Two casinos both advertise a 100% match up to €100 and both print “30x wagering” on the banner. One of them asks you to bet €3,000 before you can withdraw. The other asks for €6,000. The multiplier is identical. The offers are not.
Bonus Only vs Deposit + Bonus Wagering: What’s the Difference?
Two casinos both advertise a 100% match up to €100 and both print “30x wagering” on the banner. One of them asks you to bet €3,000 before you can withdraw. The other asks for €6,000. The multiplier is identical. The offers are not.
The difference is what the multiplier is applied to. Some casinos multiply the bonus only. Others multiply your deposit and the bonus added together, usually written as 30x (D+B). A third group, much rarer, multiplies the deposit. Until you know which one you are looking at, the headline number tells you almost nothing about what the offer costs.
This guide shows the maths on both structures, gives you a one line formula to convert any offer into a single comparable number, and explains the point most bonus pages skip: a deposit + bonus requirement gets worse as the match percentage gets smaller, which is the opposite of what most players assume.
The short answer: On a 100% match, 30x deposit + bonus is exactly twice as expensive as 30x bonus. To compare any two offers, convert both to a bonus-only number. A deposit + bonus requirement on a 100% match doubles it, on a 50% match it triples it, and on a 25% match it multiplies it by six.
What a Wagering Requirement Actually Multiplies
A wagering requirement is a turnover target. Before bonus winnings become withdrawable cash, you have to place bets adding up to a set total. The multiplier is only half of the instruction. The other half is the base it multiplies, and that base is set in the terms, not on the banner.
There are three bases in common use.
Bonus only
The most player-friendly of the three and now the most common at casinos aimed at regulated markets. Written as “30x bonus”, “30x B”, or “wagering applies to bonus funds only”. You deposit €100, receive a €100 bonus, and the target is 30 times the bonus: €3,000 in total bets. Your own €100 is not part of the calculation.
Deposit + bonus
Written as “30x (D+B)”, “30x deposit and bonus”, or “wagering applies to the deposit and bonus amount”. The same deposit and the same bonus now produce a target of 30 times €200, which is €6,000. You are being asked to play through your own money as well as the casino’s. This structure is most common at offshore licensed casinos and at operators offering very large headline match percentages.
Deposit only
Uncommon, and usually attached to cashback, reload offers or bonuses credited as real money rather than bonus funds. It matters less as a cost and more as a restriction: it means the money you put in cannot be withdrawn again until you have played it through, so a deposit made and immediately regretted is locked. If you want the mechanics of which pot pays first, our guide to bonus balance vs real money covers how casinos order the two balances.
The Same 30x Costs Twice as Much
Here is a single offer, a €100 deposit with a 100% match giving a €100 bonus, run through six ways the same terms could be written. The rows run from cheapest to most expensive, and the last column converts each one to a bonus-only figure so they all sit on one scale. Euro is used for readability only. Nothing here depends on the currency, because every figure is a multiple of the deposit, so swap in your own and the ratios hold.
| How the terms are written | The sum you are actually being set | Total you must bet | Same as bonus-only |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10x deposit + bonus | 10 × (€100 + €100) | €2,000 | 20x |
| 30x bonus | 30 × €100 bonus | €3,000 | 30x |
| 30x deposit | 30 × €100 deposit | €3,000 | 30x |
| 35x bonus | 35 × €100 bonus | €3,500 | 35x |
| 20x deposit + bonus | 20 × (€100 + €100) | €4,000 | 40x |
| 30x deposit + bonus | 30 × (€100 + €100) | €6,000 | 60x |
Read the last two columns together and the ranking stops matching the banner. A 35x bonus-only offer, which looks worse than 30x, asks for €3,500 in turnover. A 20x deposit + bonus offer, which looks far better than 30x, asks for €4,000. The 30x offer that most players would rank as average is the most expensive on the list, at €6,000, because it is the only one applying a mid-sized multiplier to a doubled base.
Where the value leaks: A casino advertising a low multiplier next to a deposit + bonus base is not being generous, it is moving the cost from a number you can see to a number in the terms. Any time you see a headline multiplier that looks unusually low, the base is the first thing to check.
How to Convert Any Offer Into One Comparable Number
You do not need a calculator for this. For any deposit + bonus requirement, the bonus-only equivalent is:
The conversion: Bonus-only equivalent = multiplier x (1 + 1 / match rate). On a 100% match the match rate is 1, so you double the multiplier. On a 50% match the match rate is 0.5, so you triple it. On a 200% match you multiply by 1.5.
Once both offers are expressed as a bonus-only multiplier, the smaller number is the cheaper offer. That is the whole comparison. It also lets you compare a match bonus against a free spins package, since free spins winnings are almost always wagered as a multiple of the winnings themselves rather than of any deposit, so they never carry a deposit in the base at all.
Why a Small Match Makes Deposit + Bonus Much Worse
This is the part that catches experienced players out. Intuition says a smaller bonus should be easier to clear, because there is less bonus money to play through. Under a deposit + bonus structure the opposite is true, because your deposit stays in the base no matter how small the bonus gets.
The table below holds the deposit at €100 and the requirement at 30x (D+B), and varies only the match percentage.
| Match offered | Bonus on a €100 deposit | Turnover at 30x (D+B) | Same as bonus-only |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25% | €25 | €3,750 | 150x |
| 50% | €50 | €4,500 | 90x |
| 100% | €100 | €6,000 | 60x |
| 150% | €150 | €7,500 | 50x |
| 200% | €200 | €9,000 | 45x |
| 300% | €300 | €12,000 | 40x |
A 25% reload with 30x (D+B) attached is the equivalent of a 150x bonus-only requirement. That is not a bonus in any meaningful sense, it is a condition placed on your own money in exchange for a small credit. Reload and midweek offers are where this combination shows up most often, because the headline percentage is low enough that nobody thinks to check the base.
The same logic runs the other way. Very large match percentages soften the effect, which is why a 300% offer with deposit + bonus wagering can genuinely be a better deal than a 100% offer with the same terms. Large matches usually carry a low maximum bonus and a tight maximum cashout, so read those two limits before treating the improvement as real.
The Break-Even Multiplier Nobody Prints
Turnover has a cost. Every bet you place is exposed to the house edge, so the expected cost of clearing a requirement is the turnover multiplied by 100% minus the game’s RTP. A bonus is worth taking, on average, only when the bonus is larger than the expected cost of the turnover attached to it.
That gives a break-even point you can work out for any offer. At a 96% RTP slot the house expects to keep 4% of everything you bet, so the highest bonus-only multiplier that still breaks even is 25x.
| Game RTP | Expected house take per €1,000 wagered | Break-even bonus-only multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| 97% | €30 | 33x |
| 96% | €40 | 25x |
| 95% | €50 | 20x |
| 94% | €60 | 16x |
| 92% | €80 | 12x |
This is an average across many bets, not a prediction of your session. Slot results scatter widely around the average, and high volatility games scatter the most, which is why some players clear a 60x requirement and most do not. The table is a comparison tool, not a promise. What it does show clearly is that the common 35x and 40x bonus-only offers already sit past break-even on a typical slot, and a 30x (D+B) offer at 60x equivalent sits far past it. Always check the RTP in the game information panel, since studios ship several configurations of the same slot and casinos do not always run the highest.
Four Terms That Change the Real Cost More Than the Multiplier
Two offers with an identical bonus-only multiplier can still be very different, because the multiplier says how much you must bet and says nothing about how you are allowed to bet it.
| Term | What it does | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Game weighting | Sets how much of each bet counts, by game type | Slots usually count 100%, live tables often 10% or 0%. At 10%, a €3,000 target becomes €30,000 in actual bets |
| Maximum bet while wagering | Caps the stake per spin, commonly 5 or 10% of the bonus | Breaking it once can void the bonus and the winnings, and it is the most common reason a payout is refused |
| Time limit | Sets a deadline, typically 7 to 30 days | A €6,000 target in 7 days forces a much faster pace than the same target in 30 |
| Maximum cashout | Caps what you can withdraw from bonus winnings | A 5x bonus cap means clearing €6,000 in turnover can never pay more than €500, whatever you win |
| Sticky or non-sticky | Decides whether the bonus itself is ever withdrawable | A sticky bonus is removed from your balance at withdrawal, so only the winnings above it are yours |
Weighting deserves the most attention, because it is the one term that can multiply the real cost several times over without changing the advertised number at all. If a casino applies a deposit + bonus base and 10% table game weighting, the offer is effectively unclearable outside slots. Terms that are hard to find, or that contradict the banner, are also a reliable early signal of an operator worth avoiding, and the rest of that pattern is worth learning to recognise early.
What Regulators Have Started Doing About It
The calculation base is no longer purely an operator choice in every market. In Great Britain, changes to the Gambling Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice took effect on 19 January 2026. Social Responsibility Code 5.1.1 now states that licensees must not apply wagering requirements to incentives which require customers to play through bonus funds over a maximum of 10 times. The cap is written against bonus funds, which means the bonus-only figure is the number that has to satisfy it, so an offer expressed as a multiple of deposit plus bonus still has to convert back to 10x bonus or lower to comply. The same update bans mixing gambling products within a single incentive, so a casino bonus can no longer be bundled with a free bet.
The Commission also confirmed it is not regulating game contribution weightings at this stage. The multiplier is capped, the weighting behind it is not, so weighting is where the remaining variation sits even on UK licensed sites.
Other markets restrict bonuses in different ways. Under Chapter 14, Section 9 of the Swedish Gambling Act, a licence holder may not offer a bonus beyond the first occasion on which a player participates in a game, so Swedish licensed casinos have one welcome offer and no reloads at all. Most other jurisdictions, including the offshore licences many international casinos hold, set no cap on either the multiplier or the base, which is exactly why the comparison in this guide matters more the further you get from a regulated market. Which licence an operator holds is the single biggest predictor of how its terms are written, and our guide to which casino licence is best sets out what each one actually requires. For the Maltese licence specifically, see are MGA casinos safe.
Rules follow the licence, not the brand: The same casino brand can run a 10x bonus-only offer on its UK site and a 40x (D+B) offer on an offshore site under a different licence. Always read the terms on the version of the site you can actually register with. The casino list on this page shows operators that accept players from your country, so the offers you see are the ones that apply to you.
How to Read a Bonus in Under a Minute
Open the full terms rather than the banner, then answer five questions in this order.
- What is the base? Search the terms page for “deposit” near “wagering”. If the requirement names both the deposit and the bonus, apply the conversion formula before you compare it with anything.
- What is the weighting? Find the game contribution table. If your preferred games count for less than 100%, divide 100 by that percentage and multiply the turnover target by the result.
- What is the maximum bet? Note the number and stay under it for every spin until the requirement is cleared, including autoplay and bonus buy rounds where those are allowed.
- Is there a maximum cashout? If there is, that number is the real ceiling on the offer, no matter how large the bonus looks.
- Is the bonus sticky? A non-sticky bonus lets you withdraw the bonus amount itself once cleared. A sticky one does not.
If any of the five cannot be answered from the published terms in a couple of minutes, that is information too. Opaque bonus terms and slow payouts tend to travel together, which is why our guide on why casinos delay withdrawals starts with the terms rather than the payment method.
Which Structure Should You Take?
On the maths alone, a bonus-only requirement is better than a deposit + bonus requirement at the same multiplier, every time. But the base is only one input, and ranking offers purely by structure will still mislead you. A 40x bonus-only offer with 10% slot weighting is worse than a 15x (D+B) offer with 100% weighting, and no headline on either page will tell you that.
A practical order of preference for most players looks like this. A no wager bonus first, since there is nothing to convert and the winnings are cash. Then a low bonus-only multiplier with full slot weighting and no maximum cashout. Then a higher bonus-only multiplier. A deposit + bonus requirement is worth taking only when the match is large, the weighting is full and the cashout cap is generous, and it is rarely worth taking at all on a small reload.
It is also worth saying plainly: clearing any wagering requirement has a negative expected value on a normal slot once the multiplier goes past the break-even figures above, and the deposit you put in is at risk throughout. A bonus lengthens the time your money survives and adds some upside variance. It is not free money, and no structure makes it free money. If a bonus is the reason you are depositing rather than something added to a deposit you were making anyway, the offer is doing the deciding, and that is the point at which the terms matter least and the habit matters most.
For the wider picture of how offers are built, including no deposit, reload and cashback types, start with what is a casino bonus. If you play at crypto casinos, note that deposit + bonus wagering is more common there, and that offers denominated in a volatile currency can shift in real terms while you are still clearing them.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends entirely on the casino, and the answer is in the bonus terms rather than on the banner. If the terms say “wagering applies to bonus funds”, only the bonus is multiplied. If they say “30x deposit and bonus” or “30x (D+B)”, your own deposit is multiplied too, which doubles the turnover on a 100% match.
D+B is shorthand for deposit plus bonus. It means the turnover target is 30 times the two amounts added together. Deposit €100, receive a €100 bonus, and the target is 30 × €200, which is €6,000 in total bets. The same 30x applied to the bonus only would be €3,000.
Yes, on a 100% match it is considerably better. The 35x bonus-only offer asks for €3,500 in turnover. The 30x deposit + bonus offer asks for €6,000, which is the equivalent of 60x on the bonus. The higher-looking multiplier is the cheaper offer.
Add the deposit and the bonus, then multiply by the stated number. To compare it against a bonus-only offer, use the conversion: multiplier x (1 + 1 / match rate). A 100% match doubles the multiplier, a 50% match triples it, a 200% match adds half again.
Because it roughly doubles the turnover generated by each offer while letting the casino advertise a multiplier that looks competitive. It is a pricing decision, not a technical necessity. It is most common at offshore licensed operators and on offers with very large headline percentages.
Bonus only, at the same multiplier, always. The only situation where a deposit + bonus offer competes is when the match percentage is very large, the game weighting is 100%, and there is no restrictive maximum cashout. On a small reload of 25% or 50%, deposit + bonus wagering is close to unclearable in practical terms.
Usually not while a bonus is active. Most casinos either lock the deposit until the requirement is met, or allow a withdrawal on condition that the bonus and any winnings from it are forfeited. Some offers with deposit-only wagering exist specifically to lock the deposit for one play-through, so check whether cancelling is possible before you claim.
From 19 January 2026, Social Responsibility Code 5.1.1 of the Gambling Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice prevents licensees applying a wagering requirement that makes a customer play through bonus funds more than 10 times. Because the cap is expressed against bonus funds, a UK offer written as a multiple of deposit plus bonus still has to work out at 10x the bonus or lower.
On the maths, no. A €100 deposit with a 25% match gives a €25 bonus, and 30x (D+B) sets a €3,750 turnover target, which is 150 times the bonus. Small reloads combined with a deposit + bonus base are the least valuable structure commonly offered.
It changes the real cost rather than the stated target. If a game contributes 10%, only €10 of every €100 you bet counts toward the requirement, so a €6,000 target needs €60,000 in actual bets on that game. Weighting is applied on top of whichever base the casino uses, and it is not capped by the UK rules.
With a 30x bonus-only requirement, €3,000. With 30x deposit plus bonus on a 100% match, €6,000. With 40x bonus only, €4,000. Then apply the game weighting: at 100% those figures stand, at 20% they multiply by five.
Rarely. Free spins winnings are normally wagered as a multiple of the winnings themselves, so a €100 win with 35x wagering means €3,500 in turnover regardless of what you deposited. Free spins attached to a deposit match, however, are often governed by the match bonus terms, so check whether the two are treated as one offer.
Most terms allow the casino to void the bonus and any winnings derived from it, and some void the whole balance. It is the most common reason a withdrawal is refused after a large win. The limit applies to every single bet until the requirement is fully cleared, not to your average stake.
In most jurisdictions, yes. The structure itself is legal and disclosed. What varies is whether the regulator caps the size of the requirement, as Denmark and Great Britain both now do at ten times, or restricts bonuses in other ways, as Sweden does by permitting a bonus only on a player’s first occasion of play and the Netherlands does by barring them for anyone under twenty four. The licence an operator holds is the best indicator of how far its terms can go.
Open the full bonus terms, not the promotion page, and search for the word “deposit” in the wagering clause. If it appears alongside “bonus” in the requirement itself, the base is deposit plus bonus. If the clause names only bonus funds, your deposit is excluded. If you cannot tell from the published terms, ask live chat to confirm in writing before depositing.
