The arithmetic
The wagering requirement is not a condition of the offer, it is the offer
What a bonus actually asks a player to stake, worked out in dollars rather than in multiples, with a calculator that none of the sixteen Canadian comparison sites we read carries.
A multiple is not a price, and the difference costs money
The most important number in any casino offer is the one that looks like a footnote (set in the smallest type on the page, as a rule), and it is the multiple attached to the words "wagering requirement". That phrase names the volume of bets which must be placed before a balance becomes withdrawable. A bonus figure describes what arrives in the account; the requirement describes what has to be done with it, and only the second has any bearing on whether an offer is worth taking.
This is why there is no bonus amount anywhere on this site, and why we put a calculator on this page instead: an amount is a promise about a "credit" (a balance marked as bonus funds in the operator's ledger), and a credit that cannot yet be withdrawn is not money in any sense a bank would recognise. So the useful way to read an offer is to convert its multiple into a volume of stake and then to convert that volume into a cost, and both of those conversions are multiplications a reader can do in his head. The second one is the one almost nobody does.
Of the sixteen Canadian comparison sites we read on 20 October 2026, three carried a tool of any description (a "calculator", an odds table, an "AI mode" button) and not one of them worked out what a requirement actually asks for, which is the gap the calculator below was built to fill.
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 objection, which belongs before the arithmetic
A site paid by the casinos whose offers it describes has an obvious interest in making those offers look generous, and a calculator is an unusual thing for such a site to publish (the result is frequently discouraging). The honest answer is that the arithmetic is not ours to choose, and that a sum which embarrasses us is still a sum.
Thirty-five times a hundred is three thousand five hundred whoever does the multiplication, and a reader who distrusts us entirely can reach the same figure on a telephone in twenty seconds. That is the appeal of publishing a calculation rather than a verdict: a calculation survives the suspicion of its author.
What we do choose is which numbers sit beside it, and that choice is declared rather than buried. Our cards carry the type of landing page a link opens rather than an amount ("free spins with no deposit", "entry at a one-dollar deposit"), because an amount ages badly and a destination does not.
The limitation is worth stating plainly, and it is a real one: the calculator works on the numbers a reader types into it, and those numbers have to come from the operator's own "terms and conditions" rather than from anything we hold (we hold no amounts at all, and the figures inside an offer change without notice).
The base, which doubles the work without changing the number
A requirement has two parts and the segment advertises only the first of them, which is how two identical figures come to mean quite different things; the omission is not an accident. The multiple is the part everybody quotes, and the "base" (the sum that the multiple is applied to) is the part deciding what the multiple is worth.
Consider a player who deposits a hundred dollars and receives a hundred in bonus, which is the shape of a great many offers in this index. At thirty-five times the bonus alone he must place three thousand five hundred dollars of bets, and at the same thirty-five times applied to "deposit and bonus" together he must place seven thousand (the figure the calculator prints when the base is switched).
The advertised number is identical in both cases and the work is doubled in the second, so that a single clause four words long turns out to be the largest difference between two offers that look alike on a comparison table ("deposit and bonus", four words exactly)!
There is a third variant, less common and worth recognising on sight, in which the requirement applies to the deposit alone (the mildest of the three by a wide margin). The way to tell them apart is to look for the word "bonus", the phrase "deposit and bonus", or the word "deposit" immediately after the multiple. A reader who checks nothing else in a terms document should check that phrase. It is the one place where the same figure means two different things.
An offer with the figure written down?
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From a volume of stake to a cost in dollars
A volume of bets is still not a price, and converting it into one is the step that turns an offer from a slogan into a decision a person can make. The conversion uses the "return" of the game being played (ninety-six per cent is a fair working figure for a slot), and the arithmetic is as simple as it looks.
At a return of ninety-six per cent every hundred dollars staked gives back ninety-six on average and keeps four, so a volume of three thousand five hundred costs about a hundred and forty dollars. That is four per cent of the volume, and not of the bonus. A player weighing a hundred-dollar bonus against that figure is weighing a hundred against a hundred and forty, which is a different proposition from the one on the banner.
The word "average" is doing a great deal of work in that sentence, and the limitation deserves saying outright. The cost of one particular attempt may be far less or far more, because a run of outcomes is not an expectation. The figure describes a great many attempts rather than the one in front of you (the "variance" of a session, in the suppliers' own word).
Two further clauses change the sum, and both live in the terms rather than in the offer. That is where a reader should expect anything that matters to be. A "max cashout" (a ceiling on what the offer can ever pay out) caps the upside while leaving the work untouched; a "max bet" rule while a bonus is active, commonly five dollars, decides how many hours the work will take.
The "game weighting" table sets the rest of it, and the effect is not marginal: a game counting at ten per cent (most live tables, and some slots) turns three thousand five hundred into thirty-five thousand, which is not an offer any reader should accept without having seen that number written down in the "terms" rather than on the banner.
One distinction changes the sum more than the multiple does, and the documents seldom name it the same way twice. A credit deducted from the first withdrawal (the "sticky" kind, in the trade's own slang) can never be cashed out, so the figure to set against the cost of the stake is the winnings alone and not the credit; a credit that leaves with the player once the requirement is met (the "non-sticky" kind) is worth its face value, and the two arrangements sit happily under the identical multiple. The calculator above prints the volume either way, because the volume is unaffected. What changes is the prize at the end of it.
A second clause decides which money is staked first, and with it whether a player can walk away halfway through. Where the terms provide that bonus funds are used before cash ("bonus balance is played first", in a common formulation), a deposit cannot be withdrawn until the requirement has been met or the credit given up, and a player who stops midway has stopped with his own money behind somebody else's multiple. Where cash is played first, the deposit is spent before the credit is touched at all, and a player can stop at any point with whatever remains of it (the "forfeiture" clause then surrenders the credit alone).
What the calculator does, and what it refuses to do
The tool at the top of this page takes four numbers and returns two of its own, and everything it uses comes from the reader rather than from us (no figure in it is ours). It asks for the deposit, the bonus, the multiple and the "base", and it prints both the volume of stake required and the average cost of producing that volume at a ninety-six per cent return (the second figure being the one worth comparing with the bonus).
It runs entirely in the browser, sends nothing anywhere at all and needs no consent, because there is nothing here to consent to (the arithmetic happens on your own device); three numbers and a multiplication do not require a cookie.
What the tool will not do is tell a reader whether an offer is good, and we would call that refusal deliberate rather than modest. Whether a hundred and forty dollars of expected cost is worth a hundred dollars of "bonus" depends on what else the player gets for it, how much he would have staked in any case, and what the evening is worth to him.
Those are not questions that arithmetic can answer, and a site answering them with a score out of five is answering them on the reader's behalf without having been asked to!
The part that stays with you
A requirement converted into dollars is a requirement a person can refuse, and refusing one is a perfectly ordinary thing to do (the offer will be there next week). A great many offers on this site, and on every site like it, cost more in expected stake than they hand over in credit, measured in the only unit that settles anything, which is dollars, and the reason the trade advertises the credit rather than the cost is that the credit is the smaller of the two numbers.
So the habit worth taking away from this page is short, mechanical and thoroughly unglamorous: find the multiple, find the base, multiply the two together, and then multiply the result again by four per cent (or by the "house edge" of whatever game you mean to play).
If that second figure comes out larger than the bonus, the offer is a price rather than a gift, and you now know what the price is. You can still take it, with your eyes open.
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Questions readers ask
What does a 35x wagering requirement mean?
It means the bonus must be staked thirty-five times over before any of the balance can be withdrawn, so that a hundred-dollar bonus asks for three thousand five hundred dollars of stake. The figure is a volume of bets rather than a sum of money lost, which is the distinction the calculator on this page exists to make.
Why do two casinos with the same 35x feel so different?
Because the multiple is applied to different bases: thirty-five times the bonus alone asks for three thousand five hundred on a hundred-dollar bonus, and thirty-five times the deposit and bonus together asks for seven thousand on the same money. Two offers advertising the identical number can therefore be twice as much work as one another.
Does every game count towards it?
No, and the "game weighting" table is where the answer sits rather than on the promotion page. Slots usually count in full, table games and live dealer tables often count for a fraction or not at all, and a player clearing an offer on a game weighted at ten per cent is doing ten times the work he expected.
What does the stake actually cost me?
At a return of ninety-six per cent, staking a given volume costs about four per cent of it on average, so three thousand five hundred of stake costs around a hundred and forty dollars. That is the number worth comparing against the bonus, and the calculator above prints both.
By the Canadian Dollar Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2012
