No Deposit Bonuses – The Small Print

Last Updated on March 3, 2023, written by Amelia Cassiday

Let’s be honest – no deposit bonuses are great! After all, what other bonus gives you free money to gamble with, without you ever having to even add any of your own funds first? There are some things you need to think about before you accept a no deposit bonus though, and we are going to talk about them on this page.

Please don’t think that all no deposit bonuses have restrictive terms and conditions though – the examples we use below are not found at the majority of online bingo sites, and there certainly aren’t any restrictive terms and conditions found attached to bonuses at sites we recommend. We would still always advise looking through the small print though, just so you know exactly what you can and can’t do with your bonus funds.

So, the first thing to look at is this: expiry dates. Yes, just like your supermarket shopping, bonuses have expiry dates, and you must use your bonus funds before the expiry date passes. If you do not manage to use your bonus funds before the specified date, they will simply be removed from your account, and you’ll have no way of getting them back. The expiry date will always be found in the small print of the bonus, and they can range from a single day through to a few months. Of course, the longer the expiry date, the better the bonus in question is.

Next we move onto the restrictions in terms of which games you can play. The majority of the time you won’t find any restrictions at all, meaning that you can spend your bonus funds on anything you want to. Sometimes your chosen online bingo site will designate certain games though, and this is generally because they want to push you in the direction of these games, for many reasons. The trouble is this: some people accept the bonus and then find out that it can only be used at a game they dislike, and then they have to make a deposit in order to play their preferred game. So, always check before you accept a bonus, just to make sure you can play your favourite game.

The last thing – and perhaps the most complex thing – to look at is the rollover requirement, and you must check this before accepting any no deposit bonus. It is expressed as a multiple, such as 30x or 40x, and can be found in the small print of all bonuses. This figure tells you how many times you have to wager your bonus funds before they, as well as any money won from them, can be withdrawn. So, if the rollover requirement is 40x and you get a £10 no deposit bonus, you’ll need to make £400 worth of bets before you can make a withdrawal.

But what is okay when it comes to the rollover requirement? Well, we’d say that anything under 40x is reasonable, and anything under 30x is exceptional. Once the rollover starts getting towards 50x though, you’ll find that you have pretty much no chance of ever being able to make a withdrawal, unless you are very lucky. Basically though, remember this: the lower the rollover requirement is, the better the bonus generally is.

There is one way to always ensure that you get bonuses with fair terms and conditions though, and it’s this: only ever play at sites we have recommended. There are loads of established and new no deposit bingo sites around, and you’ll find that only those with fair terms and conditions appear on our list of the best sites for you to play at.