First deposit bonuses at UK online casinos in 2026 — what the offer really costs

7 November 2026 data was checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register of licence holders and domain listings.

A first deposit bonus is the price a casino pays to win a new account. The player pays in real money, the casino adds a percentage of that payment in bonus funds or spins, and the wagering requirement is the wall between the bonus and anything that can be withdrawn. That wall is what the rest of this page is about — not which casino shouts the loudest headline, but how the terms of the offer shape what the player keeps at the end.

Ten UK-licensed casinos sit on the register at the Gambling Commission, and the comparison below works through them in the order the regulator’s domain list sets out: Unibet, Betfair, Sky Vegas, MrQ, Betway, PokerStars, Paddy Power, Ladbrokes, BetVictor and Betfred. They share the same statutory ceiling on wagering — a 10x cap that took effect on 19 December 2025 — and the same identity-verification gate that runs before the first deposit clears. What differs is what each brand attaches to a first deposit, and how quickly it pays out once the paperwork is settled.

Crypto-funded bonuses and the licence boundary

The phrase “bitcoin casino” suggests a corner of the market that runs outside the UK framework. The Gambling Commission does not recognise that corner. Every brand below holds an active remote casino operating licence, and every licence-holder must verify name, address and date of birth before the first deposit — bitcoin, ether or a pound through Faster Payments, the rule is identical.

The register settles the question in figures. On 18 September 2026 the Commission listed 139 businesses holding an active remote casino operating licence, and 1,065 active domains running against those licences. A handful of brands headline themselves as crypto-friendly; what that means in practice is that the cashier accepts a coin, runs it through a converter, and credits the account in pounds before the wagering begins. The bonus structure is unchanged. The 10x wagering cap still binds, the £5 stake ceiling for over-25s still binds, and the GAMSTOP self-exclusion check still runs on the way in.

A player who wants to fund the first deposit with bitcoin and is unwilling to pass an identity check has already removed every UK-licensed operator from the list. The Curaçao-licensed sites that take bitcoin without ID checks are not on the Commission’s register; they are not in scope here.

Payments and payout speed for a first deposit bonus

Three rails do the work at a UK-licensed casino in 2026: debit card, e-wallet and bank transfer via the Faster Payments Service.

Faster Payments launched in 2008 and runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week; most transfers settle instantly or within a couple of minutes, with a £1,000,000 per-transaction scheme limit (individual banks usually set the customer limit much lower). A deposit made that way is in the casino balance before the bonus terms are even read.

Apple Pay sits beside debit card as a near-field rail for the deposit itself; on a phone with Face ID the in-app payment is authenticated by a double-click of the side button. Apple Pay is not available in every market and is not, in itself, a deposit method a casino can offer without a debit card behind it — it is a front-end for a card. Since 14 April 2020 credit cards have been banned for gambling across Great Britain, and that ban is enforced at the cashier, so a Visa or Mastercard routed through Apple Pay works only if it is a debit card. A e-wallet like AstroPay — an electronic money institution authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority — sits in the same column; it is a wallet holding a card, not a substitute for one.

Payout speed is where the rail matters most. A withdrawal back to the same debit card takes longer than the deposit did, because the casino’s anti-money-laundering checks now run on the player as well as the deposit. A licensed operator has to verify source of funds once cumulative deposits cross £150 in a rolling 30-day window, and that check stretches the first large withdrawal by hours, sometimes a working day. Faster Payments returns are usually inside two hours once the operator has cleared the file; a debit-card return can take one to three working days, depending on the issuer.

What follows is the comparison.

Comparison: ten licensed casinos ranked for first deposit bonus value

The ten casinos below are taken in the order the Commission’s domain list gives them. None of the subject-support fields below could be filled from the source data — the register records the licence and the domain, not the bonus terms — so the comparison rests on the licence and the operating company alone. A player who wants the bonus terms has to read each operator’s own promotions page, because the register does not speak for them.

Betfair and Paddy Power share a licence — both run against PPB Games Limited. They are the same legal account on the Commission’s register, marketed as separate brands. A player who self-excludes from one is, for GAMSTOP’s purposes, self-excluded from both.

How the comparison reads

The licence number in the second column is what the Commission publishes against each domain. The format follows the rule that every remote casino operating licence is written in the form Account-R-Number-Suffix, where the first six digits repeat the licence-holder’s account number. Reading the licence back to its operator is a public lookup; the register’s CSV download matches the licence to the domain and to the trading name.

The third column is the register’s view of the website: Active means the Commission has the domain down as currently trading against that licence. Inactive means the licence still exists but the domain is not currently trading; White Label means a third-party site runs against another operator’s licence. The table above carries no White Label rows because none of the ten brands are white labels.

The fourth column is where the bonus terms would live, if they were on the register. They are not. Every UK-licensed casino publishes its own bonus terms on its own promotions page, and the regulator does not arbitrate between them. The em dash in that column is the honest answer: the Commission’s register tells the player nothing about the offer.

Unibet — Platinum Gaming Limited

Unibet (unibet.co.uk) is a brand of account 45322, Platinum Gaming Limited, which holds remote casino licence 045322-R-324275-019. Platinum Gaming is the UK arm of the Kindred Group; the licence is long-standing and currently active. It serves as a benchmark for first deposit offers.

The first deposit bonus Unibet publishes is in the typical UK shape: a percentage match against the first payment, capped at a stated figure, with wagering attached. The 10x cap in force since 19 December 2025 puts a hard ceiling on what the wagering requirement can be, and any offer above that ceiling is a breach the Commission can act on. A player who finds an offer with a 20x or 30x multiple on Unibet is looking at an offer that either predates the cap or was published in error — the licence-holder has a duty to publish compliant terms.

Betfair — PPB Games Limited

Betfair (Betfair.com) is operated by PPB Games Limited under licence 039411-R-319335-010. Paddy Power shares this account; both brands are governed by the same licence conditions and GAMSTOP requirements.

The first deposit bonus at a multi-brand licence-holder is published separately for each brand, because the brand on the homepage is what the marketing runs through. The terms are different in the headline and the same in the legal plumbing — the same licence, the same anti-money-laundering obligations, the same GAMSTOP enrolment. A player who already holds an account at one PPB brand and opens another is not, for the bonus’s purposes, a “new” player; most offers exclude existing customers across the licence.

Sky Vegas — Bonne Terre Gaming Limited

Sky Vegas holds licence 065519-R-339675-002, issued to Bonne Terre Gaming Limited. As a distinct gambling entity from Sky’s broadcast operations, it leverages existing SkyID verification for a smoother account setup process.

The first deposit bonus at Sky Vegas follows the same UK pattern as the rest — a percentage match with a stated cap and a wagering requirement that the 10x ceiling governs. Sky’s customer base overlaps heavily with its TV subscription, so the cashier can lean on existing SkyID verification; a player already verified through Sky is, in practice, past the ID check before the deposit page loads.

MrQ — Tek Fox Ltd

MrQ (Mrq.com) is listed on the Gambling Commission register as an active domain of account 60629, Tek Fox Ltd, which holds the active remote casino operating licence 060629-R-337532-004. MrQ is the smallest licence-holder in the comparison by account number, and the most recent to enter the GB-licensed market. The licence is current and the domain is Active.

A newer licence-holder on a comparison page means a smaller player base, a smaller balance sheet, and a marketing budget that has to do the work the brand recognition does not. The bonus terms at MrQ are published on the promotions page rather than the register; the regulator’s role stops at the licence boundary, and what the casino actually pays out sits inside that boundary.

Betway — Betway Limited

Betway (Betway.com) operates under licence 039372-R-319367-029 (Betway Limited). A long-standing licence holder in the UK, it provides established operational stability, with withdrawals often processed via Faster Payments.

A long-standing UK licence is not, on its own, a guarantee of a generous first deposit bonus. The 10x wagering cap applies equally to a twenty-year-old operator and a newcomer, and the bonus terms at Betway are no more generous than the regulator’s ceiling allows. Where an established operator does add value is on the operational side: withdrawals settle to a known Faster Payments endpoint rather than a debit-card return, and the source-of-funds check has been run on enough accounts to be quick on the second visit.

PokerStars — Stars Interactive Limited

PokerStars (Pokerstars.uk) operates under licence 039108-R-319334-026 (Stars Interactive Limited). The .uk domain is the specific site for Great Britain, distinct from its international operations. Existing players moving from poker to casino services retain their verification status.

A poker brand’s casino bonus is sometimes the quietest of the comparison: the headline product is the poker room, and the casino tab sits beside it. The terms of a casino first deposit bonus at PokerStars still follow the UK ceiling on wagering, and the cashier still runs the same identity check as the poker room’s sign-up. A player moving from poker to casino on the same account does not re-verify.

Paddy Power — PPB Games Limited

Paddy Power operates under the PPB Games Limited licence 039411-R-319335-010, the same account shared with Betfair, as shown in the comparison table. Each brand manages its own promotions and bonus terms within the 10x wagering cap.

The bonus terms at Paddy Power are not the same as at Betfair even though the licence is. Each brand runs its own promotions page, and a first deposit bonus published under the Paddy Power name is governed by the Paddy Power terms, not by PPB Games’ master terms. The 10x wagering cap is the shared ceiling; the percentage match and the cap on the bonus amount are the brand’s call.

Ladbrokes — LC International Limited

Ladbrokes (Ladbrokes.com) uses licence 054743-R-330863-014 (LC International Limited). Part of the same group as Coral, it operates in the high-traffic sector of the UK market. Terms are subject to standard licensing requirements.

A merged licence-holder running two recognised high-street brands has the kind of marketing budget that lets the first deposit bonus run heavy. The 10x cap still binds; what a brand like this can do is push the percentage match up to the edge of the cap, knowing the player sees a bigger headline number. The actual cost of clearing the offer — the turnover required — does not shrink with the headline.

BetVictor — BV Gaming Limited

BetVictor (Betvictor.com) holds licence 039576-R-319370-028 (BV Gaming Limited). It maintains a long-standing operational presence in the UK market. Its bonus structure, like all UK-licensed sites, is bound by mandatory GAMSTOP and identity verification checks.

The first deposit bonus at BetVictor runs in the standard UK shape: a percentage match with a stated cap, wagering on the bonus, and the GAMSTOP check before the account is opened. A player who self-excludes at BetVictor is self-excluded at every UK-licensed online casino for the period chosen, which is why the Commission’s mandatory GAMSTOP enrolment is a structural feature of the offer, not an aside.

Betfred — Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited

Betfred (Betfred.com) operates under Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited’s licence 039544-R-319290-010. While the parent company is Gibraltar-registered, this UK-issued licence mandates full adherence to Gambling Commission standards and player protections.

A Gibraltar-incorporated licence-holder running on a Commission licence is the post-2014 shape of the UK-facing market. The 10x wagering cap applies equally to a Gibraltar-incorporated operator and a UK-incorporated one; the licence is the same, the obligations are the same, and the GAMSTOP enrolment is the same.

Overview — how a first deposit bonus works at a UK-licensed casino

A first deposit bonus is, in its plainest form, a percentage of the first payment credited to the account in bonus funds, with a wagering requirement attached. The player deposits £100; the casino credits £100 in bonus funds at a 100% match; the wagering requirement is the multiple the player has to turn the bonus over before any winnings become withdrawable. At the 10x cap, that is £1,000 of wagering for a £100 bonus.

The wagering requirement binds. The £1,000 of turnover has to happen on games that count 100% toward the requirement (most slots do; most table games count less, and live dealer games often count nothing), at stakes within the £5 over-25 / £2 18-24 game-cycle limit. A spin above the stake limit does not void the offer outright — but it does not count toward the wagering, either.

What the player keeps at the end is the bonus’s real cost. A £100 bonus cleared through £1,000 of turnover on a slot with a 96% return-to-player gives the player back, on average, £960 of the £1,000 wagered — a £40 cost against a £100 bonus. The cost of clearing the bonus is what the offer actually costs, and it is the number the marketing headline does not print.

Mixed-product bonuses — bet on sport, get casino spins — are banned under the same December 2025 reform that capped wagering at 10x. The package must be one product. A player who sees a sports-casino bundle on a UK-licensed site is looking at terms that breach the Commission’s social responsibility code.

Regulation — the Gambling Commission’s licence and what it obliges

The Gambling Commission regulates online casino gambling in Great Britain under the Gambling Act 2005. The Commission is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; its public register is the test of whether a brand holds a licence. On 18 September 2026 the register listed 139 businesses holding an active remote casino operating licence.

A remote casino operating licence has a format the register publishes: Account-R-Number-Suffix, with the first six digits repeating the licence-holder’s account number, the “R” marking the licence as remote (online), and the suffix being a sequence number for additional licences on the same account. The licence number sits in the second column of the comparison table; a player who wants to confirm a brand can look the licence up on the Commission’s register and read it back to the domain.

The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 changed the boundary. Before 2014 a Gibraltar- or Malta-licensed operator could take customers in Great Britain on its home licence; after the Act, any operator taking customers in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based. A Curaçao licence is not a substitute; a Malta licence is not a substitute; a Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. The test is whether the Commission has the operator on its register, and the register is searchable online and downloadable as CSV or Excel.

Since 7 May 2019 every online operator has had to verify name, address and date of birth before the first deposit or any play. Anonymous play is not possible at a UK-licensed site. The “bitcoin casino” framing in the search results has to be read in that light: a UK-licensed casino accepts bitcoin at the cashier, runs it through a converter, and credits the account in pounds — the identity check has already passed by the time the bitcoin arrives.

The 10x wagering cap — what changed on 19 December 2025

The Commission’s reform of bonus terms in late 2025 did two things at once. It capped wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x — meaning a £100 bonus cannot be tied to more than £1,000 of turnover before withdrawal. And it banned mixed-product bonuses, where a bet on one product (say, sport) carries free spins or a bonus on another product (say, casino).

The 10x cap is the binding ceiling. Any offer above it, on any UK-licensed site, is non-compliant — and a non-compliant offer is one the Commission can act against. The cap is not a target: a casino does not have to offer 10x; it can offer 5x or no wagering at all. But it cannot offer 11x, 20x or 30x. The latter were common before the reform; they are not now.

A first deposit bonus with a 10x requirement reads as the standard. A player looking at a smaller percentage match with no wagering attached — sometimes called a “real money” bonus — keeps more of the offer than the headline 200% match with 10x; the cost of clearing 200% on £100 at 10x is £2,000 of turnover, against which the slot’s house edge eats into the player’s stake at the rate the game publishes. A smaller match with no wagering can come out ahead on the same stake.

The stake ceiling — what the game-cycle limit does to a bonus

A bonus is cleared at the slot machine. The slot machine has a maximum stake per game cycle: £5 for players aged 25 and over (since 9 April 2025), £2 for players aged 18-24 (since 21 May 2025). A spin above the stake limit does not count toward wagering; a series of spins above the stake limit can leave the bonus uncleared at the end of the validity window.

The stake limit is not a casino term — it is a Commission rule. It applies at every UK-licensed site, on every slot, regardless of what the bonus terms say. The bonus’s wagering contribution is capped at the stake limit per spin by force of the underlying game, not by the offer. A player who picks a slot with a minimum spin above £5 cannot play that slot at a UK-licensed casino.

This shapes which slots a first deposit bonus can be cleared on. Low-stake slots — anything playable from 10p or 20p a spin — give the player more spins per pound of turnover, and more spins at a 96% return means the player keeps more of the bonus’s worth. High-stake slots, even with a higher return-to-player, give fewer spins per pound and burn the bonus faster. The house edge per spin is broadly similar across modern UK-licensed slots; the difference is how fast the wagering requirement runs.

Wagering-turnover band — how long it takes to clear a first deposit bonus

The arithmetic the page owes the reader is a band, not a single number. A first deposit bonus cleared at the standard UK wagering cap runs at £10 of turnover for every £1 of bonus, and the time it takes depends on the stake-per-spin the player picks.

The standard calculation: turnover = bonus × wagering factor; spins = turnover ÷ stake-per-spin; play time = spins × 5 seconds ÷ 3600 (seconds to hours). At a 10x cap, a £100 bonus means £1,000 of turnover, and at a £1 stake per spin that is 1,000 spins of 5 seconds each, or roughly 1.4 hours of continuous play. The same bonus at 20p a spin is 5,000 spins, or 6.9 hours. The same bonus at the £5 over-25 stake ceiling is 200 spins, or 17 minutes — but the wagering contribution per spin is much larger, and the variance on each spin is correspondingly heavier.

The band the page owes the reader is the gap between the 20p and the £5 stake, holding the £100 bonus and the 10x wagering factor constant. Roughly 17 minutes of slot play at £5 a spin sits at one end; roughly 7 hours of slot play at 20p a spin sits at the other. The “how long” depends on which slot the player picks and at what stake. The wagering requirement is fixed; the time is not.

A faster-clearing bonus is not a cheaper bonus. The wagering contribution per spin is fixed by the stake; a smaller stake just spreads the same turnover across more spins. A £5-a-spin clear is fast because the stake eats the requirement quickly, not because the player loses less to the house edge per spin. The arithmetic is the same at every stake; the time is what changes.

Responsible gambling — what the licence requires before and after the bonus

A first deposit bonus is gated by responsible-gambling controls that run before the deposit clears and continue while the account is open. Three of them bind on every UK-licensed operator.

GAMSTOP self-exclusion has been a mandatory condition of every online licence since 31 March 2020. A player can self-exclude for six months, one year or five years; the exclusion cannot be cancelled early, and it applies across every UK-licensed online casino, not just the one the player enrolled at. A player who has self-excluded cannot claim a first deposit bonus at any of the ten casinos above; the cashier rejects the deposit at the GAMSTOP check.

Financial vulnerability checks run at £150 of net deposits in a rolling 30-day window (from 28 February 2025), using public data only. The check is a public-record search, not a credit check; it is what the Commission calls a “light-touch” assessment, and it runs on the casino’s side before the deposit clears. A player whose name returns a vulnerability flag is asked to set a deposit limit before continuing. The wider financial risk assessments the Commission has announced are not yet in force.

Deposit limits are not set by the Commission; the operator must prompt a customer to set one before the first deposit, and that prompt has been mandatory since 31 October 2025. A player who skips the prompt and proceeds to deposit anyway is the player who has chosen to play with no limit; the operator’s obligation is to ask, not to enforce.

National Gambling Helpline (GamCare) and GambleAware are the routes the Commission’s licence conditions point a player toward when the safer-gambling controls are not enough. The Helpline is free; GambleAware funds the treatment and education services the Commission’s responsible-gambling code requires operators to signpost.

What a player actually does — the order the bonus takes

The first deposit bonus arrives at the end of a sequence, not the start. The order the player goes through runs in this shape.

Step one is identity verification. Name, address and date of birth are checked against public databases before the deposit page loads. A player who cannot pass this check is not at a UK-licensed casino.

Step two is GAMSTOP. The cashier runs a GAMSTOP check on the way to the deposit. A player who is enrolled cannot deposit.

Step three is the financial vulnerability check, which kicks in once cumulative net deposits cross £150 in a rolling 30-day window. The check uses public data; a flag triggers a prompt to set a deposit limit.

Step four is the deposit itself, with the bonus attached. The cashier prompts a deposit limit before the first deposit; the bonus terms are published on the promotions page; the player chooses whether to claim.

Step five is the wagering requirement. The bonus is credited in bonus funds; the player turns the bonus over at the 10x cap on games that count 100% toward wagering; the stake ceiling binds at £5 over-25 or £2 18-24.

Step six is the withdrawal. The bonus’s wagering contribution has been cleared; the player requests a payout; the operator runs a source-of-funds check on cumulative deposits; the Faster Payments return or debit-card return settles.

The sequence is the licence condition’s product. None of the steps is optional for the operator, and a player who wants to skip one is not at a UK-licensed casino.

What the bonus actually costs — the arithmetic a player owes themselves

A bonus’s real cost is the expected loss against the turnover required to clear it. The expected loss is the turnover multiplied by (1 − RTP) — the share of every pound wagered that the slot keeps, on average, across millions of spins.

A £100 bonus cleared at 10x wagering means £1,000 of turnover. On a slot with a 96% RTP, the expected loss on £1,000 of turnover is £1,000 × (1 − 0.96) = £40. The bonus credited £100; the cost of clearing it was £40; the player keeps £60 of the offer’s headline value, on average.

A bigger match means a bigger turnover requirement and a bigger expected loss against the same RTP. A 200% match on £100 means £200 of bonus, £2,000 of turnover at the 10x cap, and £80 of expected loss on a 96% slot — the player keeps £120 of the £200 headline. The percentage of the bonus the player keeps is the same (60%) at every match percentage; what changes is the absolute number.

The arithmetic is an average over many spins. A single session can come in well above or well below the expected loss; the figure is the long-run cost, not the cost of any one evening at the slots. The Commission does not require operators to publish the expected loss on the bonus page; the player who wants it has to run the arithmetic themselves.

Offshore casinos — what the player gives up by leaving the register

A first deposit bonus at a UK-licensed casino is governed by the rules above. A first deposit bonus at an offshore casino — Curaçao, certain Malta-facing operations without a Commission licence — is governed by the casino’s own terms, which are not enforceable by the Commission.

The player gives up three things by moving offshore. GAMSTOP enrolment: the offshore casino does not check GAMSTOP, so a player who has self-excluded at a UK-licensed site can deposit at the offshore site the same evening. Source-of-funds verification: the offshore casino has no statutory trigger for a vulnerability check at £150 of net deposits, so the protections around cumulative play do not run. ADR and complaints: a dispute with an offshore casino has to go through the casino’s own complaints process; the Commission’s complaints route applies only to licensed operators.

A player who values the Commission’s protections is a player who should not move offshore for a bonus. A bigger headline match at an offshore casino is not a saving once the protections are priced in. The Commission’s role is to make the offer legible, and an offshore offer is illegible by design.

Tax and what the player keeps

Players pay no tax on gambling winnings in the UK. The 40% Remote Gaming Duty raised from 1 April 2026 is an operator-side tax; it does not pass through to the player’s withdrawal.

A player who wins £1,000 on a UK-licensed slot keeps the £1,000; the casino pays the duty to HMRC out of its own margin. A player who wins the same £1,000 at an offshore casino keeps the £1,000 too, but at the cost of the protections noted above. The tax treatment is the same; the safety net is not.

The single-page version — how the comparison runs in a sentence

A first deposit bonus at a UK-licensed casino is a percentage match against the first payment, with a 10x wagering cap, on a slot stuck to the £5 over-25 / £2 18-24 stake ceiling, behind an identity check, a GAMSTOP enrolment, and a £150-net-deposit vulnerability check. Ten casinos on the register run that offer in their own way; what the player keeps is the gap between the bonus credited and the expected loss against the wagering. The arithmetic is the same at every casino; the percentage match is the brand’s call.

Frequently asked questions

How is a first deposit bonus usually calculated?

A first deposit bonus is a percentage of the first payment, credited as bonus funds. A 100% match on a £100 deposit gives £100 in bonus funds; a 200% match on the same deposit gives £200. The percentage and the cap are the casino’s call; the wagering requirement binds at the 10x ceiling the Commission introduced on 19 December 2025, so a £100 bonus means £1,000 of turnover before withdrawal.

Can a first deposit bonus be funded with cryptocurrency?

A UK-licensed casino can accept bitcoin or another cryptocurrency at the cashier, but the bonus structure is unchanged: the casino converts the crypto to pounds, credits the account in pounds, and the wagering requirement runs in pounds. The identity check that runs before the first deposit is the same regardless of the funding rail, so a UK-licensed casino cannot offer a first deposit bonus funded by bitcoin without verifying the player first.

Does a first deposit bonus require identity verification before it pays out?

Yes. Every UK-licensed casino has verified name, address and date of birth before the first deposit clears, since 7 May 2019. The verification is the casino’s statutory obligation, not the bonus terms. A player who cannot pass the ID check cannot deposit, and therefore cannot claim a first deposit bonus, at any UK-licensed site.

What wagering usually applies to a first deposit bonus in the UK?

The Commission’s December 2025 reform capped wagering at 10x. A £100 bonus cannot be tied to more than £1,000 of turnover at a UK-licensed casino, and mixed-product bonuses — a sports bet bundled with casino spins — are banned. A bonus with a 30x wagering multiple, common before the reform, is non-compliant now.

Is a first deposit bonus separate from a no-deposit bonus?

Yes. A first deposit bonus requires a deposit to claim and is calculated as a percentage of that deposit; a no-deposit bonus is credited at sign-up without a deposit. Both run under the 10x wagering cap at a UK-licensed casino. A no-deposit bonus is usually smaller in headline value because the casino is paying out without a deposit in return.

How long is a first deposit bonus usually valid for once credited?

Bonus validity is set by the casino, not by the Commission, and it is published in the bonus terms. A typical UK-licensed offer runs valid for 30 days from credit; some are shorter (7 days), some longer (90 days). Unused bonus funds expire at the end of the validity window, along with any winnings tied to them.