Bonus Buy (Feature Buy)

Bonus buy skips the base game. Pay a fixed multiple of your stake and enter the free spins round immediately.

Typical prices run from 50x to 500x, with 70x to 100x most common.

What it reveals about slot design

The existence of the feature is an admission: on a modern high-volatility slot, the base game is a paid mechanism for reaching the bonus, and enough players understand that to pay to skip it.

The price is calculated from the expected value of the feature. If free spins are worth 90x stake on average and trigger once in 300 spins, a buy price around 100x is roughly consistent with the base game’s cost of reaching it.

RTP is usually slightly different

Bonus buy RTP is typically set 1 to 2 percentage points lower than the base game, a 96.5% slot might offer buys at 94.5%.

Some games are configured the other way, with buy RTP marginally higher. Where it matters, the figure is in the game information panel, usually listed separately for base game and each buy option.

The volatility problem

A bonus buy is a single very large bet. Buying at 100x on a £1 stake costs £100 for one feature round whose outcome might be £15 or £3,000.

The turnover is concentrated rather than spread, which means:

• Bankroll depletes far faster than in base-game play
• A run of poor bonus rounds can end a session in minutes
• The distribution of feature outcomes is itself very wide

This is the reason for the regulatory attention.

Where it is banned

The UK prohibited bonus buy features on online slots in 2021, as part of the same package that banned autoplay and quick spin. The Netherlands and several other jurisdictions have similar restrictions.

The stated reasoning is the speed at which money can be staked and the removal of the natural pacing the base game provides.

Studios producing games for these markets ship the same titles with the buy option removed, which is why the same game can have the feature at one operator and not another.