First deposit bonus casinos in the UK — a side-by-side look at the licensed field

A first deposit bonus is the offer a casino runs to make a first payment feel like more than a payment. Match a deposit by 100%, hand over a few dozen free spins, sometimes both — the shape changes, the promise does not. The promise is that there is more in the account than was paid in, and the part nobody advertises is what the casino wants back before any of it can leave. The UK has tightened the rules around that last part. Since 19 December 2025 a Gambling Commission licensee can no longer require a player to wager a first deposit bonus more than ten times before it withdraws. That single number reshapes the comparison, because ten times the bonus is one thing to clear and forty times is quite another, and offers that used to chase the higher multiple have had to be rebuilt or quietly retired.

This page compares ten active UK-licensed casino domains — the brands a player actually meets on a UK-facing comparison — against what the Gambling Commission’s public register says about each one, what each one’s first deposit offer looks like in shape, and how the new wagering rule lands on the offer each one runs. The angle here is the paths through the field, not the verdict on any single brand. Some readers are picking a first bonus and want to know which offer is worth the paperwork. Some are picking a brand first and the offer is a tie-breaker. Some are picking an operator that will not vanish when they want to withdraw. The point of the comparison is that all three of those readers can read the same ten rows and reach three different answers.

Data current as of 6 November 2026 and cross-checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register of licence holders and domains.

What a UK first deposit bonus actually is — and what it costs the player who claims it

A first deposit bonus is a credit a UK-licensed casino adds to a new account when the initial transfer clears. The headline figure is typically a match up to a stated ceiling, a fixed amount, or a set of bonus rounds. The number the player actually works against is the wagering requirement — the multiple of the bonus the player has to bet through before any winnings become withdrawable cash. The terms define the multiple; the shape it takes varies by operator.

There are three patterns a UK player meets most often. A bonus on the deposit alone — the casino credits £100 on a £100 deposit and asks for the bonus to be wagered twenty times, meaning £2,000 of qualifying bets before withdrawal. A bonus on the bonus plus deposit combined — sometimes called a “stake-not-returned” structure, the same £100 on £100 requires £4,000 of qualifying bets because the multiple applies to the £200 combined balance. And a bonus paid as free spins on a named slot — where the wagering multiple attaches to whatever the spins pay out, not to the deposit. Each pattern costs a different amount of play to clear, and each one settles the bonus differently when the playthrough completes.

What changed on 19 December 2025 is the ceiling on the multiple. A UK-licensed casino can no longer ask a player to wager a first deposit bonus more than ten times before any winnings become withdrawable. The rule sits inside the Commission’s social responsibility code and applies to every bonus credit offered to a UK player, free-spin winnings included. Mixed-product bonuses — the offer that gives casino spins in exchange for a sports bet — were banned in the same change. The practical effect is that the heaviest bonus structures the offshore market still sells have been removed from the licensed UK field. A UK player now meets, at the top end, a ten-times playthrough on a £100 bonus — £1,000 of qualifying bets — rather than the forty or fifty times an offshore brand used to attach to the same headline number.

This is the arithmetic behind the headline. A £100 bonus with a ten-times playthrough at a £1 slot stake is 1,000 spins. At a five-second pace per spin — the floor the Commission set for slot pace on 31 October 2021 — that is 5,000 seconds of play, or roughly an hour and twenty-three minutes. The same £100 bonus at twenty times is 2,000 spins and two hours and forty-six minutes. The four-fold difference in time-to-clear is what the cap removed from the top of the market. What the cap did not change is that the bonus itself is still a credit against expected loss, not a free ride — the slot still runs at its house edge, and the bonus is paid out of what the slot keeps.

The offer a UK player meets on a licensed site is, in the end, a credit on top of a deposit, a multiple to clear it, and a list of which games count toward that multiple. The credit is the headline; the multiple is what the offer actually costs.

Why the licence number is the first thing to check — and what the Gambling Commission register actually shows

A UK first deposit bonus is only available from a UK-licensed casino, because the rules that cap the wagering multiple and ban mixed-product bonuses sit inside the Commission’s licence conditions, not in the general law of the land. An offshore brand running on a Curaçao or Malta licence is not bound by the 10x cap and is not offering a UK first deposit bonus in the regulatory sense — it is offering an offshore deal that happens to accept UK players, and the player has no recourse to the Commission if the bonus terms turn out to mean something different from what the brand advertised.

The register is the test. The Gambling Commission publishes a public register of gambling businesses, searchable online and downloadable as a CSV or Excel file. As of 18 September 2026 the register listed 139 businesses holding an active remote casino operating licence — the specific licence type that covers an online casino product — and its domain list recorded 1,065 active and 361 white-label website entries. A white-label site is one that trades under another company’s licence; several consumer brands share one licence holder, and the register is the only way to see which ones do.

The licence number itself follows a fixed shape. A remote casino operating licence on the register has the form (account)-R-(number)-(suffix), where the leading six digits repeat the licence holder’s account number and the “R” marks a remote (online) licence. So Ladbrokes’s licence 054743-R-330863-014 reads as account 54743 (LC International Limited), a remote licence, with running number 330863 and suffix 014. The format is not decorative — it is the only public confirmation that a domain on a casino’s footer is in fact the licence the casino is operating under, and that the player who deposits with that brand has the protections the licence confers.

What the licence confers matters. A Commission licensee is bound by the Licensing Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) and by the Remote Technical Standards, which between them require the operator to verify the customer’s identity and date of birth before any play or first deposit — a rule in force since 7 May 2019. A licensee must offer deposit limits, must offer time-out, must enrol the customer in GAMSTOP and check the customer’s name against the national self-exclusion register before any deposit. None of that is true of an offshore site. The bonus offer is the headline; the licence is the body underneath it.

There are limits to the protection. The Commission has no power to block an offshore site at the ISP level, and the only tools it has against an unlicensed brand trading into Great Britain are cease-and-desist notices, search-engine delisting and referrals to payment processors and hosting providers. The player on an unlicensed site has no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, and no approved alternative dispute resolution. The bonus on offer may look larger for it. The protection is what is smaller.

Safer-gambling controls every UK player meets before the first deposit clears

A first deposit at a UK-licensed casino is not the same act as opening an account at a UK-licensed casino. The account has to exist and be verified before the deposit can be accepted. The Commission’s social responsibility code sets the verification threshold: a licensee must confirm the customer’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit or any play, and the check has to be robust enough to catch someone trying to use a false identity. The check has been in force since 7 May 2019 and is non-negotiable for any operator holding a remote casino licence.

The next control is GAMSTOP. Since 31 March 2020 every UK-licensed online gambling operator has been required to take part in GAMSTOP, the national online self-exclusion scheme. A customer registering with a UK-licensed casino has their name checked against the GAMSTOP database before any deposit is accepted; if the name is registered, the operator must refuse the deposit. Self-exclusion periods on GAMSTOP run for six months, one year or five years, and once chosen the period cannot be cancelled early. The check is real-time and the operator cannot bypass it; this is the design.

The third control is deposit limits. There is no state-set ceiling on what a UK player may deposit in a day, a week or a month — the Commission has not set one, and offshore comparison pieces that quote a £100 or £500 “UK limit” are quoting a single operator’s house rule, not a regulatory cap. What every UK-licensed operator must do is offer a financial limit prompt before the first deposit. Since 31 October 2025 the prompt is mandatory: a licensee has to invite the customer to set a deposit ceiling before any money goes in, and has to log the offer. A customer can decline the limit and proceed, but the operator has to make the offer and has to record that it was made.

The fourth control is the financial vulnerability check. Since 28 February 2025 a UK licensee has to run a credit-check-style vulnerability assessment on any customer whose net deposits cross £150 in a rolling 30-day window. The check uses public data only — electoral roll, county court judgments, bankruptcies — and is intended to flag the customer who is gambling beyond their means rather than the customer who is gambling on credit. The wider financial risk assessment, which would have access to a customer’s current account data through Open Banking, has been announced but is not yet in force; the public-data check is what operates today.

Beyond those four, the slot product itself is constrained. Since 31 October 2021 auto-play has been banned on UK slots, a single spin may not complete faster than two and a half seconds, and “losses disguised as wins” — the celebratory animation that fires on a payout smaller than the stake — are banned. Since 9 April 2025 the maximum stake per game cycle has been £5 for players aged 25 and over; since 21 May 2025 it has been £2 for players aged 18 to 24. A player aged 25 or over staking £5 per spin across a ten-times playthrough on a £100 bonus has to clear the bonus across 200 spins, or about seventeen minutes at the regulated pace.

What the controls do not do is choose the offer for the player. A first deposit bonus on a UK-licensed site is offered on the operator’s terms, with the verification, the GAMSTOP check, the limit prompt and the vulnerability screening happening around it. None of them is optional. None of them is offset by the bonus.

Crypto deposits and the licence — what is and is not different about funding a UK first deposit bonus with bitcoin

A UK-licensed casino accepts the payment methods its cashier lists, and a handful of UK-licensed casinos list cryptocurrency among them — bitcoin and sometimes ether or tether, settled into the player’s cash balance at the cashier’s prevailing rate. The bonus offer, where one exists, runs on the same terms as a deposit funded by debit card or bank transfer. The wagering multiple, the cap on the multiple, the game weighting, the maximum cashout — all of it applies in the same way to the same offer.

What changes with crypto is the path the money takes to get there. A bitcoin deposit routes through the player’s wallet, onto whatever chain the casino accepts, and into the casino’s settlement system before it shows as cash in the player’s account. A debit card deposit routes through the card network and arrives in seconds. Both deposits, once they have cleared, sit in the same cash balance. Both are subject to the same wagering rule. The licence conditions do not bend for the payment method.

What does not bend either is the verification check. A UK licensee has to confirm the customer’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit or any play, and that requirement does not relax for a crypto-funded first deposit. Some offshore brands market “no KYC” or “anonymous” play as a feature; a UK-licensed brand cannot offer this feature and cannot offer a first deposit bonus to a customer who has not been verified. The verification has to come first, and the cashier’s deposit button will not light up until the operator’s compliance team has cleared the new account.

The licence is what closes the question. The Commission’s guidance on cryptocurrencies is consistent across its licence conditions: a remote casino operating licence obliges the operator to know its customer, and the customer has to be a real person whose identity has been checked against the electoral roll and the operator’s own records. A bitcoin deposit cannot be the entry point that bypasses the check. It can be the funding method, after the check, and that is where the difference between a UK-licensed and an offshore site is sharpest.

The same is true of e-wallets, prepaid cards and bank transfers. AstroPay’s UK entity, Larstal Limited, is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority as an electronic money institution; Apple Pay protects card data through tokenization, replacing the actual card number with a device-specific tokenised Device Primary Account Number. Neither of those mechanisms changes what the licensee has to do before the first deposit. The verification sits in front of the deposit regardless of the rail it arrives on.

How deposits and withdrawals actually move at a UK-licensed casino

The deposit side is the easy half. Most UK-licensed casinos clear a debit card or e-wallet deposit in seconds, and a UK Faster Payments bank transfer typically arrives within a couple of minutes — the Faster Payments Service has run round the clock since 2008, and most payments on it settle instantly or within two hours. The Faster Payments scheme itself sets a £1,000,000 per-transaction ceiling, though individual banks apply their own lower limits to their own customers. The Bank of England oversees the scheme’s stability and final settlement without being a participant in it. None of that affects a first deposit bonus; what affects a first deposit bonus is the wagering requirement, and that runs after the deposit clears, not during it.

The withdrawal side is the slower half. A UK licensee has to confirm the customer’s identity before paying out — the same identity check that runs before the first deposit, repeated at withdrawal to catch any change — and a licensee has to run source-of-funds checks on withdrawals above a certain size. Those checks are not the casino being slow on purpose; they are the LCCP and the Proceeds of Crime Act obligations the licensee has to satisfy before any money leaves the cashier.

What this means in practice is that the time from a withdrawal request to cleared funds is two numbers, not one. The first number is the operator’s internal processing time — the queue the withdrawal sits in while compliance reviews it. The second number is the payment rail the player has asked for. A debit card withdrawal through Visa or Mastercard typically takes one to three business days to clear after the operator has approved it. A bank transfer through Faster Payments typically clears the same day or the next morning. An e-wallet withdrawal (PayPal, Skrill, Neteller) typically clears within hours of approval.

What the licence does not do is force the operator to be fast. There is no Commission rule setting a maximum payout time, and the comparison sites that publish “instant withdrawals” or “same-day payouts” are reporting what the operator markets on its own cashier page, not what the Commission has confirmed. The fastest operators in the UK field do clear withdrawals the same day, on Faster Payments rails, once the verification has been completed. The slower ones sit in a two-to-five-day window. The bonus offer is the same on both.

Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit cards routed through e-wallets. A player who tries to fund a deposit with a credit card, direct or via an e-wallet funded by one, will be refused at the cashier. Debit cards and bank transfers are unaffected by the ban. Apple Pay works because the card on the device is a debit card in the typical UK configuration, not because the Commission has blessed Apple Pay as a payment rail. The Commission banned the funding source, not the wallet.

Ten UK-licensed casinos, side by side — what the register shows for each

The table below sets out the ten UK-licensed casino domains the rest of this page works through. Each row is taken from the Gambling Commission’s public register as of 18 September 2026. The columns are the licence holder, the full remote casino operating licence number, the status of the brand’s domain on the register, and any subject-level data the register carries for that brand on a first deposit bonus. Where the register has no subject-level entry for a brand, that cell is empty — the register is a licensing record, not a bonus database, and an empty cell means the register did not record a fact, not that the offer does not exist on the operator’s own site.

Several of the ten sit on the same licence. Ladbrokes is operated by LC International Limited, and so is Coral and Gala Bingo; the table lists Ladbrokes, but the licence number covers the whole LC International group. Paddy Power is operated by PPB Games Limited, the same licence holder as Betfair. Two consumer brands can share the corporate parent, and a player who sees two names on a comparison page may be looking at one licence. The register is the place this becomes visible.

The subject support column is empty across the board. The Gambling Commission’s public register is a register of licence holders and the domains they run, not a register of bonus terms. A first deposit bonus is offered by an operator on its own site, under the operator’s own terms, and the Commission does not list the offers. The bonus data that lives on this page sits on the operator’s cashier pages and in their bonus terms, not on the register, and a register check confirms the brand is licensed — not what the bonus is worth.

The brands, the bonus shapes, and what each one offers a player choosing a first deposit bonus

The ten brands above vary widely in what they offer as a first deposit bonus and in who their offer is shaped for. The notes below set out what each one offers on the operator’s own page, how the offer sits against the 10x cap, and which reader the offer is the right fit for. The notes do not recommend any brand as a place to play; they describe the offer the operator publishes.

Unibet — Platinum Gaming Limited, licence 045322-R-324275-019

Unibet’s UK first deposit offer, on the unibet.co.uk cashier, has historically been a tiered casino welcome that credits a fixed bonus amount on a qualifying first deposit with a wagering multiple inside the Commission’s cap. The bonus is split between the casino and the live casino lobby in some configurations; the casino share is what the wagering requirement runs on. Free spins accompanying the deposit are credited on a named slot with any winnings subject to the same 10x rule. Unibet works well for players who already have a sportsbook account with the brand. This bonus is competitive, the licence is clean, and the verification check is mandatory before any funds can be deposited.

Betfair — PPB Games Limited, licence 039411-R-319335-010

Betfair’s UK casino is the exchange operator’s casino product, separate from the exchange itself. The first deposit offer on the casino is a matched deposit with a modest multiple — typically inside the 10x cap and structured as a bonus-on-bonus-plus-deposit in some campaigns. The casino is built for the player who has come from the exchange side of the brand and is willing to claim a casino welcome that is not the headline-grabbing offer on the comparison page. Betfair’s wider reputation is exchange liquidity, not casino welcome generosity; the casino welcome is a way into a casino product the player is already inclined to use. The licence is shared with Paddy Power, and the player using either brand is operating under the same Commission oversight.

Sky Vegas — Bonne Terre Gaming Limited, licence 065519-R-339675-002

Sky Vegas runs a first deposit offer that pairs a deposit match with bonus spins, with the wagering requirement running on the bonus alone in most campaigns. Sky’s wider product is built around the Sky brand and the existing Sky customer relationship; the casino welcome is one of several reasons a Sky customer might move money across to the casino tab. Sky Vegas is ideal for existing Sky TV or betting account holders. The slot catalogue is the main draw, making the welcome a natural entry point.

MrQ — Tek Fox Ltd, licence 060629-R-337532-004

MrQ is one of the smaller UK-licensed brands on this list and has built its reputation on no-wagering spins. The first deposit offer pairs a matched deposit with a batch of bonus spins, and the winnings from those spins are paid as cash rather than as bonus funds with a wagering multiple. A cashable spin structure is unusual in the UK field and is the brand’s reason for existing; the matched deposit itself typically carries a modest multiple inside the 10x cap. MrQ is a fit for the player who reads bonus terms carefully and values an offer where the winnings are actually winnings. The licence is small and clean.

Betway — Betway Limited, licence 039372-R-319367-029

Betway’s UK offer is a matched deposit that caps wagering at 10x, and often includes bonus spins. Betway’s wider product is a sportsbook-casino pairing, and the welcome is one route into a casino product the brand has invested in. This option is solid for existing sports customers. The licence is clean and in good standing.

PokerStars — Stars Interactive Limited, licence 039108-R-319334-026

PokerStars’ UK casino is the poker operator’s casino product, separate from the poker client itself. The first deposit offer on the casino is typically a batch of free spins on a named slot, with any winnings subject to a multiple up to the 10x cap. The casino product is built for the player who has come from the poker client and is willing to claim a casino welcome as a route into a casino product the player is already inclined to use. The licence is valid and active. Verification must be completed before any deposit can be accepted.

Paddy Power — PPB Games Limited, licence 039411-R-319335-010

Paddy Power shares its licence with Betfair, and the casino welcome uses a 10x wagering limit, frequently accompanied by promotional spins. Paddy Power’s wider reputation is the sportsbook and the novelty markets; the casino is one tab on the broader product. This brand is designed for existing sportsbook customers looking to try the casino side. The welcome is competitive but not the primary offer on the page, and all accounts must pass verification before any deposit is processed.

Ladbrokes — LC International Limited, licence 054743-R-330863-014

Ladbrokes’s UK welcome is a matched deposit with a 10x wagering limit, frequently bundled with promotional spins. The brand sits inside the LC International group, the same corporate parent as Coral and Gala Bingo; the licence is shared across the group, and a player on any one of the three brands is operating under the same Commission oversight. Ladbrokes appeals to players who have a Ladbrokes shop habit and want an online welcome that recognises that history. The licence is clean and valid. Mandatory verification is required before any deposit is accepted.

BetVictor — BV Gaming Limited, licence 039576-R-319370-028

BetVictor’s UK welcome is a matched deposit with a 10x limit, often including promotional spins. BetVictor is one of the longer-established independent brands on the page, with a smaller market share than the group-owned brands but a clean licence and a casino product that competes on its own terms. The brand is designed for players who have used BetVictor before and are looking for a casino welcome. This welcome is competitive, though not the primary offer on the site.

Betfred — Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited, licence 039544-R-319290-010

Betfred’s UK welcome is a matched deposit with a 10x limit, often including promotional spins. Betfred is one of the few brands on the page that still runs a high-street bookmaker alongside its online product, and the casino is one tab on the broader brand. Betfred is designed for players who already have a Betfred shop or sportsbook account. The casino welcome is competitive but not the headline offer on the page. The licence is clean and active.

Choosing among them — the three paths through the UK first-deposit-bonus field

Three readers approach this page with three different priorities, and the comparison is built to serve all three.

The reader who is picking a first bonus and wants to know which offer is worth the paperwork is choosing on offer shape, not on brand. On offer shape the field has tightened dramatically since 19 December 2025. A 10x wagering cap is now the ceiling, and every offer on every UK-licensed brand is at or under that ceiling. The differentiator at the top end is the bonus structure itself: a free-spin offer where the winnings are paid as cash (MrQ) sits at one extreme, and a matched deposit where the multiple runs on the bonus-plus-deposit combined sits at the other. The first clears in minutes of play; the second can take hours. A player who reads terms will land on a different answer than a player who reads headlines.

The reader who is picking a brand first and treating the bonus as a tie-breaker is choosing on the brand itself — the existing sportsbook relationship, the casino product catalogue, the cashier’s payment options, the verification prompt’s speed. On brand the comparison is harder to tabulate. Betfair and Paddy Power share a licence; Ladbrokes, Coral and Gala Bingo share a corporate parent; MrQ is the only one of the ten with a no-wagering free-spin structure. A reader who already has a Sky account will treat Sky Vegas differently from a reader who has no existing relationship. The brand fit is the brand the player has already decided to use.

The reader who is picking an operator that will not vanish when they want to withdraw is choosing on licence and reputation. On licence every brand on this page passes the test — all ten are listed as active on the Gambling Commission’s register, all ten are held by a Commission licensee, all ten are bound by the LCCP and the Remote Technical Standards. The reputational differences between them are real but they are not licensing differences. A player who wants the safer choice picks the licence; a player who wants the brand they recognise picks the brand. The two are not the same decision and the comparison should not pretend they are.

What the comparison is honest about is that no UK-licensed casino offers a first deposit bonus that is genuinely free. The 10x cap removes the worst of the wagering burden, the verification and the GAMSTOP check happen around the bonus, and the bonus is paid out of what the slot keeps. The offer is a credit on top of a deposit, and the credit is paid back through play. A player who claims the offer and reads the terms is in front of the comparison; a player who claims the offer and reads only the headline is behind it.

How the 10x cap changes the math, in plain numbers

The 10x wagering cap that took effect on 19 December 2025 is the rule to anchor any calculation of what a UK first deposit bonus costs to clear. A £100 bonus with a 10x playthrough requires £1,000 of qualifying bets before withdrawal. At a £1 slot stake, that is 1,000 spins. At the regulated five-second slot pace — the floor that has applied since 31 October 2021 — those 1,000 spins take 5,000 seconds of play, or roughly an hour and twenty-three minutes of continuous play.

The same £100 bonus under an older 40x structure — the kind the offshore market still sells and that UK licensees can no longer offer — would have required £4,000 of qualifying bets, or 4,000 spins at a £1 stake, or roughly five hours and thirty-three minutes at the regulated pace. That is the size of the change the cap has made: the heaviest offers have been removed from the licensed UK field, and what remains at the top is a ten-times playthrough rather than a forty-times playthrough. The arithmetic holds the offer at the top end of a band — ten times the bonus — rather than at a single number, because a UK player may meet the cap exactly or sit under it, and the calculation below assumes the cap rather than assuming any single operator’s actual multiple.

A reader who is choosing on the bonus is choosing on which operator sits nearest the cap on a given bonus size. A reader who is choosing on the brand is choosing on the same offer shape across brands and reading the multiple as a tie-breaker. The cap is the frame both readers are working inside, and the offer on the page is the variable.

Frequently asked questions on first deposit bonuses at UK-licensed casinos

How is a first deposit bonus usually calculated?

A UK first deposit bonus is most often a percentage match on the deposit, paid as a credit on top of the cash balance. A 100% match up to £100 credits £100 on a £100 deposit; a 50% match up to £200 credits £100 on a £200 deposit. The wagering requirement then runs on the bonus credit — and since 19 December 2025, no more than ten times that bonus.

Can a first deposit bonus be funded with cryptocurrency?

Yes, where the casino’s cashier accepts cryptocurrency. The bonus runs on the same terms as a deposit funded by any other method, with the same 10x wagering cap, and the same verification requirement: a UK-licensed casino has to confirm the customer’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit, regardless of how the deposit is funded.

Does a first deposit bonus require identity verification before it pays out?

Yes, before it pays in. A UK-licensed casino has to verify the customer’s identity before the first deposit or any play, and that check has been in force since 7 May 2019. A player who has not yet cleared the verification cannot deposit, and so cannot claim a first deposit bonus at all.

What wagering usually applies to a first deposit bonus in the UK?

No more than ten times the bonus. The 10x cap took effect on 19 December 2025 and applies to every bonus credit, free-spin winnings included. Mixed-product bonuses (a casino bonus in exchange for a sports bet) were banned in the same change.

Is a first deposit bonus separate from a no-deposit bonus?

Yes. A first deposit bonus requires a deposit before it credits; a no-deposit bonus credits on account creation without a deposit. The two are distinct offers, sometimes offered together, and the wagering rules apply to each separately. The 10x cap applies to a no-deposit bonus as well as to a first deposit bonus.

How long is a first deposit bonus usually valid for once credited?

Typically 30 days from credit, with the free-spin portion often expiring sooner — seven days is common on free-spin offers. A bonus that is not cleared within its validity window is forfeit. A player who claims a first deposit bonus should check the validity window before claiming, since the wagering requirement does not pause when life gets in the way.