The document
The five lines in a bonus document that decide all the others
Where the five clauses that govern a casino offer sit inside the operator's own terms, how to read each one before registering anywhere, and what a regulator on the other side of the Atlantic settled on as a ceiling.
The offer is one line long, and the document under it is the offer
The sentence on a banner is an advertisement and the paragraph it links to is a contract (the "terms and conditions", reached from a line of small type beneath the button, and sometimes headed "promotion rules" instead), and only one of those two governs what becomes of a balance. It is not the one set in the larger type, and the gap between the two is where most of the disappointment on this subject is manufactured.
A document of that kind is not written to be read, and there is no sense pretending otherwise; it is written to be enforceable, which is a different purpose and produces different prose. That is precisely why a reader needs a route through it rather than somebody's summary of it, and the route is five headings long.
Inside the document there are five lines which decide everything the offer can do, and the remainder is procedure (identity checks, payment routes, the "right to amend" that every operator reserves to itself). We set them out in the order a player meets them rather than in the order of their weight, because a clause found late has already cost whatever it was going to cost.
None of the five is hidden in any legal sense. Each sits under a heading of its own (the words vary from one operator to the next, the five subjects do not), and a reader who knows the five headings can work through a document he has never seen in about four minutes.
The objection, which belongs before the checklist
A site paid by the operators whose documents it describes has an obvious reason to describe them gently. The answer we can give is that the document is not ours to soften, because it sits on the operator's own domain and not on ours. Every button here opens their page rather than a copy of it (the paid nature of the link declared in the page and in its markup, which is where a reader can check it). The checklist below is therefore testable against a brand we have never written a word about, which is the only kind of advice worth taking from a commercial page.
Of the sixteen Canadian comparison sites we read on 20 October 2026, not one set out the clauses of a terms document in a form a reader could carry somewhere else, and most reproduced the operator's own summary of the operator's own offer (the "key terms" box, which is a selection made by the party selling). We would rather publish the headings and be checked against the source than publish a précis nobody can verify.
The limit of the method deserves one sentence. We read these documents from outside the country, and the page served to an address in Ontario or in Alberta is sometimes a different page altogether (the provincial sites run under separate registrations), so a clause we quote may read differently where the reader happens to be sitting.
The multiple, and the quantity that it multiplies
The first line is the multiple and the second is the quantity it applies to, called the "base" in most documents, and neither of them means anything without the other. A "30x" against a credit of fifty dollars asks for fifteen hundred dollars of play, and the same thirty applied to a deposit and a credit together asks for three thousand (the identical advertised figure, twice the evening).
Three words settle which of the two you are looking at, and they sit immediately after the number: "bonus" on its own, "deposit" on its own, or the pair of them joined by an "and". Three documents can carry the same multiple and ask for three quite different volumes of play, and the calculator we put below prints the volume for each of the three.
There is a fourth arrangement, rarer and worth a second look, in which the multiple applies to the winnings from a "free spins" package instead of to any sum deposited. A reader who finds the word "winnings" after the number is looking at a requirement whose size cannot be known in advance (the spins have to be played before the figure exists at all); we would read the rest of that document twice.
What a wagering requirement actually asks of you
Of the sixteen Canadian comparison sites we read, three carry a tool of any kind and not one of them works out how much a bonus asks you to stake. This one does, in your browser, and sends nothing anywhere.
—The figure is the total you must stake, not the amount you lose: at a return of ninety-six per cent, a stake of that size costs about four per cent of it on average.
The clock, which turns a volume into a rate of play
The third line is the window, and it is the one that decides whether a requirement is feasible rather than merely large. Fifteen hundred dollars of play inside seven days is two hundred and fourteen dollars a day (the arithmetic of a window is division and nothing more), and at fifty cents a spin (a modest stake by any measure) that is four hundred and twenty-eight spins every evening for a week!
A rate of play is the form in which a requirement becomes a question about an evening instead of a question about money, and it is the conversion a banner never performs. Nobody budgets in multiples; everybody budgets in hours.
Most documents start the clock when the credit is granted rather than when the player first uses it, and the terms say which of the two ("from the date of credit" against "from the first qualifying wager"). The difference is a day or two at the front of the window, and a day inside a window of seven is a seventh of the work.
What expires at the end of it is the second half of that line, and it is rarely the credit alone. In most documents we read, an unmet requirement voids the balance built on the credit as well ("bonus and winnings will be forfeited", or words close to it). A player who has turned a fifty-dollar credit into two hundred, and has placed eleven hundred of the fifteen hundred, keeps nothing of the two hundred at the end of the seventh day.
A sixth heading, usually called "eligible games", decides which rounds count towards the total at all. A table weighted at a tenth multiplies every figure in this section by ten, which is the single fastest way for an offer to become impossible without ever changing its advertised number.
Two ceilings that no banner ever shows
The fourth line is a ceiling on withdrawals, written as "maximum cashout" or as "maximum withdrawal from bonus funds", and it fixes the best possible outcome of the offer before the first spin is placed (a ceiling on the upside, with the work left exactly where it was). It is commonly set as a multiple of the credit (ten times is a frequent figure), which means an offer can be cleared in full and still pay out a fraction of what it produced.
The fifth is a cap on the size of a single bet while a credit is live, five dollars in a great many documents and printed under "maximum stake", and it does two separate things at once. It settles how many rounds the work will take, and it settles what one careless spin costs, because a number of operators void the balance rather than the offending wager; that clause repays a second reading.
Those two lines are the reason a generous multiple and a mean one can change places. A document at twenty-five times with a ceiling of five times the credit (the "effective" requirement, if the trade had a term for it) is worse, in every outcome that matters, than one at thirty-five times with no ceiling at all.
The two ceilings are also the lines a summary is most likely to leave out, our own digest included, which is an argument for opening the document rather than trusting anybody's digest of it (including this page, which is a map and not a substitute). A reader who checks one thing should check for a ceiling, since it is the only clause of the five that limits the best case instead of the worst.
Terms in one place?
Ruby Fortune
Alderney AGCC cat. 1 · Kahnawake 00892
Landing page: the operator’s Canadian home pageLanding page named in the operator's programme link sheet, 14 October 2026. We publish no amounts.
Open Ruby FortuneCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
A yardstick borrowed from somewhere that has a rule
Great Britain capped bonus wagering at ten times the sum deposited and granted, with effect from 19 January 2026, in a social responsibility code provision numbered 5.1.1 in the Gambling Commission's licence conditions (an "SR code", in that regulator's own shorthand). It binds operators licensed there, it has no force whatever on this side of the Atlantic, and it is still the most useful single figure on this page (a foreign rule, quoted here as a measure rather than as a right).
The use we make of it is comparison and not complaint. Ten times a deposit of fifty and a credit of fifty is a thousand dollars of play, and thirty-five times the credit alone is one thousand seven hundred and fifty, so a reader holding a document can see at once which side of a regulator's line the offer in front of him would have fallen on.
We should say plainly what that comparison is not. It is not a claim that an offer above the British ceiling is unlawful anywhere in Canada, and it is not an accusation against any brand on this site. Neither the Registrar's Standards in Ontario (amended on 14 May 2026) nor the integrity guidelines in Alberta (advertising sections dated 18 June 2026) sets a ceiling of that kind. Both of them require what they call the "material terms" to be presented with the offer itself.
So the ceiling in this country is the reader's own, which is a less comfortable arrangement than it sounds. It also means that nobody is in a position to tell you a document is unacceptable; you decide where your own line falls, and the five headings are how you find out where the document falls in relation to it.
What the five lines leave you holding
A document that can be read in four minutes is a document that can be refused in one, and refusing an offer costs nothing whatever (there will be another within the week). The habit worth keeping is mechanical: find the multiple, find the quantity under it, find the window, find the ceiling, find the cap on a bet, in that order and before any money moves ("wagering", "eligible games", "expiry", "maximum cashout", "maximum stake", if the headings themselves are wanted).
Two of the five change the arithmetic and three of them change the chance of ever reaching the end of it (the window, the ceiling and the cap, in that order), which is why we publish the headings instead of a verdict on any particular promotion. A verdict would save four minutes once and cost the reader the ability to read the next document without us.
That, in the end, is the whole purpose of the page. Read the five lines, decide for yourself, and then go and play the game you chose rather than the one an offer chose on your behalf!
Spin Casino
Alderney AGCC cat. 1 · Kahnawake 00892
Open Spin CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Lucky Nugget
Alderney AGCC cat. 1 · Kahnawake 00892
Open Lucky NuggetCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
All Slots Casino
Alderney AGCC cat. 1 · Kahnawake 00892
Open All Slots CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Questions readers ask
Which lines of a bonus document actually matter?
Five of them: the multiple, the quantity it applies to, the expiry window, the ceiling on what the offer can return and the cap on the size of a single bet. The rest of the document is procedure, and these five decide between them what the offer is worth taking.
How long is the window on a typical offer?
Seven days is the commonest figure in the documents we read, with thirty days at the generous end and twenty-four hours on some "free spins" packages. The window matters because it turns a volume of play into a rate of play, which is the form in which a reader can judge whether it is feasible at all.
Does a withdrawal ceiling apply to my own deposit as well?
Usually not, and the wording says which: a ceiling written as "maximum withdrawal from bonus funds" leaves a deposit balance alone, while one written as "maximum withdrawal while a bonus is active" does not. The distinction sits in the phrasing rather than in the figure, and it is worth the twenty seconds it takes to read.
Is a thirty-five times requirement normal in Canada?
It is common, and nothing in Canada caps it, because neither of the two provincial standards we read sets a ceiling on the multiple. Great Britain capped bonus wagering at ten times the sum deposited and granted from 19 January 2026, which gives a reader a figure to measure against rather than a rule he can invoke here.
By the Canadian Dollar Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2012
