In my previous post I showed that a casino bonus has a simple break-even point: at an average RTP of 96%, a wagering requirement of 25x on the bonus costs exactly as much as the bonus is worth. Below that the bonus has a positive expected value, above it a negative one.
That raised an obvious question: how many real offers are actually below that line? Our project keeps the terms of every casino it lists as structured data, so I ran the numbers across all 200 of them.
Note: this is a data and probability post, not advice to gamble. Gambling is 18+, and the house always keeps an edge.
The dataset
Each casino is one JavaScript object, filled from a first-hand check of its terms page and cashier (October 2026). The fields that matter here look like this:
{ bonus: { welcome: { match: 100, // % maxAmount: 500, // EUR wageringRequirement: 35, // x, null when not published wagerAppliesTo: 'bonus', // or 'deposit+bonus' maxBet: 5, // EUR per spin while wagering timeLimit: 10 // days }, cashback: { rate: 10, wageringRequirement: 0, maxAmount: 1000 } }, licenseAuthority: 'Curacao Gaming Authority (CGA)' } One rule made the analysis much easier: unpublished values are stored as null, never 0. A 0 in a wagering field would mean "no wagering", which is a very different claim. Every number below only counts the casinos that actually publish that value.
How many casinos offer a welcome bonus at all?
| Casinos | |
|---|---|
| With a welcome bonus | 191 |
| Without one (cashback or VIP only) | 9 |
| Wagering requirement published | 185 |
The typical headline offer is a 100% match (the median of 190 offers with a match figure).
The wagering distribution
const wr = brands .map(b => b.bonus?.welcome?.wageringRequirement) .filter(x => typeof x === 'number'); const bucket = (lo, hi) => wr.filter(x => x >= lo && x <= hi).length; | Wagering | Casinos | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 25x or lower | 8 | 4% |
| 26x to 35x | 112 | 61% |
| 36x to 40x | 57 | 31% |
| above 40x | 8 | 4% |
The median is 35x, the lowest is 10x and the highest is 60x. So only 8 of 185 published offers sit at or below the 25x break-even line, and they are the only ones where the bonus is not negative on average before any other rule kicks in.
The word that doubles the cost
The multiplier is only half the story. What it multiplies matters just as much:
| Wagering applies to | Casinos | Median wagering |
|---|---|---|
| Bonus only | 104 | 40x |
| Deposit + bonus | 83 | 35x |
| Deposit only | 2 |
At first glance the deposit + bonus offers look friendlier (35x instead of 40x). Run the expected value on a €100 deposit with a 100% match and 96% RTP and it flips:
const ev = ({ deposit, bonus, wagering, appliesTo, rtp = 96 }) => { const base = appliesTo === 'deposit+bonus' ? deposit + bonus : bonus; return bonus - base * wagering * (1 - rtp / 100); }; ev({ deposit: 100, bonus: 100, wagering: 40, appliesTo: 'bonus' }); // -60 ev({ deposit: 100, bonus: 100, wagering: 35, appliesTo: 'deposit+bonus' }); // -180 The "lower" 35x on deposit + bonus means €7,000 of betting instead of €4,000, so the expected cost is €280 instead of €160. 43% of the offers in the dataset use the deposit + bonus base.
The rules around the bonus
Two smaller fields shape how a bonus can be played:
- Maximum bet while wagering: €5 is close to a standard. 155 of the 185 casinos that publish a cap use exactly €5.
- Time limit: 10 days (69 casinos) and 7 days (58) dominate, with 30 days at 28 casinos.
With a €5 cap, clearing 35x on deposit + bonus for a €100 deposit takes at least 1,400 spins inside those 7 to 10 days.
Cashback looks very different
Cashback is the quiet counterpart to the welcome bonus. 181 of the 200 casinos offer some form of it, and the wagering picture is the opposite:
| Cashback wagering | Casinos |
|---|---|
| None (paid as cash) | 78 |
| 1x | 81 |
| 3x to 30x | 10 |
| 40x | 9 |
For 159 casinos (88%) cashback carries no wagering or 1x. Mathematically that makes a modest cashback worth more than most welcome bonuses, because almost none of it is eaten by required betting.
Licences
| Licence shown on the site | Casinos |
|---|---|
| Anjouan | 73 |
| Curacao | 28 |
| Tobique Gaming Commission | 9 |
| Malta (MGA) | 6 |
| Kahnawake | 3 |
| Other | 13 |
| No licence displayed on the site | 68 |
Offshore licences (Anjouan, Curacao) cover most of the list, and about a third of the casinos do not display a licence on their site at all. Players who care most about regulation usually look for an MGA or UK Gambling Commission licence, which only a handful of these brands hold.
Takeaways
- Only 4% of welcome offers clear the 25x line. The median offer (35x) has a negative expected value before max-bet and time rules.
- Read what the multiplier applies to. Deposit + bonus can nearly double the betting needed even when the number looks lower.
- Cashback is the better deal on paper. 88% of the cashback offers have no wagering or 1x.
- Store "unknown" as
null. It sounds like a detail, but it is what keeps a dataset like this honest: 6 of the 191 offers do not publish a wagering figure, and counting them as 0x would have almost doubled the "good" bucket.
If you want to look at the underlying data per casino (match, wagering, max bet, cashback and licence side by side), the full list is on CasinoKit. The calculators from the previous post use the same objects, so you can plug any offer in and see its expected value.
