The maximum cashout is the clause that decides whether a big win from a bonus is a win at all. It is almost always disclosed, and almost never noticed.
Do the arithmetic
You take a $10 no-deposit bonus. Wagering is 50x, so you stake $500. Somewhere in that $500 of turnover, a bonus round lands and your balance reaches $2,400.
The bonus terms say: maximum cashout $100.
You withdraw $100. The remaining $2,300 is removed from your balance when the withdrawal is processed. Nothing has gone wrong. The contract worked exactly as written.
The shapes it takes
- A flat cap. "Winnings from this bonus are limited to $100."
- A multiple of the bonus. "Maximum withdrawal is 5x the bonus amount." On a $50 bonus, that is $250.
- A multiple of the deposit. Common on match bonuses, and easy to miss.
- A cap that survives wagering. The cruellest version: you meet the wagering requirement in full, the balance converts to cash, and the cap still applies to the converted amount.
What to check
The cap interacts with the game you choose. A slot with a maximum win multiplier of 20,000x can, in principle, pay $10,000 on a $0.50 spin. Under a $100 cashout cap, the game's ceiling is irrelevant. The lower of the two numbers governs, always.
A cap is only fair if it is legible. A cap buried in a linked sub-page, or applied to a bonus advertised as having "no restrictions", is an unfair term and we score it as one.