A bonus buy is a slot feature that lets you pay a fixed multiple of your stake, usually somewhere between 50x and 500x, to skip the base game and go straight to the bonus round. Instead of waiting for scatters to land, you pay the price in the buy menu and the free spins start at once.
In this guide, we'll work out what a bonus buy costs you on average, how its RTP compares with the base game, and how many buys a bankroll can actually cover. We'll use real prices and published RTPs from slots in MetaWin's lobby, plus our own catalogue data on the 1,029 slots here that offer one.
Here's the short version. A bonus buy is a shortcut to the part of the slot where the biggest wins happen. On high-volatility games, that's the bonus round, where a title like San Quentin 2: Death Row builds towards its 200,000x max win. The buy costs more per round and doesn't change the house edge, but every purchase puts you straight into the round that can pay big.
Looking for bonus buy slots to play?
Our lobby has a dedicated collection of more than 1,180 bonus buy slots at MetaWin, including games from Pragmatic Play, Hacksaw Gaming, Nolimit City and Gladiator Games.
New bonus buy slots for November 2026
| Game | RTP | More |
|---|---|---|
 Chests Of Cai Shen – Infinity Pragmatic Play | 96.5% | |
 Sweet Loot Pragmatic Play | 96.53% | |
 Hangovers & Holidays Hacksaw | 96.34% | |
 Royal Hunt Peter and Sons | 96% | |
 Soju Power Maxways Maxxi Labs | 96.24% | |
 Udder Carnage Holy Cow! Gaming Corps | 95.79% | |
 Vampires: Blood Moon Booming | 95.8% | |
 Jet Bark Hacksaw | 96.33% | |
 Minotaur ReBurn Endorphina | 96.04% | |
 3 Adventures of Alice™ Hold and Win Hacksaw | 96.26% |
These are the newest bonus buy releases in our lobby, refreshed every week from MetaWin's New Releases. Titles we've reviewed link to the full review, and the rest take you straight to the game.
What is a bonus buy?
Most slots save their biggest features for a bonus round, often free spins, that you trigger by landing enough scatter symbols. A bonus buy, also called a feature buy, lets you pay for that trigger instead of spinning until it happens.
You'll find it behind a button beside the reels, labelled Buy Bonus, Bonus Buy or Buy Feature. Open it and the menu lists each option with its price as a multiple of your current bet. The price moves with your stake, so a 100x buy costs $20 at a $0.20 bet and $100 at $1.
Studios sell three broad kinds of buy. A direct bonus buy starts the free spins straight away. Feature spins, such as Hacksaw's BonusHunt FeatureSpins at 3x per spin, raise the chance of triggering the bonus without guaranteeing it. Tiered menus, like the Elevate menu on Dead or Alive 3: Wanted, sell several versions of the same bonus at different prices.
Did you know?
Of the 2,406 slots in MetaWin's slots lobby, 1,029 have a bonus buy, 42.8% of the catalogue. At Maxxi Labs, it's 76 of its 81 games.
How much does a bonus buy cost?
Prices vary more than most players expect, from a couple of times your stake for boosted spins to several thousand times it for premium bonuses. Most standard free spins buys sit between 50x and 100x.
Bonus buy price tiers at MetaWin
These prices come from the buy menus of slots in our lobby. Every price is a multiple of your bet, so the dollar cost depends on your stake.
| Price range | What it usually buys | Examples at MetaWin |
|---|---|---|
| 2x-5x per spin | Feature spins or boosted bets that raise the bonus chance | Le Bandit and Le Vampire BonusHunt (3x), San Quentin 2 xBet (2x) |
| 50x-100x | A standard free spins round | Star Nudge (50x), Le Vampire Coffin Break (60x), MoneyFest (80x), Gates of Olympus 1000 (100x) |
| 250x-500x | An upgraded bonus with stronger starting conditions | Le Bandit All That Glitters Is Gold (250x), Sugar Rush 1000 Super Free Spins (500x), Money Train 4 Persistent buy (500x) |
| 1,000x and up | Premium tiers with the highest starting multipliers or extra wilds | Dead or Alive 3 Dead or Alive Spins (1,000x), Gates of Olympus 2500 Super Free Spins 2 (1,250x), San Quentin 2 with three Jumping Wilds (2,500x) |
Since the price scales with your bet, it's worth turning the multiple into dollars before you press anything.
What a bonus buy costs at your stake
Each figure is the price of one buy. A single 500x buy at a $1 stake costs the same as 500 base game spins.
| Stake | 60x buy | 100x buy | 250x buy | 500x buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $0.20 | $12 | $20 | $50 | $100 |
| $0.50 | $30 | $50 | $125 | $250 |
| $1 | $60 | $100 | $250 | $500 |
| $5 | $300 | $500 | $1,250 | $2,500 |
What does a bonus buy cost you on average?
The price is what you pay up front. What a buy costs you over time depends on its RTP, and the maths is the same as for any bet.
Average cost of a buy = buy price × (100 - buy RTP %) / 100
Say you buy the free spins on Gates of Olympus 1000 at a $1 stake. The buy costs 100x, so $100. Pragmatic Play lists that buy at 96.49% RTP, which leaves 3.51% as the house edge. On average, each buy returns $96.49 and costs you $3.51.
Now spend the same $100 on 100 base game spins at $1. The base game runs at 96.50%, so those spins return $96.50 on average and cost you $3.50. The edge is almost identical. What changes is how the money moves: 100 spins spread it across a session, while the buy settles it in one round.
Check it yourself: take any buy price, multiply it by the house edge, and you have the average cost. On Dead or Alive 3's 1,000x tier at 96.04%, that comes to about 39.6x your stake.
Bigger buys cost more on average, but they also buy a stronger starting position. Sugar Rush 1000's 500x Super Free Spins open with a 2x multiplier already on every spot, and San Quentin 2's top tiers add up to three Jumping Wilds before the first spin. You pay more for the round, and the round has more room to pay.
Author's Thoughts
Matija Antic
A bonus buy doesn't change the maths. What it changes is where you start, straight in the round where the big multipliers live. I'd still price every buy as the cost of one bonus round I'm happy to pay for.
Do bonus buys have a different RTP?
Sometimes, but by less than you might think. Studios publish a separate RTP for each buy option, and most sit within a few hundredths of a point of the base game.
Base game RTP vs bonus buy RTP
Published RTPs for slots in MetaWin's lobby, from studio pages and reviewers reading each game's help file. Studios offer several RTP versions, so check the paytable in the game for the version you're playing.
| Game | Base game RTP | Bonus buy RTP |
|---|---|---|
| Gates of Olympus 1000 | 96.50% | 96.49% (100x) |
| Sugar Rush 1000 | 96.53% | 96.52% (100x) |
| The Dog House Megaways | 96.55% | 96.55% (100x) |
| Le Bandit | 96.34% | 96.28% to 96.40% |
| Le Bunny | 96.14% | 96.13% to 96.36% |
| Dead or Alive 3: Wanted | 96.03% | 96.02% to 96.10% |
| San Quentin 2: Death Row | 96.13% | 96.18% to 96.27% |
| Money Train 4 | 96.10% | 96.10% (100x), 96.50% (500x) |
| Pine of Plinko 2 | 96.32% | 96.50% (92x) |
Two patterns stand out. Pragmatic Play's buys sit level with the base game or a couple of hundredths of a point below it. Hacksaw Gaming, Nolimit City, Relax Gaming and Print Studios often price some buys slightly above it, which means the bonus round itself carries a touch more of the game's return.
Even the biggest gap in this table, 0.4 points on Money Train 4's 500x buy, only saves you about $2 on a $500 buy at a $1 stake. A higher buy RTP is a nice detail. It isn't a reason to buy.
Did you know?
A bonus buy can pay a higher RTP than the base game. On San Quentin 2: Death Row, every one of Nolimit City's Green Mile buys sits above the 96.13% base, up to 96.27% for the 100x option.
How many bonus buys can your bankroll cover?
This is where a buy feels very different from spinning. The same budget that lasts an evening of base game spins can disappear in one or two purchases.
How many 100x buys your bankroll covers
The number of 100x buys a $100 or $500 balance can pay for, next to the base game spins the same money buys.
| Stake | Cost of a 100x buy | Buys from $100 | Buys from $500 | Base spins from $100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $0.20 | $20 | 5 | 25 | 500 |
| $0.50 | $50 | 2 | 10 | 200 |
| $1 | $100 | 1 | 5 | 100 |
| $5 | $500 | 0 | 1 | 20 |
Bonus rounds pay out unevenly. Some return a fraction of their price and a few return many times it, which is why five buys can finish anywhere. If you want a feel for that spread, our guide to slot volatility explains how it shapes a session.
One buy is one bet
A 100x buy at a $1 stake puts $100 on a single bonus round. Set a session budget before you open the buy menu, and count each buy against it in full.
What MetaWin's data shows about bonus buy slots
We ran our own numbers on the 2,406 slots in MetaWin's slots lobby to see how bonus buy slots compare with the rest. Here's what came out.
Bonus buy slots vs other slots at MetaWin
Figures from MetaWin's game catalogue on 20 October 2026. Volatility shares are of games with a published rating.
| Measure | Bonus buy slots | Other slots |
|---|---|---|
| Slots in the lobby | 1,029 | 1,377 |
| Median RTP | 96.2% | 96.14% |
| RTP of 97% or higher | 5.6% | 10.0% |
| Rated high volatility (5 of 5) | 28.2% | 10.2% |
| Rated low volatility (1 of 5) | None | 2.2% |
Share of slots rated high volatility
MetaWin slots lobby, 20 October 2026
The table shows two things. Bonus buy slots don't pay a better RTP, and if anything fewer of them reach 97%. They are also almost three times as likely to be rated high volatility, and none of them are rated low. That makes sense, since a buy only appeals when the bonus is where the big wins live.
Some studios lean on the feature far more than others. Maxxi Labs offers a buy on 76 of its 81 slots here, BGaming on 95 of 150, Pragmatic Play on 299 of 510, and Hacksaw Gaming on 78 of 127.
About this data
A slot counts as a bonus buy slot here if MetaWin's platform tags it with a buy feature. Studios don't tag consistently, so treat 1,029 as a minimum. RTP is the figure each game lists at MetaWin.
Is a bonus buy worth it?
It can be. On most high-volatility slots, the biggest payouts come from the bonus round, so a buy is the most direct route to a slot's top wins. Instead of hundreds of base game spins waiting for the scatters, every purchase is a straight shot at that round.
The trade-off is cost and swing. Over enough buys, your average loss still tends towards the price times the house edge, and a single round can return far less than it cost. When a bonus lands well, though, it can pay many times its price. Max wins like 150,000x on Money Train 4 and 200,000x on San Quentin 2 are built around the bonus round.
Try it with demo credit first
973 of the 1,029 bonus buy slots at MetaWin have a demo mode. Buying a few bonuses with demo credit shows you how a game's bonus round behaves, the quiet ones and the big ones, before any real crypto moves.
A buy makes most sense when you want the bonus round itself and the price fits inside a budget you've already set. It makes less sense when you're chasing a loss, or when one buy would eat a large share of your balance.
By that measure, the best bonus buy is one priced so that a quiet round doesn't end your session, while a good one can still change it.
Author's Thoughts
Matija Antic
What a buy really sells is time. You skip the wait for the round where the big multipliers live, and that's worth paying for as long as the price is one you're comfortable with.
Popular bonus buy slots at MetaWin
These are some of the best-known bonus buy slots in our lobby, each with a full review. Between them, they cover buy prices from 3x per spin to 2,500x and max wins from 10,000x on Le Bandit and Snoop Dogg Dollars to 200,000x on San Quentin 2, and their buy RTPs are published, so you can run the maths above before you play.
Read the full reviews
For the full line-up, head to the bonus buy collection in our lobby, and keep each buy inside the budget you set before you start.
