The 10x wagering cap: what the new UK bonus rules mean for beginners

If you have ever claimed a casino bonus and then found you could not withdraw a penny of it, the rules have shifted your way. Since 19 January 2026, UK-licensed gambling sites cannot ask you to bet a bonus more than 10 times before your winnings become withdrawable.

Below, we cover what a wagering requirement is, what changed in January, and what the rules left alone.

What is a wagering requirement?

A wagering requirement is the total amount you have to bet before bonus winnings turn into cash you can withdraw. Some sites call it playthrough. Others call it rollover. Same thing.

Say you claim a £10 bonus with 10x wagering. You need to place £100 in bets first. Not win £100. Bet it.

Think of a voucher that only unlocks once you have spent a set amount in the shop. The bonus is real money. It just has a condition sitting on top.

What changed on 19 January 2026?

Three rules came into force that day, and they apply to almost every UK gambling licence. Casino, betting, bingo and lottery offers are all covered. The rules sit in Social Responsibility Code 5.1.1, part of the licence conditions every UK-licensed site has to follow.

Here is each one in plain terms.

The rule	What it means for you
Wagering capped at 10 times the bonus	A site cannot ask you to bet a £20 bonus more than £200
No mixing product types in one offer	A football bet cannot be rewarded with slot spins
Offer value locked once advertised	Finishing the qualifying spend early cannot shrink your reward

How much did the 10x cap change?

Quite a lot, if you were looking at the worst offers. Before the cap, some UK sites applied wagering of up to 60 times the bonus. The regulator singled that out as one of the extremes it wanted gone.

The table below shows the same bonus under a typical old requirement and under the new ceiling.

Bonus	At 40x (common before)	At 10x (maximum now)
£10	£400 in bets	£100 in bets
£20	£800 in bets	£200 in bets
£50	£2,000 in bets	£500 in bets

Those old numbers are the reason so many bonuses never got cashed out. Betting £2,000 to unlock £50 is a long evening. Or several.

The Gambling Commission settled on 10x as a compromise. Responses to its consultation split almost evenly between capping wagering and banning it outright. It ruled out a ban, and ruled out tighter caps of 1x and 5x. The reasoning was that sites would write harsher terms elsewhere, that some players would drift to unlicensed sites chasing bigger offers, and that smaller operators would struggle to compete with the biggest ones.

Can an offer still mix sports betting and slots?

Usually not, though there is one exception worth knowing. An offer can no longer ask you to bet on one product and then pay you in a different one.

These examples come from the regulator’s own guidance to operators.

Offer	Allowed
Bet £5, get a £10 free bet	Yes
Spend £5 on casino games, get 20 free spins	Yes
Bet £5, get 20 free spins	No
Bet £5, get a £5 free bet and 20 free spins	No
Bet £5, get £10 bonus to spend on any product	Yes

The exception is bonus money you can spend anywhere on the site. If the reward is credit you can put on sport, slots, bingo or lottery, your pick, the offer is fine. The site is not allowed to narrow that list for you.

For a beginner, this closes off a real trap. You used to sign up for a simple free bet and end up holding spins on a slot you had never opened.

What the new rules do not cover

The cap fixed the headline number. It left several things underneath it untouched.

Game weighting still applies. Weighting decides how much each £1 you bet counts towards your requirement. The Commission’s own example: put £1 on roulette with 30% weighting and only 30p of it counts. Slots usually count in full. Table games often do not.

The regulator looked at weighting during the consultation and chose to leave it alone for now. It said it would watch whether sites start leaning on weighting to make a 10x bonus feel heavier than 10x.

Time limits survived too. So did maximum win caps on free spins.

Pros: what the cap fixed

• Lower ceiling on wagering. A £50 bonus now tops out at £500 in bets instead of £2,000 or more.
• One product per offer. A football bet can no longer be paid out in slot spins.
• Locked-in offer value. A site cannot shrink your reward for hitting the qualifying spend early.

Cons: what it left alone

• Game weighting is untouched. A £1 roulette bet can still count as 30p towards your requirement.
• Time limits still apply. Miss the deadline and the bonus goes, whatever you have already wagered.
• Win caps are still allowed. Some free spin offers limit how much of your winnings you keep.
• The odds have not moved. A 10x requirement is still 10x of real betting, and you can still finish with nothing.

How do you check whether a bonus is worth claiming?

Check five things before you claim: the wagering, the game weighting, the time limit, whether your deposit is locked, and any win cap. Here they are in the order that saves you the most time.

1. Start with the wagering number. 10x is the legal ceiling, not the going rate. Plenty of sites sit below it. Lower is always better for you.
2. Read the game weighting table. It is usually buried in the bonus terms, which is why we break the terms down in every review. If your favourite game counts at 20%, your real workload is five times what the headline suggests.
3. Check the time limit. If you only play at weekends, a seven-day window may be impossible. Work out whether the deadline fits your week.
4. Find out whether your deposit is locked. A sticky bonus ties your own deposit to the bonus until wagering is done. A non-sticky bonus keeps the two separate, so your deposit stays withdrawable. Non-sticky is friendlier, and you should not assume which one you have got.
5. Look for a maximum win cap. Some free spin offers cap what you can walk away with, whatever you win.

Are there bonuses with no wagering at all?

Yes, and they are the gentlest place for a first-timer to start. A handful of UK sites run bonuses with zero wagering. Anything you win goes straight into your cash balance as real money, withdrawable right away.

PlayOJO and MrQ both build their whole offer around this. Neither applies a wagering requirement to bonuses or free spins.

Some of the biggest UK groups pay their welcome spins with no wagering too. Among the BetVictor sister sites, Smooth Spins and Parimatch both do. In the Entain group, Ladbrokes, Coral and PartyCasino do the same with their welcome spins.

1. 

   PlayOJO Casino

   T&Cs apply · Please gamble responsibly

   

   PlayOJO Casino

   T&Cs apply · Please gamble responsibly

Likes

• No wagering on any bonus, including free spins and rewards
• Winnings paid as cash, not as bonus funds you have to convert
• Cashback on every bet through the OJOplus scheme, win or lose
• Safer gambling tools built into the account, including deposit limits

Dislikes

• No traditional matched deposit bonus, so the headline offer looks small next to rivals
• The site takes a minute to find your way around if you have never used an online casino

How do you stay in control?

Bonuses are fairer now, but they’re still gambling, and the house still has an edge.

Set a deposit limit before you play, not after. It is the same instinct as deciding how much cash to take on a night out. Every UK-licensed site has to offer this, and you will find it in your account settings.

Two other tools are worth knowing about from day one:

• Reality checks. A pop-up that tells you how long you have been playing. Easy to ignore, but useful.
• Self-exclusion. You block yourself from a site for a set period, and the site has to honour it. GAMSTOP does the same thing across every UK-licensed gambling site at once, from one free sign-up. Our safe gambling guide walks you through setting it up.

And a small habit that helps: pick a game you enjoy. Grinding through wagering on something you find boring is how a bonus stops being fun.

Frequently asked questions

Does the 10x cap apply to free bets from bookmakers?

Yes, if the free bet comes with wagering. The cap covers betting, bingo and lottery offers as well as casinos, though most bookmaker free bets have no wagering to begin with.

Is the cap based on the bonus alone, or bonus plus deposit?

The rule is written around the bonus funds. Sites have calculated wagering in different ways in the past, so check the terms of the specific offer before you claim it.

Can I still lose money on a bonus with 10x wagering?

Yes. The cap changed how much you have to bet, not the odds of the games. You can complete the wagering and still finish with less than you started.

What happens if I run out of time before finishing the wagering?

The bonus and any winnings tied to it are removed. Whether your own deposit is affected depends on whether the bonus is sticky or non-sticky, so read that part of the terms first.

Do these rules apply to sites that are not licensed in the UK?

No. The Gambling Commission only sets rules for the sites it licenses. You can check any site’s licence on the Commission’s public register, or browse our list of licensed UK gambling companies.

Is a 5x bonus always better than a 10x one?

Not automatically. A 5x bonus with heavy game weighting and a seven-day limit can be harder work than a 10x bonus with full slot weighting and 30 days. Look at all three numbers together.

Further reading

• Casino reviews, where we test every welcome offer with real money
• Guides for more beginner explainers

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Sources

1. Gambling Commission, Autumn 2023 consultation: Proposed changes to LCCP and RTS: Socially responsible incentives, Consultation Response (published 26 March 2025, last updated 30 June 2025). gamblingcommission.gov.uk
2. Gambling Commission, Proposal 1: Ban or limit the use of wagering requirements, final LCCP wording and 19 January 2026 commencement. gamblingcommission.gov.uk
3. Gambling Commission, Proposal 2: Ban mixing of products within incentives. gamblingcommission.gov.uk
4. Gambling Commission blog, Socially responsible incentives: what operators need to know, Pradeep Rajania, 12 December 2025. Source of the compliant and non-compliant offer examples. gamblingcommission.gov.uk
5. DCMS, High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age, April 2023 white paper. The origin of the reforms. gov.uk
6. PlayOJO, official bonus page. States no wagering requirements on any bonus. playojo.com
7. MrQ, Wagering Requirements Explained. States MrQ applies no wagering requirements. mrq.com