What Are Bonus Buy Slots?

Most video slots keep their most exciting moments behind a trigger. Land enough scatter symbols and a round of free spins or a special feature begins; miss them and the base game carries on. On a bonus buy slot there is a second door. A button on the screen, often labelled "Buy Feature" or "Bonus Buy", lets a player pay a fixed amount and go straight into that round without waiting for it to arrive.

This explainer is aimed at readers who are 18 or older. It describes a game mechanic and its cost; it is not encouragement to use it.

How the purchase works

The price of the bonus is shown as a multiple of the current stake. A game might ask for, say, 80 or 100 times the base bet, and the exact multiple differs from title to title. Change the stake and the cost moves with it. Once paid, the feature plays out in the usual way, and whatever it returns is added to the balance.

Some games offer more than one option on the menu: a standard feature, an enhanced version with extra multipliers or more spins, and occasionally a cheaper "boost" that raises the chance of triggering naturally for a while. Each carries its own price, and the help screen explains what you receive for it.

Is the bonus worth what it costs?

A bought feature is not a gift from the game. Its price is set so that, over a vast number of purchases, the round returns less than it costs, in line with the game's built-in edge. Many developers publish a separate return-to-player figure for the buy option, and it can be slightly higher or lower than the base game's figure. The help or information screen is the place to look; if no figure is given, assume nothing in the player's favour.

A quick sense of scale

The figures are an invented illustration. They show that a single click can use the same money as a long stretch of normal play, and the result arrives in seconds.

What it does to a session

Bonus rounds hold much of a slot's potential for bigger payouts, and they also produce plenty of disappointments. A purchased feature can return a fraction of its price as easily as it can return a multiple of it. Buying repeatedly concentrates play into fewer, larger outcomes, which makes the balance swing harder. In practice it behaves like switching to a far more volatile version of the same game. Our guide to slot volatility explains why such swings can empty a budget quickly even when the long-run return is unchanged.

Speed is the other factor. Base-game spins take a few seconds each; feature buys skip all of them. A budget meant for an hour of play can be gone in a handful of purchases.

Where the option is restricted

Because of these concerns, some regulators have limited or removed feature buys at licensed casinos, and some game studios release separate versions of the same slot with and without the button. Whether you see the option at all depends on where you live and how the operator is licensed. Check the rules in your country before playing any online slot.

A checklist before you consider it

• Read the help screen for the buy price, the feature's rules and any separate return figure.
• Work out the cost in money, not in multiples: 100x of a modest stake can still be a large sum.
• Decide in advance how many purchases, if any, fit into the session budget.
• Remember that a poor round does not make the next one more likely to pay.
• Stop once the planned amount has been used.

Practical habits for keeping track are collected in our piece on managing a slot bankroll. Online slots should stay paid entertainment for adults, never a way to make money, and any purchase inside a game deserves the same thought as spending the money anywhere else.