The wagering multiple where a bonus turns negative
Every casino bonus has a break-even point: the wagering multiplier at which the expected cost of clearing it equals the bonus itself. Below that line the offer is worth taking. Above it, you are paying for the privilege. Here is where that line sits — and where the market actually prices.
At a 4% house edge — a 96% RTP slot, which is what bonus terms almost always steer you onto — a casino bonus breaks even at 25× wagering when the multiplier applies to the bonus alone, and at 12.5× when it applies to deposit + bonus on a 100% match. The industry standard welcome offer is 35× to 45×. That is not a close call: at 35× on deposit + bonus, a £100 bonus carries an expected cost of £280 to clear. Its realistic value is −£180. And this is not theoretical — of the 6 operators whose own published terms give both a multiplier and the base it applies to, all 6 sit above their break-even point.
What each multiplier costs
Updated 20 Aug 2026A £100 deposit with a 100% match — so a £100 bonus — cleared at a 4% house edge. Realistic value is the bonus minus the expected cost of clearing it.
| Wagering | Applies to bonus only | Applies to deposit + bonus | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turnover | Cost to clear | Realistic value | Turnover | Cost to clear | Realistic value | |
| 1× | £100 | £4 | +£96 | £200 | £8 | +£92 |
| 10× | £1,000 | £40 | +£60 | £2,000 | £80 | +£20 |
| 12.5×break-even, dep+bonus | £1,250 | £50 | +£50 | £2,500 | £100 | £0 |
| 15× | £1,500 | £60 | +£40 | £3,000 | £120 | −£20 |
| 20× | £2,000 | £80 | +£20 | £4,000 | £160 | −£60 |
| 25×break-even, bonus only | £2,500 | £100 | £0 | £5,000 | £200 | −£100 |
| 30× | £3,000 | £120 | −£20 | £6,000 | £240 | −£140 |
| 35×market standard | £3,500 | £140 | −£40 | £7,000 | £280 | −£180 |
| 40×market standard | £4,000 | £160 | −£60 | £8,000 | £320 | −£220 |
| 45×market standard | £4,500 | £180 | −£80 | £9,000 | £360 | −£260 |
| 50× | £5,000 | £200 | −£100 | £10,000 | £400 | −£300 |
| 60× | £6,000 | £240 | −£140 | £12,000 | £480 | −£380 |
Where break-even sits for your terms
Read your match size down the left and the house edge of the games you can actually play across the top. If the offer's wagering multiplier is above the number in the cell, the bonus has negative expected value.
| Match | 1% edge | 2% edge | 4% edge | 6% edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25% (deposit + bonus) | 20× | 10× | 5× | 3.3× |
| 50% (deposit + bonus) | 33.3× | 16.7× | 8.3× | 5.6× |
| 100% (deposit + bonus) | 50× | 25× | 12.5× | 8.3× |
| 200% (deposit + bonus) | 66.7× | 33.3× | 16.7× | 11.1× |
| Any match bonus only | 100× | 50× | 25× | 16.7× |
- 1% — Blackjack, basic strategy (rarely eligible)
- 2% — Low-edge table games (usually weighted down)
- 4% — Typical slot, 96% RTP — the usual case
- 6% — Low-RTP slot, 94%
On a bonus-only base, the match size is irrelevant
Break-even is 1 ÷ house edge and nothing else — the bonus cancels out of the equation. A 500% match at 40× wagering is exactly as bad a deal as a 50% match at 40×. The headline number on the banner tells you nothing about whether the offer is worth taking.
On a deposit + bonus base, a bigger match is genuinely better
Break-even rises from 5× at a 25% match to 16.7× at 200%, because the bonus grows faster than the base it is wagered against. A 200% match at 35× is less punishing than a 100% match at 35× — though at a 4% edge both are still negative.
Where real offers actually sit
6 operators · archive-sourcedThe table above is arithmetic. This one is evidence. Each figure below is quoted from the operator's own bonus terms as captured by the Internet Archive, then checked back against that snapshot word for word. Of the 6 operators that publish both a multiplier and the base it applies to, all 6 price above their own break-even point. Not most. All of them.
| Operator | Wagering | Applies to | Break-even | Over the line | Turnover | Realistic value | Snapshot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KatsuBet | 45× | Deposit + bonus | 12.5× | 3.6× | £9,000 | −£260 | 2022-11-30 |
| BitStarz | 40× | Bonus only | 25× | 1.6× | £4,000 | −£60 | 2026-05-01 |
| mBit | 40× | Bonus only | 25× | 1.6× | £4,000 | −£60 | 2023-05-31 |
| 7Bit Casino | 35× | Deposit + bonus | 12.5× | 2.8× | £7,000 | −£180 | 2024-12-12 |
| Mirax Casino | 35× | Deposit + bonus | 12.5× | 2.8× | £7,000 | −£180 | 2026-05-12 |
| Vavada | 35× | Bonus only | 25× | 1.4× | £3,500 | −£40 | 2021-05-10 |
Turnover and realistic value are computed on the same £100 deposit, 100% match and 4% house edge as the table above, so the columns are comparable — not on each operator's own headline package, which differs. What is operator-specific is the multiplier and its base, and those are the two figures that decide the outcome.
Partly necessity — every one of these operators refuses connections from our network, so their live terms are unreachable to us. But a dated capture is also the better citation. A casino can revise its bonus terms silently and a live link still resolves, pointing at something other than what was read. A timestamped snapshot cannot move.
The cost is staleness, and it is uneven — the Mirax capture is from 2026, the Vavada one from 2021. Every row shows its snapshot date for that reason. These terms may have changed since; read the current ones before depositing. Each operator's review page carries the exact sentence quoted and a link to the capture it came from.
- Gamdom — Every archived capture of Gamdom's terms is a client-rendered React shell — 31 characters of text behind the page furniture. The terms body is fetched at runtime from an API that was never archived, and it is not compiled into the page bundle either.
- Rollbit — Rollbit's Help Centre articles are client-rendered, so the archived captures hold no readable terms text.
Listed rather than dropped. An absence that looks like an oversight is worse than an absence that explains itself — and we will not fill the gap from an affiliate summary, which is marketing rather than terms.
How these numbers are produced
Write D for the deposit, m for the match as a fraction, W for the wagering multiplier and h for the house edge as a fraction. The bonus is B = mD.
- Required turnover is W·B when wagering applies to the bonus alone, or W·(D + B) when it applies to deposit + bonus.
- Expected cost to clear is turnover × h. House edge is the long-run share of every amount staked that the game keeps, so staking a total of T is expected to cost T·h.
- Realistic value is B minus that cost.
- Break-even is where the two are equal: W = 1/h on a bonus-only base, and W = m / (h(1 + m)) on a deposit + bonus base. Both are independent of the deposit, which is why one number covers every stake level.
Everything on this page follows from those four lines. No operator supplied any figure, and none was needed — read the multiplier and its base off the terms you are being offered and the table tells you the rest. The arithmetic is reproducible; check it.
- Game weighting. Terms typically count slots at 100% and table games at 10% or 0%, which forces you onto the higher edge.
- Maximum bet clauses. A cap of around £5 per spin while a bonus is live means large turnover takes a long time, and breaching it usually voids the bonus and everything won with it.
- Expiry. Seven to fourteen days is common. Turnover you cannot physically complete in the window is value you never had.
- Maximum cashout. Some offers cap what you may withdraw from bonus winnings regardless of what you won.
- Variance. These are expectations, not outcomes. Individual results vary widely in both directions — which is precisely why the offers work.
Every one of those makes a real offer worse than the model, never better. Read the figures here as a ceiling.
FAQ
What is the break-even wagering requirement on a casino bonus?
At a 4% house edge — a typical 96% RTP slot, which is what bonus terms usually force you onto — a bonus breaks even at 25× when the wagering applies to the bonus alone, and at 12.5× when it applies to deposit + bonus on a 100% match. Above those multipliers the expected cost of clearing the bonus exceeds the bonus itself, so its expected value is negative. The industry standard offer is 35× to 45×.
Does a bigger bonus match make the wagering easier to clear?
Only when the wagering applies to deposit + bonus, and the effect is the opposite of what most people assume. On a deposit + bonus base the break-even multiplier rises with the match — 5× at a 25% match, 12.5× at 100%, 16.7× at 200% (all at a 4% edge) — because the bonus grows faster than the base it is wagered against. On a bonus-only base the match size makes no difference at all: break-even is 1 ÷ house edge, regardless of whether the match is 50% or 500%.
How do you calculate the cost of clearing a wagering requirement?
House edge is the long-run share of every amount staked that the game keeps, so the expected cost of staking a total of T is T × edge. Required turnover is the wagering multiplier times its base — the bonus alone, or deposit + bonus. A £100 deposit with a 100% match at 35× on deposit + bonus means 35 × £200 = £7,000 of turnover; at a 4% edge that is an expected £280 to clear, against a £100 bonus. Realistic value = bonus − expected cost = −£180.
Is this a prediction of what I will lose?
No. It is an expectation, not an outcome. Individual sessions vary enormously around the expected value, and plenty of players clear a 40× bonus in profit — that is what makes the offers attractive. What the table shows is the average across many attempts, which is the number the operator is pricing against. Over one bonus you may win; over the long run the arithmetic decides.
Are the real terms better or worse than this model?
Worse, essentially always. The model assumes the whole bonus is clearable, that every game contributes 100%, that no maximum-bet clause is breached, that the expiry period is long enough, and that there is no cap on what you can withdraw from bonus winnings. Real terms carry all five of those restrictions and each one can only reduce value. Treat every figure here as a ceiling on what a bonus is worth, never a floor.
Do any real casino bonuses come in below the break-even point?
Not among the ones we could verify. Six crypto casinos publish both a wagering multiplier and the base it applies to in their own bonus terms: KatsuBet at 45× on deposit + bonus, BitStarz and mBit at 40× on the bonus alone, 7Bit and Mirax at 35× on deposit + bonus, and Vavada at 35× on the bonus alone. Break-even at a 4% house edge is 25× on a bonus-only base and 12.5× on deposit + bonus, so every one of the six is above its own line — KatsuBet by a factor of 3.6. Each figure is quoted from the operator's own terms as captured by the Internet Archive and checked back against that snapshot word for word.
What is a wager-free bonus worth?
At 1× — where the bonus need only be staked once — a £100 bonus is worth about £96 at a 4% house edge and £92 if the deposit must be staked too. That is close to face value, which is why wager-free offers are rare and usually much smaller in headline terms. A small wager-free bonus routinely beats a large heavily-wagered one.
This table is published under CC BY 4.0. Quote it, republish it, rebuild it from the formulas above — attribution to ProvenPayouts is all that is asked. If you find an error in the arithmetic, we want to hear about it.
18+ only. Gambling involves risk and is not a source of income. This page is a mathematical reference, not financial advice and not a betting strategy. No model makes gambling profitable — a lower house edge is a slower loss, not a gain.