The home page of this site lists our top casino offers which also represent some of our favourite places to play online.
If you’ve already claimed the bonuses from those sites and you’re looking for somewhere new to play, then this page is for you as it lists the full range of offers from sites that we’re happy to recommend.
As we mentioned on the front page of the site, the casino bonuses we list are primarily aimed at UK players. That’s not to say that you can’t claim any of the bonuses if you aren’t from the UK, but you will need to double check the T&C’s of the offer you’re interested in just to make sure you’re eligible.
If you are looking for free bets rather than casino bonuses, click here to go to our free bets page.
Best Bonuses From UK Online Casinos
WR = wagering requirements. Bonuses are for new customers only and terms and conditions will apply. See the casino’s website for full details.
Casino Bonuses Explained
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a casino bonus, then we’ll do our best to explain here.
In essence, a casino bonus is a promotional tool used by the casinos to get new players to sign up and give the site a try. The idea behind this sort of marketing is that once you’ve registered and seen how great the site is, you’ll stick around and become a long term customer.
Generally speaking, there are two kinds of bonus – deposit bonuses and no deposit bonuses.
A deposit bonus requires you to make a deposit at the casino before you receive your bonus, and the amount you deposit may impact the size of the bonus you are given too. A no deposit bonus is given without the need for a deposit at all. As you can probably guess, deposit bonuses tend to be much more common and more generous than their no deposit counterparts, which are pretty difficult to find these days.
Just like betting bonuses however, all casino bonuses will come with restrictions attached – after all, if a casino were to literally hand out money which could immediately be withdrawn, then they would go bankrupt pretty quickly.
These restrictions are known as wagering requirements or playthrough requirements, and simply require a set level of play before you can withdraw the bonus and any associated winnings.
Here’s a quick example of how it works.
Wagering Requirements Example
You sign up to a site offering a 100% matched deposit up to £50, with wagering requirements of 30x.
You aren’t really a big spender so only deposit £20, but the casino are as good as their word and match that amount 100%, giving you £20 in bonus money on top of your £20 deposit. You now have £40 to play with.
However, if you are lucky enough to win any money, you won’t be able to withdraw it until you have staked at least 30x £20 on qualifying games.
30 x £20 = £600
So you need to place £600 worth of bets before your winnings become withdrawable cash.
It sounds an awful lot, but remember, during the course of a gaming session you might only deposit £20, but when you take into account all the wins and losses along the way, you could easily make a few hundred pounds worth of bets as your £20 balance grows and falls without ever depositing more.
If you’ve had a big win, you can sometimes withdraw your deposit and winnings early by forfeiting the bonus, but many casinos don’t allow any withdrawals whatsoever until you have completed the WR, which is the shorthand for the term ‘wagering requirements’.
At most reputable casinos, the WR are relatively low, but what qualifies as low? Wagering requirements of 20x-30x would be excellent, although most often you will see them between 35x-40x, while anything above 50x is probably going to be more hassle than it is worth.
Wagering Requirements: Marketing Tricks, Pitfalls, and Conditions
Sometimes a casino will list their wagering requirements as ‘Bonus plus Deposit’ rather than as a multiplier of the bonus – this is often to make the playthrough requirements look smaller than they really are.
It means the wagering is applied to the sum total of the deposit (which was your money to begin with) and the bonus (which was the money given to you by the casino). So a 100% matched deposit bonus on a £10 deposit would give you another £10 in bonus funds, but the wagering requirements would be applied to that full £20, not just the bonus amount of £10.
When comparing bonuses make sure you take this into account, as a 100% bonus with 30x Bonus wagering is actually better than a 100% bonus with a 20x Bonus + Deposit wagering (which would actually be 40x the bonus). Basically, the wagering might look smaller, but it’s applied to larger amount so will be more difficult to clear.
Obviously if you are claiming a no deposit bonus, the wagering requirements will be listed as a multiplier of the bonus only. This is the dream scenario.
We should also point out that because casino games have different house advantages, some casinos will restrict the games you can play with their bonuses or only apply a portion of each stake to the wagering requirements, so check this before you get stuck in.
In the early days of casino bonuses it was common to be able to grind out the bonus playing £1 bets on blackjack and walk away with 90% of the bonus intact thanks to the tiny house edge in that game. This was known as bonus hunting, but the casinos eventually got wise to it and many stopped allowing you to play blackjack with a welcome bonus.
Another tactic casinos use to balance their risk is to say for example, that for every £1 played on blackjack, just 25p (or 25%) will come off your wagering requirements. So if you had 30x on a £10 bonus to clear, a total of £300, a single hand of blackjack costing £1 would only bring that total amount down to £299.75p.
This means it takes much longer to grind through your wagering amount and gives the casino a much stronger chance to win that money back from you.
This brings us neatly on to time limits.
You may find that you only have, for instance, 7 days from the time you claim the bonus in which to clear your wagering requirements, so depositing too much might end up giving you an impossible task in terms of clearing those wagering requirements.
Types of Casino Bonus You Can Claim
Being new to playing at online casinos means that you are going to come across a whole host of casino bonuses that you haven’t experienced before.
There are many different types bonuses, some of which can seem the same at first glance, so you might need a little help getting your head around them all.
With this in mind, we have broken them down into categories and listed each type of bonus with a short description.
No Deposit Bonuses
The first type of bonus we’ll look at are the ones that are given without any upfront cost – given to players without them having to make a qualifying deposit. We have spoken about them a little already.
While many bonuses are given to incentivise new players to sign up, these can also be given to retain existing players.
- One Hours Free Play Bonus – How these work is that you are given a set amount of credits and then have up to one hour (longer at some casinos) to place a certain amount of wagers in the hope that you will end the session with more money that you started with. The casino will then let you ‘keep’ a certain amount of these winnings. However, to redeem them you will usually need to make a deposit at the casino and then play through the winnings a certain amount of times before you can actually withdraw them.
- Free Spins – Another type of no deposit bonus comes in the form of ‘Free Spins’. This is a set number of spins on a particular online slot machine which you don’t need to pay for yourself. Whatever you win from those spins is yours to keep, but there will probably be an upper limit of a few hundred pounds. These may come with wagering requirements if it’s a large amount, but often they don’t have playthrough requirements at all.
- Free Chips – In America this term is used in the way we would describe bonus money, but in the UK it can refer to a promotion for live casino games. The casino will you give a set amount of free chips to spend on live casino games, which cannot be spent elsewhere on the site. These are a bit like the equivalent of free spins, in that they often have no wagering requirements attached.
Deposit Bonuses
The second type of bonus is the most common for new players, a deposit bonus.
As already explained, these given when you deposit money into the casinos, and usually the amount of the bonus is tied to the amount of the deposit in some way.
Sometimes both the deposit and bonus are ‘locked’ until the wagering requirements are met, whilst other times you can withdraw your deposit at any time and forfeit the remaining bonus.
- Matched Bonus – The original type of casino bonus offered by many online casinos. It is very simple: make a deposit and your initial amount will be matched by the casino. The value of the bonus will change from casino to casino, so a 100% bonus is obviously a doubling of your deposit, a 200% bonus will see your initial deposit tripled and so on. It could be lower as well though, so a 50% or 75% deposit match.
- Multi-Stage Bonus Match – This type of casino bonus is for all intents and purposes a matched bonus, however, instead of one single bonus amount, you get bonuses on your first few deposits made, so for example you might get 100% matched on deposit 1, 50% matched on deposit 2, and 25% matched on deposit 3, up to a certain amount. They might sell it as a 175% deposit match. Often these bonuses can only be claimed until you make your first withdrawal, so make sure you read through all terms to avoid mistakes.
- Cash Back Bonus – A cash back bonus is a form of compensation given should you have had a losing session, and is where the casino will return to your casino account a percentage of those losses. In some cases this cash back will be withdrawable cash, whilst in others it comes as bonus funds with play through requirements attached.
- Sticky or Phantom Bonuses – This is when a casino gives you a bonus, then take that bonus amount away after you meet the terms and requirements of the bonus and request a withdrawal. So if you had been given a £100 bonus, won some money, and then requested a cash out/withdrawal of £200, the £100 bonus will be removed and only £100 will be sent to your bank account.
- Reload Bonuses – These are often looked upon as loyalty bonuses. The casino offers a bonus when you make additional deposits within specific time frames. They might be offered daily, weekly or monthly and are basically a deposit bonus offered for continued play. The frequency, size and amount of reload bonus you are offered may depend on your previous activity in the casino. Eg: Those that play more, might get bigger, or more frequent, bonuses.
- Deposit Method Bonuses – Some online casinos will flip you a bonus simply for making a deposit using a certain payment method – normally for deposits made by eWallets or a prepaid voucher deposit such as Ukash or PaySafeCard. Once you make the deposit using whatever method the casino has requested, the bonus is added instantly to your casino account. These bonuses are typically around the 5% to 20% percentage range.
Other Bonuses
The majority of bonuses will fit into the two categories listed above, but there are a few outliers that don’t really belong in either.
These tend to be used for customer retention rather than customer acquisition, so are also more low key.
- Refer a Friend Bonuses – This bonus does what it says on the tin. Should you refer one of your friends to a particular casino, and that person then goes on to make a deposit and play, then the casino will credit your account with a small bonus. However, the player you refer must not be living at your address or using your computer, as in the majority of cases only one player per household/computer is allowed. The good thing about these is that they can usually be claimed more than once, which is a rarity among casino bonuses.
- Loyalty Comp Bonuses – Should you have had a particularly bad session or series of sessions then it can actually be worth contacting the casino and asking for a bonus just because you feel hard done by. It won’t necessarily work, but many casinos have been known to do this in the past as a reward for your custom and to compensate you for your bad run of luck. It won’t be much and may well come with terms, but if you don’t ask you won’t get.
- Comp Points – Most online casinos have some kind of comp point system or loyalty rewards scheme in place, that either sees you earn points for every wager you make or gives out free spins when certain ‘achievements’ have been met. Those that use comp points will allow their customers to exchange the points, usually for bonus funds, but sometimes for physical goods as well. This is an area that has changed a lot over the years, so the specifics will likely be different from one casino to the next.
Bonus Codes
Although this is becoming rarer, it’s worth making a mention of bonus codes to end this page.
Typically, any sign up offers or bonuses are triggered simply by clicking the link or advertising banner you see online. So long as you then go on to do what the instructions tell you (sign up, opt in to the offer, whatever) the system will know that you have accepted the offer and any bonus funds etc. will be granted as expected.
However, some casinos may still require you to enter a code into the cashiers section of their banking page when you are making a deposit to claim a bonus.
This was the old way of doing things but you might still come across it, so just keep an eye out for anything that looks like a promo code in the offer you have read about.
It might say something like MATCH100, or BONUS2023, or it might even be what appear to be random letters and numbers UKGS200 (this could quite possibly have a meaning such as UK Gambling Sites 200% Matched Bonus).
Whatever it says, just make sure you enter the code as you sign up because otherwise the promotion won’t be applied.
If you are struggling to find where the bonus code should go, your best bet is to contact support so you don’t go ahead and miss out on it by some sort of accidental error.