Bonus Buy Slots: Why the UK Was Right to Switch Them Off

Play a big-name slot at a casino licensed in Malta or Denmark and there’s usually an extra button next to the spin button. It offers to skip the base game: pay a lump sum and go straight into the free spins. Open the same slot on a UK-licensed casino site and that button isn’t there. It’s the same game from the same studio, minus one feature.

Readers ask me about this more than almost anything else in slots. Some think Britain is being overcautious. Others had no idea the feature existed. I’ll give you my view, but the bonus buy deserves a fair hearing first.

What a bonus buy actually is

A bonus buy, also called a feature buy, lets you pay a fixed multiple of your stake to trigger the bonus round when you choose, rather than waiting for the scatters to land. The usual price is around 100 times your stake. Some games sell several tiers, and the dearer ones add extras such as multipliers or sticky wilds. In Denmark, the government says some buy-ins cost as much as 250 times the stake.

The feature is generally traced back to Big Time Gaming’s White Rabbit in 2017. Within a couple of years, most of the major studios had their own version.

TOP 10 Slots With Bonus Buy Feature

Here are ten of the most widely played bonus buy slots. No official popularity ranking exists, so these are the titles that appear most consistently across the major slot databases and catalogues.

Slot	Provider	Bonus Buy price	RTP
Gates of Olympus	Pragmatic Play	100x	96.50%*
Sweet Bonanza	Pragmatic Play	100x	96.49%
Big Bamboo	Push Gaming	99x to 608x (four options)	up to 96.94% with the buy
Money Train 2	Relax Gaming	100x	96.40%, rising to 98% with the buy
Wanted Dead or a Wild	Hacksaw Gaming	80x / 200x / 400x	96.27% / 96.33% / 96.43%
San Quentin xWays	Nolimit City	100x, 400x or 2,000x	96.03%, up to 96.95% on the top buy
Dead or Alive 2	NetEnt	66x	96.80%
White Rabbit Megaways	Big Time Gaming	100x	97.24%, rising to 97.77% with the buy
Fruit Party 2	Pragmatic Play	100x	96.53%
Starburst XXXtreme	NetEnt	10x or 95x per spin (XXXtreme Spins)	95.29%

What it gives players

The appeal is real. On most modern slots, the bonus round is where the action is. The base game is a long stretch of small wins and dead spins while you wait for it.

A bonus buy removes the wait. It also tells you exactly what the feature will cost before you commit. Triggering it naturally might take 150 spins one night and 1,500 the next. The buy price is worked out from the game’s maths, so on many titles you don’t pay extra for the shortcut. If the feature is the only part of the game you enjoy, it’s an efficient way to play.

I understand that case. I just don’t think it outweighs what comes with it.

The problem with the bonus buy slots is the size of each bet

Bonus buy is a good feature. The problem is that it costs a lot and can be a huge bet, sometimes almost the whole bankroll. And as a bonus game, it does not guarantee a big win. You can end up with nothing, as bonus games can sometimes give you 0 in winnings. It happens, but rarely. So this feature is only for players with a huge bankroll.

At a £1 stake, a 100x buy costs £100 for a single click. The bonus round you get for that £100 can pay back £8, and it often does. Ten buys comes to £1,000, and you can get through them in a few minutes.

In most cases, the feature does not double your bankroll, but you risk emptying it and going to top up again. That is why it adds to addictive behaviour.

A bonus buy turns a slot into a run of £100 single bets, with nothing in between to slow you down.

Normal slot play spreads your losses over hundreds of small spins. A bonus buy packs them into a handful of big ones. It also encourages a familiar line of thinking: the last bonus paid £12 on a £100 buy, so the next one must be due. And the button is right there.

Then there’s the stake cap. Online slots in Britain are now limited to £5 a spin for over-25s and £2 for 18 to 24-year-olds. A £500 bonus buy wouldn’t make much sense next to those limits.

The price of skipping the base game

100x

Typical buy price

£100 for one click at a £1 stake

250x

Top buy-in cited by Denmark

From the Spilpakke 1 reform agreement

608x

Dearest tier on Big Bamboo

Push Gaming sells four buys, starting at 99x

Better odds, still a house edge

96.40%

Money Train 2, normal play

Return to player when you spin for the bonus

98%

Money Train 2, bonus buy

Over the long run, still £2 lost per £100 bought

UK slots after the 2021 design changes

165m+

fewer spins staked above £2 in six months

9.5m

fewer spins staked above £10 in six months

£3,000+

price of one bonus buy the regulator found before the ban

£5 / £2

maximum slot stake today, over-25s / 18 to 24s

Sources: UK Gambling Commission, Skatteministeriet, SlotCatalog. RTP figures are long-run averages set by each game’s maths.

Why bonus buys aren’t allowed in the UK

The Gambling Commission acted after it found six operators offering feature buy-ins on slot-style games. One game was charging more than £3,000 to go straight into the bonus round.

The Commission pointed to its technical standards. Requirement 14A says gambling products must not “actively encourage customers to chase their losses”. It also bars products that push players to raise their stake or spend more than they had planned. All six operators removed the feature.

The ban was part of a wider overhaul of slot design. Spins now have to take at least 2.5 seconds, autoplay and turbo modes have gone, and games can’t celebrate a “win” that pays back less than you staked. The stake caps came later, followed by the 10x cap on bonus wagering. Taken together, the rules follow one idea: anything that makes money leave an account faster gets slowed down or removed.

How the ban protects players

Mostly by slowing play back down. In the UK, the only way to reach the bonus round is by spinning, at a capped stake and a minimum speed. That puts a ceiling on how much anyone can lose in an hour, however the session is going.

Losses also come in smaller pieces, which gives you time to notice them. After an hour of £1 spins, you’re more likely to stop and check your balance than after three clicks that cost the same amount. Rules built into the game itself also do something affordability checks can’t, a point we’ve made before: safer gambling needs smarter checks, not simply more checks.

It also takes away the “one more go” button at the moment it’s most tempting, which is straight after a disappointing bonus. The Commission’s own review of the 2021 slot changes found some evidence of less intense play and no unintended harm.

None of this stops anyone losing. It slows the losses down, and that’s what it was designed to do.

So why do studios build bonus buy slots?

Partly because players want it. Slot streams and big-win clips have made the bonus round the main attraction, and in many markets people expect to be able to jump straight to it.

There’s a commercial reason too. A bonus buy increases the amount staked in a session, and more money staked means more revenue for operators and for the studios that supply them.

Britain is also just one market among many. Studios release one version of a game across dozens of countries and switch the button off wherever a regulator says no. That’s why the games in our comparison of top UK slot sites look slightly different from the versions you see abroad.

Denmark is next

Danish players can still buy bonuses, and some Danish casinos give bonus buy games their own section in the lobby. That’s about to change.

Denmark’s gambling reform package, Spilpakke 1, includes a ban on buying direct access to bonus games on slots, both online and in land-based venues. The government’s reasoning is close to the UK’s. Buy-ins of up to 250 times the stake make players take more risk than usual, leading, in the agreement’s words, to “bigger and faster losses”.

It isn’t a one-off measure. The same package bans free spins and free bets in welcome offers, which UK operators can still use within the wagering cap (see our guide to UK casino bonus codes), and it ends VIP programmes. The reforms are being phased in during 2027, and the details of the bonus buy ban will be set out in the executive orders that follow the new law.

My opinion on bonus buy features when playing online slots

I enjoy a good bonus round as much as anyone, and most people who use bonus buys abroad aren’t reckless. But a button that sells £100 bets doesn’t belong in a market built around a £5 stake cap. Britain made the right call, and Denmark is right to follow.

If the missing button is tempting you towards an offshore site, think about what you’d be giving up: GamStop, deposit limits, the stake caps and a regulator you can complain to. That protection is worth far more than skipping a few hundred base-game spins.

18+. Gambling should be entertainment, not a way to make money. If it has stopped being fun, free and confidential support is available from GambleAware.org and GamCare, and on our responsible gambling page.