The Bonus Real Value Calculator: What a Casino Offer Is Actually Worth
Type in the terms of any offer and this returns what it is worth. It calls the identical functions that produce every figure in the register, so the tool and the tables cannot disagree with each other.
Everything happens in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is nothing to submit.
- Bonus granted
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- Turnover required
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- Actual play needed after contribution
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- Cost of clearing it
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- Cash-out cap applied
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Real Value
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A worked example to check the tool against
The defaults above are a real promotion: a fifty percent deposit match up to $1,500, with a requirement to wager ten times the deposit plus the bonus. At a $1,000 deposit that grants a $500 bonus, which sets a $15,000 turnover requirement. On a slot returning ninety-six percent, the expected cost of pushing $15,000 through is four percent of it, or $600.
So the offer gives $500 and costs $600 to unlock. That is a Real Value of minus $100, and because both halves scale with the deposit, doubling the deposit doubles the loss rather than reversing it. Every number in that paragraph can be reproduced with a calculator in under a minute, which is the point of publishing the formula rather than a score.
Now change one field. Set the wagering multiple to one and the base to the bonus only, leaving everything else alone, and the same deposit produces a strongly positive figure. Nothing about the headline changed. The advertised number, the match percentage and the cap are all identical. What changed was a single clause in the terms, and it moved the offer from a loss to one of the better promotions on the market.
The mistakes that make offers look better than they are
The most common is reading the advertised maximum as the bonus. A promotion advertised at $1,500 pays $1,500 only to someone depositing enough to reach the cap, and at that deposit the wagering requirement is proportionally larger too. Enter your actual intended deposit rather than the number in the advertisement.
The second is ignoring game contribution. If the games you intend to play contribute at ten percent, a ten-times requirement behaves like a hundred-times requirement, and the cost rises by the same factor. The contribution field is not a detail; on table games it is frequently the difference between a viable offer and an impossible one.
The third is forgetting that the expiry window is a real constraint. This calculator prices the offer on the assumption that the requirement gets completed. Whether it can be completed in the time allowed is a separate question, and the clearing simulator is where to ask it.
What the calculator deliberately leaves out
It does not model whether you can finish the requirement in the time allowed, and it does not model running out of money along the way. Both are real risks and both are handled by the simulator instead, because folding a probability of failure into a value figure would double-count the same event and would mix two different kinds of measurement into one number.
It also assumes you play a single game type at a single contribution rate for the whole requirement. Real sessions wander between games with different contributions and different returns, which moves the true cost around the figure shown here rather than away from it.
Using it on a sweepstakes offer
This form prices deposit-match promotions. Sweepstakes coin packages work differently. There is no wagering multiple against your own money, but there is a redemption threshold that a welcome offer may fall below entirely, and the register prices those with a separate calculation described on the method page.
How to read the result
A negative Real Value means the expected cost of satisfying the wagering requirement exceeds the bonus itself, so taking the offer leaves you worse off than declining it. That is not a rare edge case. It is what happens whenever a high multiple is applied to the deposit plus the bonus rather than to the bonus alone.
Terms Tax is the share of the advertised headline that the terms consume. A figure above one hundred percent means the offer is worth less than nothing measured against how it was advertised.
Leave the cash-out cap at zero when the operator does not publish one. The result is then an upper bound: what the promotion is worth at best. A cap you cannot see can only reduce it.
The house edge is present in every line of this calculation and does not go away. This tool measures the price of an offer. It does not describe a way to beat anything, and no combination of inputs here produces one.
Calculator questions
What should I put in the advertised headline field?
The number on the poster: the maximum the promotion is advertised at, not the bonus you will actually receive at your deposit. The gap between those two is a large part of what Terms Tax measures.
What if the operator does not publish a cash-out cap?
Leave the field at zero. The result then reads as an upper bound: what the offer is worth at best. A cap you cannot see can only reduce the figure, never raise it.
Which RTP should I use?
Use the RTP of the game you actually intend to play, from its own information screen. Ninety-six percent is a reasonable default for slots, but the range across real games is wide enough to change the answer materially.
Why does the wager base setting change the result so much?
Because a requirement applied to the deposit plus the bonus is roughly three times larger than the same multiple applied to the bonus alone on a full match. That one dropdown moves the answer more than any other field on this form.
What does a break-even deposit of nothing mean?
That the offer never turns positive. Both the bonus and the cost of clearing it scale with the deposit, so if the cost scales faster the arithmetic stays negative at every level.
Does a positive result mean I should take the offer?
No. It means the promotion costs less than it gives on its published terms. It is a price, not advice, and the house edge is present throughout the calculation regardless of what the result says.