What are Bonus Buy / Feature Buy slots?

A Feature Buy is a paid option that guarantees entry to a named bonus. Instead of waiting for the usual trigger, you pay the price shown and the game either starts the feature or makes sure it triggers.

Developers can’t agree on a name. Extra Chilli Megaways calls it Bonus Buy, Big Bass Splash has Buy Free Spins, Gopnik has Sneaky Buy, and NetEnt games such as MONOPOLY Money Line and Demon Beats put their paid options under Elevate. I call it Feature Buy, and the test is simple: does the payment guarantee the bonus? If the spin still has to trigger it, it’s an Ante Bet / Enhanced Bet instead.

From the affiliate side, I always saw Feature Buy as giving players a choice and a bit more say in the game. It’s not far from the old pub fruit machines that stopped and offered you a nudge. Here the option is to cut to the chase and buy the feature.

How buying a feature works

The price is usually shown as a multiple of your current stake. Pay it, and the game moves you into the feature you bought.

That doesn’t always mean an instant jump to a bonus screen. Some games create the trigger for you. Big Bass Splash‘s Buy Free Spins makes 3, 4 or 5 Scatters land and gives you the matching Free Spins start. Thor’s Rage 2 has paid Storm and Thunder modes that guarantee the Scatters needed for the Free Spins or Super Spins mode you chose. Either way the payment guarantees entry; only the presentation differs.

What you buy isn’t always Free Spins, either. MONOPOLY Money Line’s paid options include Re-Spins.

Bonus Buy vs triggering the feature naturally

Most bought features can also be reached through ordinary play. The difference is how you get in, not necessarily the bonus that follows.

In Extra Chilli Megaways, Bonus Buy gets you 8 Free Spins for 40x your stake where the option is switched on, and the same Free Spins can still trigger normally. Book of Hidden Tombs lets you buy standard or Super Free Spins while keeping its normal in-game triggers.

A game having Free Spins doesn’t mean you can buy them. That needs its own rule, and it may only exist in some versions of the game.

Bonus Buy vs Ante Bet / Enhanced Bet

It comes down to whether the payment guarantees the feature.

Feature Buy: pay the price shown and you’re guaranteed entry to the bonus or feature you chose.

Ante Bet / Enhanced Bet: pay more for a spin that plays under changed rules, such as better trigger odds or extra symbols. The feature can become more likely, but you haven’t bought it.

Price doesn’t settle it. A fairly cheap option is Feature Buy if it guarantees entry, while a much more expensive spin is still Enhanced Bet if the feature isn’t guaranteed.

One menu, different mechanics: X-iter and Elevate

It gets less tidy when a developer puts several paid options under one menu name, because one menu can hold genuinely different mechanics.

Concrete Cowboys is a clean example. Its X-iter menu has a 2.5x Bonus Hunt that increases the chance of reaching the bonus, alongside a 100x Bonus and a 250x Super Bonus that guarantee entry. The Bonus Hunt behaves like Enhanced Bet; the other two are Feature Buy.

Demon Beats does the same under Elevate. Its lower-cost Bonus Hunt options increase the chance of Free Spins, while the 100x Free Spins option starts Free Spins directly and the 300x option starts Super Free Spins.

So judge each option by what it does, not by the menu it sits in. A Bonus Hunt, FeatureSpin or X-iter option is Enhanced Bet if the spin still has to trigger the feature.

How much does a Bonus Buy cost?

There’s no standard price. The games I’ve checked range from a few times your stake to several hundred.

Extra Chilli Megaways charges 40x for 8 Free Spins. Book of Hidden Tombs lists standard Free Spins at 100x and Super Free Spins at 200x. Barbarossa Beyond The Edge charges 110x for standard Free Spins, 220x for Random Free Spins and 330x for Power Free Spins.

Some menus go further. Gopnik runs from 7x for xNudge to 380x for its Super feature variants, and Katmandu Gold has a 100x standard Buy Bonus and a 500x Super Bonus.

A higher price doesn’t mean a better bonus. It’s simply what that route costs, and at 100x, a £1 stake means £100 for one go at the feature.

Does Bonus Buy change RTP or volatility?

A bought route can have its own maths, but there’s no general rule. Some games publish a separate RTP for each buy option; others only give the price and the feature.

Katmandu Gold lists 96.3% for its standard Buy Bonus and 96.4% for its Super Bonus, and Chaos Crew‘s rules give 95.92% RTP when you buy Free Spins. That shows a bought route can be set up differently, not that buying raises or lowers RTP in general.

Nor does having Feature Buy tell you anything about volatility, hit frequency or your chance of winning overall. Those depend on the individual game.

Are Bonus Buy slots available in Great Britain?

No. Feature Buy isn’t offered at GB-licensed casinos, and every UK-certified version I’ve checked has it switched off. Big Bass Splash, below, is one. Gates of Olympus is another: Buy Free Spins is in its international versions, but its UK-certified versions require the option to be disabled.

It goes back to January 2020. The Gambling Commission found six licensed operators offering what it called feature buy-in products, which let players stake large amounts to skip straight to a bonus. After considering its technical standards (RTS 3A and RTS 14A), it told them to remove the products, and it says further operators were then contacted and told to remove games with the option to buy a feature.

Those standards don’t treat every option that raises your stake the same way, which is why Ante Bet is a separate question. The £5 and £2 stake limits that came in during 2025 are a separate rule again.

I’ll be honest: I like Feature Buy, and I understand why the Commission acted. It’s still offered in other regulated markets, and I do wonder whether a compromise could have been found with developers, with the cost made clearer to players and limits on how often you can buy and how much it can cost.

If you watch streamers from other markets, you’ll see Bonus Buy all the time. The UK versions of those games don’t have it, and that’s just how it is here. What I won’t do is point you to unlicensed or offshore sites to find it. I wouldn’t advise playing Bonus Buy, or anything else, at a site that isn’t licensed.

Big Bass Splash: on abroad, off in the UK

Big Bass Splash shows the split clearly. In Pragmatic Play’s general game material, Buy Free Spins costs 100x your total bet where the option is switched on, and it makes 3, 4 or 5 Scatters land for the matching Free Spins start.

The UK picture is different. I have two UK certification records for Big Bass Splash, one for its main UK RTP range and one for a separate 92.05% version. Both have Feature Buy disabled, and the certification says Buy Feature should not be enabled from the back office for UK Remote. The original Big Bass Bonanza never had a buy option at all.

Why one game can have several versions

A slot doesn’t come in just one version. The same title can exist in several builds, with different RTP settings for different markets, and the buy option switched on in some and off in others.

MONOPOLY Money Line makes this easy to see. NetEnt’s material includes 94% and 96% builds both with and without the buy option, while its 88% and 92% builds don’t have it. Demon Beats has 92%, 94% and 96% builds in pairs, one with the option and one without.

Some developers say so directly. The Book of Hidden Tombs rules say purchase features may be unavailable because of licence requirements, and the Gopnik game sheet says Sneaky Buy may be removed in some regulated markets.

So a developer’s page, a demo or a factsheet tells you what a game can do, not what a UK casino is allowed to switch on.

Feature Buy examples compared

Paid feature-access examples in games I’ve checked

Game	Developer’s name	Price	What you get	Where it’s offered
Big Bass Splash	Buy Free Spins	100x total bet	3, 4 or 5 Scatters and the matching Free Spins start	Where switched on; disabled in UK-certified versions
Book of Hidden Tombs	Buy Bonus / Rebuy Bonus	100x standard / 200x Super	Direct entry to the Free Spins version you choose	Rules say it may be unavailable because of licence requirements
Extra Chilli Megaways	Bonus Buy	40x	8 Free Spins	Non-GB versions
Gopnik	Sneaky Buy	7x to 380x	Direct access to named features	May be removed in some regulated markets
MONOPOLY Money Line	Elevate	30x / 100x / 300x	Re-Spins, Free Spins or Free Spins & Chance	Some builds have it, some don’t
Demon Beats	Elevate	100x Free Spins / 300x Super Free Spins	Direct entry to Free Spins or Super Free Spins	92%, 94% and 96% builds come with and without it
Concrete Cowboys	X-iter	100x Bonus / 250x Super Bonus	Guaranteed entry to the Bonus or Super Bonus game	The same menu also has a Bonus Hunt, which is Enhanced Bet
Thor’s Rage 2	Paid feature modes	Up to 300x	Guaranteed Scatters and entry to the chosen Free Spins or Super Spins mode	Non-GB versions; no UK claim made

Related slot mechanics

Feature Buy often sits beside other paid options in the same menu, and several can lead to the same bonus. The difference is how you get in.