A bonus buy lets you pay a fixed multiple of your bet to start a slot’s bonus round straight away instead of waiting for it to trigger. Most of the games we review offer one, at prices from 3× to 1,400× the bet. The price looks like the cost, but it is not: what you actually lose on average depends on the RTP of the bought round, and that turns out to be close to the cost of playing normally. The real difference is how fast and how unevenly the money goes.
Last updated: 22 October 2026
Buys, boosters and Chance x2
- Bonus buy — a one-off payment that starts the free-spins round (or a specific version of it).
- Booster — a more expensive single spin with better odds or guaranteed features, e.g. a guaranteed Bonus symbol or loaded Revolvers.
- Chance x2 / ante bet — a surcharge of roughly 20–25% on every spin that raises the chance of triggering the bonus.
Buy prices in the games we review
| Slot | Bonus buys | Boosters / per-spin options |
|---|---|---|
| Bullets and Bounty | True Grit 70×, Four Shots to Freedom 200× | FeatureSpins 3×, 60×, 60× |
| Gator Hunters | 70×, 200×, 500×; Lucky Draw 250× | 2.5×, 90×, 400×, 1,200× |
| Gator Hunters 2 | 80×, 390×, 700× | 3×, 8×, 50×, 1,400× |
| Lobster House | 100×, Super Free Spins 400× | — |
| Merge Up | 100× | Chance x2 |
| Merge Up 2 | 100×, 250×, 500× | Chance x2 |
| Sugar Merge Up | 100×, 250×, 500× | Chance x2 (1.2×), Random Booster 10×, Booster x16 40× |
| Vikings Wild Feast | Coin bonus 40×, Drunk Crew 100×, Feast Till Drop 200× (reported) | Ante bet |
| Miss Cherry Fruits Jackpot Party | Free spins or Disco Ball respins (price scales with the bet) | Buy Chance x2.5 |
What a buy really costs
The number to look at is not the price but the expected loss: price × (100% − RTP of the bought round). For Bullets and Bounty the RTP of each buy is listed for the game’s 96.27% version, which makes the calculation exact:
| Option | Price | RTP | Average loss per buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| BonusHunt FeatureSpins | 3× | 96.24% | 0.11× |
| Bad Blood FeatureSpins | 60× | 96.36% | 2.18× |
| Draw or Die FeatureSpins | 60× | 96.29% | 2.23× |
| True Grit | 70× | 96.26% | 2.62× |
| Four Shots to Freedom | 200× | 96.30% | 7.40× |
For comparison, 200 ordinary spins at the game’s 96.27% RTP cost on average 7.46× the bet — practically the same as one 200× buy (7.40×). The buy is not more expensive on average; it puts the same money into one round instead of two hundred.
The average hides the spread. A 200× buy can return a small fraction of its price or many times it. Over a session you will see many more results far from the average than close to it.
Why buys still drain a balance faster
- Speed. A €100 buy is the same money as 100 spins of €1, gone in one click.
- No base-game wins in between. Spins return small wins that keep a session going; a buy returns one result.
- Caps still apply. Lobster House ends any round at 4,000×; Merge Up and its sequels stop at €250,000 whatever you paid.
- Per-spin options add up. Ten spins with Sugar Merge Up’s Booster x16 cost 400× the bet; Chance x2 raises every spin by about a fifth.
Where bonus buys are restricted
| Market | Rule | Since |
|---|---|---|
| Great Britain | The Gambling Commission treats feature buy-ins as a breach of its technical standards, which forbid products that encourage chasing losses or raising stakes; operators removed them. Separate rules ban autoplay, slam stops and spins faster than 2.5 seconds, and cap slot stakes at £5 per spin (£2 for players aged 18–24). | Buys: January 2020. Design rules: October 2021. Stake caps: April and May 2025 |
| Netherlands | The regulator (KSA) treats a bonus buy as a form of autoplay, which Dutch rules prohibit: every new game must be a conscious choice by the player. | Enforced against operators, e.g. in 2025 |
| Sweden | No ban. One studio, Play’n GO, publicly asked for bonus-buy games to be excluded from the Swedish market in 2024. | — |
This is why our reviews mark buy options as “not in the UK” and why a game can show a buy button at one casino and not at another. All the British rules for online slots are collected in our UK slot rules guide.
Before you buy: a short checklist
- Check the game’s RTP version in its rules — and the buy’s own RTP, if the studio lists one (how to find it).
- Decide how many buys your budget covers before the first one. One buy at 100× needs a budget of at least 100 bets; a run of five needs 500.
- Prefer the cheapest buy when you are testing a game; the expensive variants have the same average loss per euro but a wider spread.
- Switch boosters off as soon as you have used the spins you planned.