the wagering requirements, whilst others dissallow even playing excluded games until the wagering requirements have been met. In a large number of casinos you can play almost any game, but the contribution of certain games towards the wagering requirements is lower than for others. For example, wagers placed on slot machines could count 100% towards the wagering requirement, whilst wagers on roulette count for 50%. This means you would have to wager twice the amount on roulette that you would if you were playing slots.
- Are Players From Your Country Excluded? Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, casinos may choose to not offer bonuses to players from certain countries. This is for a variety of reasons and should be clearly stated in the terms and conditions. You can also find a list of excluded countries on the review page for each casino. You can also use our casino search to show only casinos that allow players from your country to redeem bonuses.