Best Aussie Online Casino Bonuses 2023

The welcome package or bonus is the promotion you can take advantage of when you sign up at a new online casino. Since its purpose is to encourage people to sign up with a specific casino, it is generally the best bonus they can offer, with a generous amount of money and hundreds of free spins commonly up for grabs.

However, its extravagant nature means that it can be a bit risky for the casino, so it’s not uncommon to see a welcome bonus broken up over a certain number of deposits, each with their own match bonus percentage and specifics. Because of this, it’s a general rule of thumb that welcome bonuses, while often quite generous, are never as great as advertised – many bonuses are only “up to” a certain amount.

Some online casinos may also offer a specific bonus for downloading or using their app to play mobile pokies. These mobile bonuses generally don’t tend to be as flashy as a casino’s main welcome bonus, but they are another incentive to further engage with a specific casino.

Many pokies games offer bonuses whilst you’re playing the game. The most common ones, aside from free spins, are outlined below.

Cascading Reels

This is a fun feature used more frequently by mobile pokies developers. With cascading reels, whenever you score a winning combination, the winning symbols are removed from the board and the remaining symbols drop down to reveal new symbols.

Often, this results in a new winning combination. Every time there’s a winner, the cascade effect continues. This can result in multiple wins per spin, potentially leading to massive prizes.

Random Cash Prizes

Some games offer random cash prizes while you’re playing the base game. These prizes can occur in a couple of different ways. The first is the prize comes up as part of a spin. For example, in Guises of Dracula, if the guises feature catches a cash prize symbol, you win that prize. Other times, you win a random prize if it is on the same payline as the winning combination.

Bonus Buy Feature

A feature that’s becoming increasingly popular is the Bonus Buy feature. With this feature, you can opt to instantly go to the free spins feature of a game by paying for it. How much you pay depends on the game, but it can be as high as 100x your bet.

How much you pay will depend on the features. For example, you’ll pay less for 10 free spins with a 3x multiplier than you will for 10 free spins with a 5x multiplier and exploding wilds. In general, Bonus Buy features are recommended for those with larger bankrolls or who don’t mind extreme variance.

Wagering requirements are conditions that online casinos attach to bonuses, meaning that players have to wager the bonus a certain number of times before they can withdraw any winnings. The amount varies between casinos and can range anywhere from 10x to 50x the bonus amount.

For example, if a casino offers a $100 bonus with a 35x wagering requirement, players will need to bet $3,500 before any winnings from the bonus can be withdrawn.

Online pokies typically contribute 100% – every dollar you bet on a slot is a dollar that contributes to the wagering requirement – but it’s not unusual to see far smaller contribution percentages for other games. A $1.00 bet on a game of Blackjack might only contribute eight cents towards your wagering requirement. Because every online casino has different wagering requirements, and even similar bonuses may have dramatically different conditions, make sure you carefully read not only the conditions of any specific bonus you’d like to claim, but also the casino’s general terms and conditions.

Wagering requirements are how casinos ensure that punters don’t just claim bonuses and then immediately withdraw them. In order to have get a payout of their bonus, punters need to put in the work to earn it over time.

With that said, it’s important to note that wagering requirements are wholly unique to casino bonuses; if you wanted to, you could deposit and withdraw as much real money as you’d like through normal means. While casino and pokies bonuses can be a lot of fun, there’s no rule that you need to use them.