There are certain requirements to be able to set a bounty, as explained in the FAQexplained in the FAQ.
There are a few other rules around bounties:
- Questions must be at least 2 days old to be eligible for a bounty.
- Users must have at least 75 reputation to offer a bounty.
- Only 1 active bounty per question at any given time.
- There are a maximum of 3 active bounties allowed per user at any given time.
- Once initiated, the bounty period lasts 7 days.
- After starting a bounty, you must wait 1 day before awarding it.
- There is a grace period of 24 hours after a bounty ends to manually award the bounty.
- If you do not award your bounty within 7 days (plus the grace period), the highest voted answer created after the bounty started with at least 2 upvotes will be awarded half the bounty amount.