A bonus buy is a button that lets you pay a set multiple of your stake to start a slot's feature round straight away, instead of spinning until it triggers on its own. It has become one of the most used options in modern slots. On UK-licensed casinos it has been switched off since October 2021.
What you pay
The studio sets the price as a multiple of your spin stake. These are the ranges you will see most often:
| Type of buy | Usual price | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|
| Standard slot feature | 50× to 75× stake | The normal free spins round |
| Megaways feature | 75× to 100× stake | Free spins with the climbing multiplier |
| Premium or super buy | 150× to 500× stake | A feature that starts in a stronger position |
| Feature spins | 2× to 5× stake | One spin with better trigger odds, no feature promised |
At £1 a spin, a 100× buy is £100 in one click. In exchange you skip what might otherwise have been 150 base game spins and land directly in the round where most of the game's return is held.
The forms a buy can take
Single price feature buy
One button, one price, the standard free spins round. This is by far the commonest version, usually somewhere between 50× and 100× stake.
Tiered buys
A menu of prices, each buying a better start: more free spins, a higher opening multiplier or extra special symbols placed at the start. Nolimit City and Hacksaw Gaming both use this approach. The top tiers often carry a slightly lower RTP than the base game, and the paytable will usually say so in small print.
Feature spins
Strictly speaking these are not a buy. You pay a few times your stake for a spin with improved odds of triggering, and you may well get nothing. Each attempt is cheaper, but across many attempts the cost works out much the same.
Ante bets and double chance
A permanent increase in stake, often around 25%, in return for roughly twice the trigger rate. In many games this is the weakest of the four options.
Does buying the feature improve your odds?
No. Studios price the buy so that its return roughly matches the base game. If a slot pays back 96% in normal play, its buy option returns about 96% as well.
Sometimes it returns slightly less. A studio might ship a game with the base game at 96.5% and the buy at 95% or below, on the reasonable assumption that few players read the second figure.
What a buy really changes. Your expected return stays the same. What changes is speed. A £100 buy runs £100 of stakes through the game in one go. Reaching the same feature by spinning might take 150 spins and the best part of an hour. The expected loss is identical; it simply lands far sooner.
What a single buy usually returns
This is the part people tend to guess at. On a high volatility slot, the middle result from buying the feature falls well short of what you paid, often somewhere between a fifth and a half of it. The average climbs to around 96% only because a small number of buys return several times their cost.
| How the feature turns out | Share of buys, roughly | Return on a £100 buy |
|---|---|---|
| Weak | 50% to 60% | £10 to £50 |
| Short of the price | 20% to 25% | £50 to £95 |
| About break even | 5% to 10% | £95 to £150 |
| Strong | 8% to 12% | £150 to £500 |
| Exceptional | 1% to 2% | Over £500 |
The first row is the single likeliest result: a £100 purchase coming back as £10 to £50. The headline average depends on the last row, which is where very few sessions end up.
Why the Gambling Commission removed it
The UK Gambling Commission banned feature buys in October 2021, in the same package that removed autoplay, turbo and quick spin, and the option to reverse a withdrawal back into your balance. It also set a minimum of 2.5 seconds per slot spin.
The Commission's case was about speed, not fairness. Its view was that features built to compress play, so that losses build up in short bursts, are the ones most linked to harm. It never claimed buys were rigged. It said they removed the natural breaks in a session, and that was the problem.
That argument deserves a fair hearing even if you choose to play elsewhere. A buy gives you nothing extra. What it takes away is time to stop and think between decisions.
Other places that restrict it
The UK is not an outlier. Feature buys are banned or limited in the Netherlands, in Germany under its state treaty, and in several Canadian provinces. Each regulator gives a similar reason: concern over how quickly money can be lost, rather than doubts about the maths.
Where buys are still switched on
Outside those regulated markets they are standard. Studios such as Pragmatic Play, Push Gaming, Nolimit City, Big Time Gaming and Hacksaw Gaming include buy options as standard, and casinos licensed in places such as Curaçao and Anjouan leave them enabled because players ask for them.
Our slots not on GamStop guide shows which sites have buys turned on. If you joined GamStop because gambling had become a problem, leave the exclusion in place. GamCare offers free, confidential support on 0808 8020 133.
Searching for free bonus buy slots usually means demo mode. Many studios let the buy button work with play money, which is a sensible way to see how a feature behaves before any real stake is involved.
The bonus balance trap
If a deposit bonus is active, a feature buy will almost always break the maximum bet rule in the bonus terms. Plenty of bonuses cap each stake at £5 or less; a 100× buy at £1 counts as a single £100 stake.
Casinos normally treat that as a breach, and the standard penalty is losing the bonus and anything won with it. It is one of the most common reasons players find a balance they thought was theirs has been removed. The wagering guide covers this and the other clauses that catch people out.
If you decide to use it
- Read the RTP for the buy itself. Many paytables list it apart from the base figure, and it is often lower. If no separate figure is shown, assume it could be.
- Compare the price with your whole balance. A 100× buy is a hundred stakes placed at once. If £100 is a big slice of what you have, the buy is too large.
- Expect less than you paid. On a high volatility game, getting back less than the price is the usual outcome, not bad luck.
- Do not buy to win back losses. Buys concentrate variance, and variance is what makes chasing so expensive.
- Turn bonuses off first. Any buy with a bonus running is likely to break the stake cap and cost you the bonus.
The short version
A bonus buy is a fast-forward button. It does not cheat you and it gives you no edge; it trades an hour of base game for one decision at the same expected cost. If you think a high volatility base game is worth nothing to you, that trade can make sense.
It is not a strategy and it is not a way to win more, whatever some streams suggest. It is also the feature that can clear a whole evening's budget in four or five clicks. If that sounds familiar, the UK ban is working in your favour.
Play with money you can afford to lose. Casino games are built to return less than is staked over time. Set a budget and use your account's deposit limits. Free, confidential support is available from GamCare on 0808 8020 133. More on staying in control.