A no deposit bonus is worth something only below a set wagering level. At 96 percent RTP that level is 25 times, and most markets sit above it.
A no deposit bonus is free money with a price attached, and the price is the wagering requirement. Whether the bonus is worth anything depends entirely on whether that price is above or below one specific number.
That number is 25.
Take a 100 bonus with a wagering requirement of 35 times. To withdraw anything you must stake 3,500.
Staking 3,500 on a game returning 96 percent means expecting to lose 4 percent of it, which is 140. You were given 100 and you expect to lose 140 getting it out.
So the expected value of that bonus is minus 40. Not a small win. A loss.
Set the expected loss equal to the bonus and solve.
The bonus is worth zero when the amount you must stake, multiplied by the house edge, equals the bonus itself. At 96 percent return the edge is 4 percent, and 1 divided by 0.04 is 25.
So at 96 percent RTP, a wagering requirement of 25 times is break-even. Below 25 the bonus is worth something. Above 25 it is worth less than nothing, and the higher the requirement the more it costs you to accept it.
The formula is worth keeping. Break-even wagering equals 1 divided by the house edge. At 97 percent return it is about 33 times. At 95 percent it is 20 times.
We track wagering requirements across 44 operators in seven regulated markets, as 74 listings because several are licensed in more than one. Of the 44, 43 publish a wagering multiple.
The median requirement is 35 times in Malta and Sweden, 30 in Denmark, Spain and Germany, and 27.5 in the Netherlands. Every one of those is above 25.
Six of the seven markets we track have a median bonus with negative expected value at 96 percent return. The exception is the United Kingdom, where the median is 1 time.
The 25 times line is the optimistic version, because it assumes the most favourable reading of every other term.
We do not publish figures on those five because we hold no dataset on them. Each one makes the arithmetic worse than the table above, never better.
When the wagering is genuinely low, when the terms are legible, and when you would have played anyway.
The honest case for a low-wagering or zero-wagering bonus is strong: at 1 time, a 100 bonus is worth about 96 and there is very little to think about. The case gets weaker with every multiple above that and turns negative at 25.
The full market benchmark is in wagering requirements compared across operators. The same arithmetic applied to free spins is in free spins with no deposit, the terms that decide the value.
GamblersGPT wagering requirement benchmark 2026, 74 operator listings across seven regulated markets, covering 44 distinct operators. All expected values computed at 96 percent RTP, which the page states as an assumption.
| Wagering | You must stake | Expected value |
|---|---|---|
| 0x | 0 | +100 |
| 1x | 100 | +96 |
| 10x | 1,000 | +60 |
| 20x | 2,000 | +20 |
| 25x | 2,500 | 0 |
| 30x | 3,000 | -20 |
| 35x | 3,500 | -40 |
| 40x | 4,000 | -60 |
| 50x | 5,000 | -100 |
Anything below 25 times is worth something at 96 percent return, and the lower the better. At or above 25 you are paying for the bonus through expected losses.
Not on its own. Expected value scales with the bonus and with the wagering together, so a 200 bonus at 40 times is worth minus 120 at 96 percent return, twice as bad as a 100 bonus on the same terms.
Yes, in two ways. A lower return game raises the break-even point in your favour only on paper, because you lose faster. And game weighting can multiply the real requirement. Use the game's own published return in the formula.
Market figures are from the GamblersGPT wagering benchmark 2026. Expected values assume 96 percent RTP. Last reviewed October 15, 2026.