Bonuses you get just for registering

Of the 908 merchants tracked here, 297 advertise a bonus that credits on registration with nothing paid in. That is the offer most people mean by new register free: no deposit, no card, just an account.

The reason to rank them by anything other than headline amount is that the headline amount is the least informative number on the offer. A bonus is money you cannot spend until you have wagered a multiple of it, and that multiple — the turnover requirement — varies here from nothing at all up to 100 times. A $250 bonus at the top of that range asks you to stake $25,000 before a withdrawal is possible. A $18 bonus at the bottom asks for almost nothing.

So the ordering below blends the two things that decide whether a bonus is worth your time: how low the turnover requirement is, and how much you are permitted to withdraw once you have met it. The first matters more, which is why it carries about two thirds of the weight.

Worth checking before you sign up: whether the bonus is restricted to the merchant’s mobile app, what the maximum withdrawal is, and whether the minimum withdrawal is set so high that clearing the bonus is theoretical.