A bonus buy lets you pay a fixed multiple of your stake — commonly 100× — to trigger a slot’s feature round instantly, instead of waiting for scatters to land it. It’s the defining convenience of the modern high-variance slot, and one of the easiest ways to burn through a bankroll if you don’t understand the maths.
What it actually costs
On a slot like Wanted Dead or a Wild, a 100× buy at a R2 stake costs R200 to enter the feature once. The studio prices that buy so the house keeps its margin — and on most games the bonus-buy RTP is slightly lower than the base game. You’re not beating the system; you’re paying a premium to compress dozens of base spins into one high-variance gamble.
That gamble can pay nothing. It can also pay 12,500×. The variance of a single bought feature is enormous — far wider than grinding the base game — which is exactly why it feels exciting and exactly why it’s dangerous.
The honest framing
- It’s entertainment you’re buying, not an edge. The expected return on a buy is, by design, below your stake. Repeated buys lose money at the slot’s house-edge rate, just faster and in bigger chunks.
- Budget per buy, not per spin. If a feature costs 100× your bet, then your “spin” is really 100 spins of risk. Size accordingly.
- Bonus buys are banned in the UK precisely because they accelerate losses and remove the natural pacing of a slot. That tells you something about the maths.
If you’re going to buy
Pick a slot where the buy cost and the published feature RTP are stated, set a hard number of buys before you start, and stop at it — win or lose. Games like Sugar Rush, Money Train 2 and Le Bandit all carry buys, and we list the cost on every page.
18+. Gambling is addictive — winners know when to stop. NRGP: 0800 006 008.