Bonus Buy Slots Explained: How Feature Buys Work

A bonus buy (also called feature buy) lets you pay a fixed price – often 80x to 200x your stake, sometimes much more for premium tiers – to trigger a slot's bonus round immediately.

Does buying the bonus change the odds?

Not meaningfully. Providers price the buy so its RTP is close to the base game's (occasionally slightly higher). You skip the base game, but you also pay for it up front, and the result of a single bought bonus is extremely volatile: many bonuses return less than their price.

Risk in practice

At €1 stake, a 100x bonus buy costs €100 per attempt. That's a full session budget for many players, spent in one click. This is why we recommend exploring bought bonuses in demo mode only, unless you've budgeted specifically for it.

Where bonus buys are banned

Great Britain banned bonus buys in 2021 under UK Gambling Commission rules. Several other regulated markets restrict them. Games are typically served without the buy feature in those regions.

Related

• Bonus buy slots list
• Ante bet slots – a related mechanic that raises your stake to increase bonus chances.

How bonus buy pricing works

The price of a bonus buy is set so that the expected value of the bonus roughly matches the price, minus the house edge. A 100x buy usually leads to a bonus worth about 96x on average – but individual buys range from a few times your stake to the game's max win. Some games publish a separate, slightly different RTP for the buy feature; you'll find it in the paytable.

Tiered and boosted buys

Modern studios sell more than one product:

• Multiple bonus tiers – Hacksaw Gaming games typically let you buy the basic bonus or a more expensive upgraded version, as in Wanted Dead or a Wild.
• Feature spins and boosters – Nolimit City's xBet and "booster" options charge more per spin to raise the chance of a bonus or guarantee a feature. See xMechanics explained.
• Ante bets – Pragmatic Play's ante bet adds about 25% to each spin to make free spins more likely. Browse ante bet slots.

Why bonus buys are risky

Buying the bonus compresses hours of variance into a few seconds. A session of ten 100x buys costs 1,000x your base stake, and it is normal for many of those buys to return less than they cost. That's why regulators in Great Britain and several other markets have banned the feature.

Using bonus buys in demo mode

Demo mode is the safest place to try bonus buys: you can see what an average bonus looks like without risking anything. Most official demos on our site include the buy option where the provider allows it. If you plan to play for real money, set a strict budget first – our bankroll guide shows how.