What are Bonus Buy / Feature Buy slots?

A Bonus Buy or Feature Buy is a paid option that guarantees entry to a named bonus or enhanced feature state. Instead of waiting for the usual trigger, the player pays the displayed feature price and the game starts, or guarantees the trigger of, the selected feature.

The names vary. Extra Chilli Megaways uses Bonus Buy. Big Bass Splash uses Buy Free Spins. Gopnik uses Sneaky Buy. NetEnt games such as MONOPOLY Money Line and Demon Beats package paid feature options under Elevate. What matters is the behaviour, not the label.

Slotathon uses Feature Buy as the mechanic name; Bonus Buy is the search-facing term commonly used for the same broad behaviour.

How direct paid bonus access works

At its simplest, the game shows a feature name and a price expressed as a multiple of the current bet. Buy it, and the game moves into the purchased feature state rather than relying on the normal random trigger.

That does not always mean the screen jumps instantly to a separate bonus round. Some implementations create the trigger state for you. Big Bass Splash, for example, documents a Buy Free Spins option where the paid route causes 3, 4 or 5 Scatters to land and awards the corresponding Free Spins start. Thor’s Rage 2 has paid Storm and Thunder modes that guarantee the Scatter count required for the selected Free Spins or Super Spins mode.

However the trigger appears on screen, both still fit Feature Buy because the payment guarantees entry to the selected feature. The route into that feature can look different from game to game.

Bonus Buy vs triggering the feature naturally

Many of the same features can also be reached through ordinary play. The difference is the access route, not necessarily the bonus that follows.

In Extra Chilli Megaways, the reviewed Bonus Buy route purchases 8 Free Spins for 40x stake where enabled. The underlying Free Spins can also be reached through the game’s normal trigger rules. Book of Hidden Tombs likewise documents paid entry to standard or Super Free Spins while retaining ordinary in-game bonus triggers.

That distinction is easy to lose sight of. A slot can contain Free Spins without letting you buy them, and finding a Bonus Buy in one configuration does not establish that the paid route exists in every version of the game.

Bonus Buy vs Ante Bet / Enhanced Bet

The cleanest distinction is whether the payment guarantees the feature.

Feature Buy: pay the displayed feature price and entry to the selected bonus or feature state is guaranteed.

Ante Bet / Enhanced Bet: pay more for an affected spin, but the spin still has to resolve under its modified trigger probability, symbols or feature rules. The extra stake can make a feature more likely without purchasing it outright.

Price does not settle the question. A relatively cheap paid option can be Feature Buy if it guarantees entry, while a much more expensive paid spin can still be Enhanced Bet if the feature itself remains unguaranteed.

One menu, different mechanics: X-iter and Elevate

This gets less tidy when a provider puts several paid options under one menu name. One branded menu can contain genuinely different mechanics.

Concrete Cowboys is a clean example. Its X-iter menu includes a 2.5x Bonus Hunt that increases the chance of reaching the bonus and a 250x Super Bonus option that guarantees entry to the Super Bonus game. The first behaves like Enhanced Bet; the second is Feature Buy.

Demon Beats shows the same principle under Elevate. Lower-cost Bonus Hunt options increase the chance of activating Free Spins, while its 100x Free Spins option directly activates Free Spins and its 300x Super Free Spins option directly activates the enhanced version.

How much does a Bonus Buy cost?

There is no standard price. Across the reviewed games, direct feature access ranges from relatively low multiples to purchases costing hundreds of times the current bet.

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

Other reviewed menus stretch further. Gopnik ranges from 7x for xNudge to 380x for its Super feature variants, while Katmandu Gold documents a 100x standard Buy Bonus and 500x Super Bonus.

Those prices describe access costs, not value. A larger multiplier does not by itself establish a higher RTP, a better chance of winning overall or a more favourable feature.

Why Feature Buy availability changes by build and jurisdiction

A feature can be part of the game design without being switched on in every build. That is why Feature Buy behaviour and Feature Buy availability have to be treated as separate questions.

MONOPOLY Money Line makes the build issue easy to see. The reviewed NetEnt material includes both buy-enabled and buy-disabled 94% and 96% OSS builds, while the reviewed 88% and 92% builds are disabled. Demon Beats has paired buy-enabled and buy-disabled 92%, 94% and 96% OSS builds.

Developer material can also flag the market dependency directly. Book of Hidden Tombs says purchase features may be unavailable because of licence requirements, while the Gopnik developer sheet says Sneaky Buy may be removed in some regulated markets.

In other words, a game’s feature list and a market-specific availability claim are separate pieces of evidence. One cannot stand in for the other.

Public developer pages are useful for establishing what a mechanic does, but they do not automatically show that the same control is enabled in a Great Britain configuration. The same caution applies to demos, factsheets and screenshots: they can prove that a paid feature exists in a build, but not that a GB-regulated operator can offer that build with Feature Buy enabled.

Are Bonus Buy slots available in Great Britain?

For GB-regulated online slots, Slotathon does not present Bonus Buy or Feature Buy as currently available. Within our current reviewed game-specific Great Britain records for this mechanic, no configuration is marked Feature Buy Allowed.

Gates of Olympus provides another game-specific example. Buy Free Spins exists in international versions of the game, while the UK-certified configurations reviewed by Slotathon require the purchase feature to be disabled.

The reason for that caution is the Gambling Commission’s published record. Its investigation found six licensees offering feature buy-in products that let customers stake significant amounts to access a bonus without playing the initial stages. After considering RTS 3A and RTS 14A, those licensees were instructed to remove the products, and the Commission says further licensees were contacted and instructed to remove games with the option to buy a feature.

Current RTS 14A still says gambling products must not actively encourage customers to increase their stake or the amount they have decided to gamble. Its implementation guidance says the requirement is not intended to prevent every special feature that allows a stake increase on a specific event, using a blackjack split as an example. That guidance is not evidence that any particular Enhanced Bet is permitted in Great Britain; it simply shows that a higher stake alone does not define Feature Buy or put every paid option in the same regulatory category.

Separately, Great Britain now has maximum online-slot stakes per game cycle of £2 for adults aged 18 to 24 and £5 for adults aged 25 and over. The £5 limit took effect on 9 April 2025 and the £2 limit for 18-to-24-year-olds on 21 May 2025. They are a separate current rule and should not be confused with the Commission’s earlier action on feature buy-in products.

For this page, that means Feature Buy can be explained as a documented mechanic in international or non-GB configurations without turning that into a claim about GB availability. We do not use the page to point readers towards offshore or unlicensed alternatives.

Big Bass Splash: one game, different market treatment

Big Bass Splash shows the distinction particularly clearly: the mechanic exists in the wider game evidence, while the reviewed Great Britain configurations treat it differently.

In Pragmatic Play’s general game material, Buy Free Spins costs 100x total bet where the option is enabled. The paid route causes 3, 4 or 5 Scatters to land and awards the corresponding Free Spins start.

The reviewed Great Britain certification evidence tells a different story. Slotathon has two certified UK records for Big Bass Splash, covering the main UK RTP family and a separate 92.05% configuration. Both mark Feature Buy as disabled, and the certification evidence states that Buy Feature should not be enabled from the back office for UK Remote.

Feature Buy examples compared

Does Bonus Buy change RTP or volatility?

A paid route can have its own maths, but there is no universal RTP rule. Some reviewed games publish separate RTP values for individual buy modes or purchased-feature routes, while others simply document the access price and feature state.

Katmandu Gold, for example, records 96.3% for its standard Buy Bonus and 96.4% for its Super Bonus. The reviewed Chaos Crew rules state 95.92% RTP when buying Free Spins. Those examples show that a purchased route can have its own mathematical configuration; they do not show that Bonus Buy universally raises or lowers RTP.

The presence of Feature Buy also does not establish a volatility change, hit-frequency change, higher overall winning likelihood or greater player value. Those require separate game- and configuration-specific evidence.

What Feature Buy does not tell you

The label alone tells you surprisingly little. It does not reveal the price, whether the purchased state is ordinary Free Spins, Super Free Spins, respins, a minigame or another feature, whether the paid route uses the same maths as the natural trigger route, or what the maximum win is.

And seeing Bonus Buy in one version tells you nothing by itself about Great Britain, another regulated market or even every build of the same game. Availability needs its own evidence.

Finally, Feature Buy does not tell you whether a neighbouring paid option belongs to the same mechanic. A Bonus Hunt, FeatureSpin or X-iter entry can instead be an Enhanced Bet if the paid spin still has to trigger the feature rather than guaranteeing entry.

Related slot mechanics

Feature Buy often sits beside other paid mechanics in the same menu, and several can lead towards the same bonus. The difference is how access is granted.