A bonus buy lets you pay a fixed multiple of your stake to trigger a slot's feature round immediately, instead of waiting for it to arrive naturally. It is one of the most popular features in modern slots and it has been illegal on UK-licensed sites since 2021.
How it works and what it costs
The price is expressed as a multiple of your base stake and is set by the studio. Typical ranges:
| Game type | Typical buy cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Standard slot | 50–75× stake | The free spins round at base settings |
| Megaways | 75–100× stake | Free spins with the progressive multiplier |
| Enhanced buy | 150–500× stake | Guaranteed better starting conditions |
| Feature spins | 2–5× stake | Improved trigger chance, not a guaranteed feature |
At £1 a spin, a 100× buy costs £100. That is the whole proposition: £100 to skip perhaps 150 spins of base game and go straight to the part of the maths where the money is.
Does it improve your odds? No.
This is the question that matters and the answer is unambiguous. A bonus buy is priced so that the RTP of the purchase matches — or very slightly undercuts — the RTP of the base game.
If a slot returns 96% in normal play, its bonus buy returns roughly 96% too. Frequently a fraction less: studios often ship the buy at 94.5% or 95% even where the base game runs 96.5%, because players are less likely to check.
What the buy actually changes. Not your expected return — your exposure rate. Buying a £100 feature puts £100 of turnover through the game in one click. Playing to that feature naturally would have taken 150 spins and perhaps forty minutes. Same expected loss, delivered a hundred times faster.
Why the UK banned it
The Gambling Commission removed bonus buys in October 2021, alongside autoplay, turbo spin and the reverse-withdrawal facility. The reasoning was explicitly about speed and structure rather than about the odds.
The Commission's position was that features designed to accelerate play and compress losses into short bursts are the ones most associated with harm. It did not argue that bonus buys were unfair — it argued they were fast, and that speed is the mechanism by which slot losses escalate.
That is a defensible position and worth taking seriously even if you choose to play offshore. The feature does not cheat you. It simply removes every natural pause from the game.
Where it still exists
Everywhere outside the UK market. Pragmatic Play, Nolimit City, Hacksaw Gaming, Big Time Gaming and Push Gaming all ship buy features as standard, and offshore operators enable them because they are among the most requested features in any lobby.
Our slots not on GamStop page lists which sites have them switched on.
If you are going to use it
- Check the buy's own RTP. Many paytables state it separately from the base game figure, and it is often lower. If it is not stated, assume it is lower.
- Size it against your whole bankroll, not your spin stake. A 100× buy is not a bet — it is a hundred bets placed simultaneously. If £100 is a meaningful proportion of your balance, the buy is far too large for you.
- Expect nothing. A bought feature returning less than its cost is the most common outcome, not an unlucky one. On a high-volatility game the median return on a buy sits well below the price.
- Never buy to chase. The buy exists to compress variance, and variance is exactly what makes chasing expensive.
- Watch the max-bet rule. If a bonus is active, a buy almost always exceeds the maximum permitted stake and voids the offer. This catches people constantly — see our wagering guide.
The honest summary
The bonus buy is neither a scam nor an edge. It is a speed control, and it only ever moves in one direction. Whether that is worth having is a judgement about how you want to spend an evening, not a question of value — because on value, it is a wash.
The variants you will encounter
Standard feature buy
A single price for the standard free spins round. The most common format, typically 50× to 100× stake.
Tiered buys
Several prices for progressively better starting conditions — more spins, a higher starting multiplier, guaranteed scatters. Nolimit City and Hacksaw both use this. The higher tiers usually carry a slightly lower RTP, which is stated in the paytable and almost never read.
Feature spins
Not a buy at all. You pay 2× to 5× your stake for a spin with an improved chance of triggering. You may get nothing. Cheaper per attempt, and over many attempts it costs the same.
Double chance
A permanent 25% stake increase for roughly double the trigger frequency. Usually the poorest value of the four — the maths rarely favours it.
What a buy actually returns
This is the number people assume and never check. On a high-volatility slot the median return on a bonus buy is well below the price — frequently 20% to 50% of it. The 96% average is reached because a small minority of buys return several times the cost.
| Outcome band | Roughly how often | Return on a £100 buy |
|---|---|---|
| Poor | 50–60% of buys | £10–£50 |
| Below cost | 20–25% | £50–£95 |
| Around cost | 5–10% | £95–£150 |
| Good | 8–12% | £150–£500 |
| Exceptional | 1–2% | £500+ |
Read the first row again. On the most likely single outcome, a £100 buy returns somewhere between £10 and £50. The average only reaches 96% because of the bottom row, and the bottom row is where nobody's session lands.
Bonus buys and wagering — the trap
If a casino bonus is active, a bonus buy will almost always breach the maximum bet permitted while wagering. Most bonuses cap stakes at £5; a 100× buy at £1 is a £100 bet.
Operators treat that as a single wager exceeding the limit, and the standard consequence is that the bonus and everything won from it is voided. This is one of the most common ways players lose a balance they thought they had cleared. Our wagering guide covers the rest of those clauses.
The regulatory picture beyond the UK
Britain is not alone. Bonus buys are also banned or restricted in the Netherlands, in parts of Germany under the GlüStV framework, and in several Canadian provinces. The reasoning is consistent everywhere: the objection is to the speed of loss rather than to fairness.
Offshore operators licensed in Anjouan and Curaçao are outside all of it, which is why the feature is universally available there and why it appears prominently in their marketing.
A defensible way to think about it
The bonus buy is a time compression tool. It converts an hour of base-game play into one click, at the same expected cost. If you value the base game at zero — and on a high-volatility Megaways title, that is a defensible view — then buying is a rational way to get to the part you actually want.
What it is not is a strategy, an edge, or a way to win more. Anyone presenting it as one has misunderstood the maths or is hoping you have.
And it is worth being honest about the risk it carries: the feature that makes losses fastest is also the one that makes an evening's budget disappear in four clicks. If that sounds like a description of you, the UK ban is doing you a favour.
If you joined GamStop because gambling was becoming a problem, this page is not for you. GamStop exists because it works. Free, confidential help is available from GamCare on 0808 8020 133, and from BeGambleAware.