A 35x requirement on a €100 deposit and a €100 bonus means €7,000 has to pass through the games before anything can be withdrawn. That single sum, and the roughly €280 it costs on average to put through a 96% slot, is the whole of what a wagering requirement does. Everything else is detail about how the sum is built.
Most promotion pages print the multiple in large type and the base it applies to in small type. The arithmetic below works in both directions, so you can take any offer, read five lines of its terms, and come out with a euro figure instead of a feeling.
What a wagering multiple is
A wagering multiple is the number of times a qualifying amount must be staked before bonus money, and anything won with it, becomes withdrawable cash. Terms write it as 35x, x35 or “35 times”. All three mean the same arithmetic.
Turnover is the running total of your stakes. Not your balance, not your net result, not your winnings. Place a €2 spin and €2 comes off the target whether the spin pays €0 or €200, which is why a modest balance can cycle through a very large turnover figure over a few hundred rounds.
That distinction is where most of the confusion lives.
Clearing a €7,000 requirement at €2 a spin takes 3,500 spins. The money you started with goes round and round, topped up by wins and drained by losses, while the counter behind the scenes only ever climbs. You can finish a requirement with less in your account than you started with, and you can also finish it ahead. The requirement itself is indifferent to which.
Bonus only, or deposit plus bonus
The base the multiple attaches to matters more than the multiple itself. Two offers can both advertise 35x and demand turnover figures that differ by a factor of two, because one counts the bonus alone and the other counts the deposit as well.
Read for one of two phrasings:
- Bonus only. The multiple runs on the credited bonus. A €100 bonus at 35x needs €3,500 staked.
- Deposit plus bonus. The multiple runs on both halves. The same €100 bonus on a €100 deposit needs €7,000 staked, because the base is €200.
On a 100% match the second phrasing exactly doubles the work. On a 50% match it adds half again. The effect scales with the match percentage, so the headline that looks most generous is often the one carrying the heavier base.
A 30x requirement on deposit plus bonus is harder than a 40x requirement on the bonus alone, though the smaller number reads as the friendlier offer. Judge the base, then the multiple, in that order.
Same headline, different cost
The table puts one headline figure, 35x, against both bases at four deposit sizes, all on a 100% match. The final column is what the larger of the two turnover figures costs on average where the game returns 96% to the player.
| Deposit | Bonus credited | 35x on the bonus | 35x on deposit plus bonus | Expected cost of the larger figure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| €20 | €20 | €700 | €1,400 | €56 |
| €50 | €50 | €1,750 | €3,500 | €140 |
| €100 | €100 | €3,500 | €7,000 | €280 |
| €500 | €500 | €17,500 | €35,000 | €1,400 |
Look at the bottom row. A €500 bonus whose terms count the deposit asks for €35,000 of staking, and putting that through a 96% game costs about €1,400 on average, nearly three times the bonus. The offer can still pay out if variance is kind, but the expected value of the grind alone has already swallowed the gift.
How game weighting works
Game weighting is the percentage of each stake that actually counts toward the requirement, and it varies by game type because house edges do. Slots usually count in full. Games where a competent player loses very little per euro staked are discounted hard, or barred.
The percentages below are the pattern that recurs across casino bonus terms. They are typical, not universal, and the only figures that bind you are the ones in the promotion you are reading.
| Game type | Typical contribution | Stake needed to clear €7,000 | Practical read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slots | 100% | €7,000 | The route nearly every requirement assumes |
| Bonus-buy features | often 0% | Never clears | Frequently barred outright for the duration of a bonus |
| Video poker | 10% to 20% | €35,000 to €70,000 | Technically allowed, practically pointless |
| Roulette | 5% to 10% | €70,000 to €140,000 | Often capped or excluded as well as discounted |
| Blackjack | 0% to 5% | €140,000 or never | Lowest edge, so the deepest discount |
| Live dealer tables | 0% to 10% | Usually impossible | Commonly carved out of casino promotions entirely |
When weighting makes a requirement unclearable
At 5% weighting a €1 bet moves the counter by five cents. Clearing a €7,000 requirement that way needs €140,000 of staking, which at €1 a hand is 140,000 hands. Nobody plays 140,000 hands of blackjack inside a ten-day window.
So a 5% weighting is not a discount. It is a polite refusal.
The practical consequence is that a bonus is a slots instrument whatever the terms technically permit. If the games you actually enjoy sit in the discounted column, the offer is not for you, and no amount of patience changes the arithmetic.
Max bet rules while a bonus runs
Almost every casino bonus caps the stake you may place while it is active, and breaching the cap voids the bonus and the winnings built on it. The cap is usually a flat figure rather than a percentage, and it applies per spin or per hand, including a bonus-buy price where those are permitted at all.
This is the clause that costs careless players the most, because it needs only one mistake. A single oversized spin, placed by habit or by a mis-tap on a stake slider, can retrospectively invalidate hours of cleared turnover. Terms rarely give a warning prompt at the moment of the breach. The account simply reports a voided bonus later, and the burden of having read the clause sits with the player.
Check the figure before the first spin, set the stake once, and leave it alone.
Why the clock binds first
The expiry window is more often the binding constraint than the multiple is. A requirement you could clear comfortably over a month becomes unreachable in ten days, and the terms usually void the bonus and its winnings rather than paying out whatever has cleared.
Divide the turnover by the days to see whether an offer is physically playable:
- €7,000 over 30 days is about €233 of staking a day.
- €7,000 over 10 days is €700 a day, or 1,400 spins at €0.50.
- €7,000 over 7 days is €1,000 a day, which is a serious daily session.
Free spins carry their own shorter clocks, frequently seven days from credit, and those clocks run independently of the main bonus window. A package can therefore have two deadlines ticking at once, which is worth mapping before claiming rather than after.
Caps on what a bonus can return
A maximum conversion or release cap limits what a bonus can ever pay out, however well the clearing goes. Written as a multiple of the bonus, it is the ceiling that sits above all the other arithmetic.
Take a €100 bonus with a release cap of 10x the bonus. Clear the requirement, hit a feature for €4,200, and €1,000 converts to cash while the remaining €3,200 is removed. Caps of 3x to 5x appear on no-deposit and free-spin credits, where operators limit exposure on money the player never risked. Promotional inducements have only recently come under a statutory Irish regulator (2), so for now the cap is whatever an operator writes into its own terms.
Two offers with identical multiples can be worth wildly different amounts once the cap is read, which is why the cap belongs in the same glance as the multiple.
The cost of clearing, in euros
The expected cost of clearing a requirement is turnover multiplied by the house edge, and the house edge is one minus the return to player. Written out: cost = T × (1 − R).
Put €7,000 through a slot returning 96% and the expected cost is 7,000 × 0.04, which is €280. Put the same €7,000 through a 94% slot and it is 7,000 × 0.06, or €420. The figure is an average across a very large number of spins, so any single attempt lands above or below it, sometimes by a lot. As a way of sizing an offer before claiming it, though, the average is the right number to use, because it tells you what the casino expects the grind to be worth.
The grid below runs a €100 bonus, bonus-only base, across five multiples and three return levels.
| Multiple on a €100 bonus | Turnover required | Cost at 97% RTP | Cost at 96% RTP | Cost at 94% RTP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20x | €2,000 | €60 | €80 | €120 |
| 30x | €3,000 | €90 | €120 | €180 |
| 35x | €3,500 | €105 | €140 | €210 |
| 40x | €4,000 | €120 | €160 | €240 |
| 50x | €5,000 | €150 | €200 | €300 |
The bottom-right cell is the one to sit with. A 50x requirement cleared on a 94% game costs €300 on average to extract a €100 bonus, so the offer is expected to cost three euros for every euro it gives. At 20x on a 97% game the same bonus costs €60 to clear and the arithmetic turns the other way. Nothing about the headline percentage tells you which of those two you are looking at.
A worked example from one operator
Golisimo’s welcome package is a usable illustration because its terms state every variable the formula needs. Version 1.12 of its rules, dated 19 August 2026, puts the casino requirement at 35x the deposit and bonus, free-spin winnings at 40x, the clearing window at 10 days, a €100 ceiling on any single stake for as long as a bonus is running, and the maximum released from a bonus at 10x the bonus amount (1).
Run a €100 first deposit through that. The 100% match credits €100, the base is €200, and 35x of €200 is €7,000 of staking inside ten days, which is €700 a day. At a 96% return to player the expected cost of that turnover is €280, against a bonus of €100 and a hard ceiling of €1,000 on what the bonus can ever release. The spins attached to the package answer to the separate 40x figure, not the 35x one, so they are a second calculation rather than part of the first. Deposit-by-deposit figures and the per-step maximums sit in the full package terms.
Those five numbers are all it takes. Any offer that publishes the same five can be put through the same arithmetic in about a minute.
Free spins clear on their own terms
Free-spin winnings almost always carry a separate, higher multiple than the cash bonus they arrive with. The spins themselves cost nothing, but the credit they produce is treated as a fresh bonus with its own base, its own clock and frequently its own cap.
The base is the winnings, not the notional value of the spins. Win €18 from 50 spins under a 40x condition and the requirement is 40 × €18, which is €720 of staking, due inside whatever window the spin terms set. Operators also pin the spins to a chosen title at the minimum stake, so the win distribution is not yours to influence.
Small wins therefore clear quickly and large wins rarely survive the cap.
Questions to ask before claiming
Six questions settle whether an offer is worth taking, and they can all be answered from the promotion page and the bonus terms. Work through them in order, writing the numbers down as you go.
- What is the base? The credited bonus on its own, or the deposit counted alongside it. Multiply it out to a euro figure before reading anything else.
- What is the weighting on the games you play? If they sit below 100%, work out the real staking figure by dividing turnover by that percentage.
- What is the window? Divide turnover by days. If the daily figure is more than you would normally stake, the offer is theoretical.
- What is the max bet? One number, memorised before the first spin.
- What is the release cap? Multiply it by the bonus to see the most the offer can ever hand back.
- What does clearing it cost? Multiply the turnover by the house edge. Set that figure beside the bonus.
If an offer fits none of the shapes described on this page, if the terms do not state a base, a weighting table, a window or a cap, then treat the missing figure as the answer and skip the promotion. An operator that publishes four of the five variables has not given you enough to do the arithmetic, and a requirement you cannot price is a requirement you cannot judge.
Where the arithmetic goes wrong
We do not recommend accepting any match bonus before checking whether the multiple applies to the deposit as well as the bonus, because that one clause silently doubles the turnover on a 100% offer and it is the clause most often skimmed. Reading it takes ten seconds and changes the euro figure more than any other line in the terms.
The other recurring errors are smaller but they compound:
- Reading the multiple and ignoring the weighting, when a discounted game can multiply the real grind tenfold.
- Treating the requirement as a debt. It is a condition on bonus money, not money owed, and abandoning an unfinished bonus costs nothing beyond the bonus itself.
- Raising stakes near the deadline, which is exactly the behaviour the max-bet clause is written to catch.
- Forgetting the release cap after a big win, when the cap was set before the first spin.
Bonus arithmetic also has nothing to say about whether playing is a good idea at all. Requirements are priced in money you have already deposited, and a requirement that looks cheap on paper can still take a session somewhere unhealthy; independent support is free and confidential (3), and setting a limit before claiming an offer is a better safeguard than any calculation on this page.
Frequently asked questions
What does 35x wagering actually require?
Thirty-five times the qualifying sum has to be wagered before bonus funds become withdrawable. That sum is either the credited bonus alone or the bonus with the deposit added.
Does the deposit count toward the multiple?
Only where the terms say “deposit plus bonus”. That phrasing doubles the staking on a 100% match, because the base becomes both halves instead of the credited bonus.
Do table games clear a bonus?
Rarely. Typical weightings of 0% to 10% leave a €1 stake worth only a few cents against the target, so the staking required runs into six figures.
How is the cost of clearing calculated?
Expected cost equals turnover times the house edge. Staking €7,000 on a 96% game works out at roughly €280, averaged across many spins.
What happens if the max bet is breached?
Breaching the stake cap normally voids the bonus and every win built on it, even where most of the requirement has already been cleared. One oversized spin is enough.
Can a cleared bonus still be capped?
Yes. A maximum conversion clause caps the payout at a stated multiple of the credited bonus, commonly 3x to 10x, and anything above the ceiling is removed.
Do free-spin wins carry their own multiple?
Yes, usually a higher one. The base is the amount won from the spins, and the clock on those winnings often runs shorter than the main bonus window.
Is a deposit rollover check the same thing?
No. A one-time deposit turnover condition is an anti-money-laundering rule applied to plain deposits, and it exists whether or not a bonus was claimed.
Sources
- Golisimo bonus and wagering clauses, v1.12 of 19 August 2026: where the worked example in this guide comes from: a 35x multiple applied to deposit plus bonus, a ten-day window and a ceiling on what any bonus can return.
- Ireland’s gambling regulator and its remit: confirms that bonus inducements fall inside the advertising rules a licensed operator must follow.
- Gambling Therapy support service: moderated groups and free counselling for anyone whose bonus chasing has stopped being a hobby.