Bonus Buy Complete Guide - From the Origins of Feature Drop to the UK Ban, Buy RTP and Ante Bets

Bonus buy is a feature that lets you pay a set multiple of your bet in one go and go straight into free spins. It started with Big Time Gaming’s Feature Drop in 2017 and became an industry standard, but it is blocked in some countries, including the UK. We trace its origins, regulation, and the relationship between price and RTP using official sources.

the-dog-houseAI Slot Magazine

Published2026.10.23

Reading time25 min

ProvidersBig Time Gaming

Bonus Buy (also called Feature Buy) is a slot feature that lets you pay a set multiple of your current bet in one go and jump straight into free spins or a bonus round without waiting for scatters. Depending on the provider, it goes by names like Feature Drop, Buy Feature, Bonus Buy, or Nolimit Bonus, and Korean players commonly call it “free buy.”

This article lays out, mainly from official sources, when and in which game bonus buy began, how different providers adopted it, and why it was blocked in some countries. It then covers the relationship between buy price and RTP, variant options such as the ante bet, and things to watch when reading the numbers. If you only want a quick definition, you can start with the Bonus Buy entry in the wiki.

Three Numbers to Know First

The information on a bonus buy screen boils down to three numbers.

• Base bet: The bet amount for one spin that you have set right now. The winnings of a purchased bonus are also calculated based on this amount.
• Buy price: How many times the base bet you pay. 100x is the most common, and depending on the game it ranges from 50x to several thousand times.
• Buy RTP: The theoretical return rate when you buy the bonus. Many games set it equal to the base game RTP, but some list a different value separately.

For example, if the base bet is 1,000 won and the buy price is 100x, 100,000 won goes out at once. Winnings after the free spins begin are calculated on the 1,000 won bet, not 100,000 won. A buy purchases the “right to enter” the bonus, not the result of the bonus.

Bonus buy timeline

• December 2016: Big Time Gaming’s Bonanza launches. It combined Megaways with cascades, but at launch the game description lists no buy feature
• October 2017: Big Time Gaming’s White Rabbit lets players buy free spins at any time with “Feature Drop”
• April 2018: Extra Chilli adds ‘Free Spins Gamble’ to Feature Drop
• May 2018: Book Of Gods brings Feature Drop to a 243-ways game rather than a Megaways game
• 2019: Buy features spread to other providers’ games, including Relax Gaming’s Money Train
• October 2019: UK industry media report that the UKGC is asking operators to remove buy features
• January 17, 2020: The UK Gambling Commission officially announces that six operators offering buy features have taken them down
• January 2020: NetEnt’s Serengeti Kings uses a buy method where the price changes with the number of symbols collected
• January 2021: Nolimit City’s San Quentin offers a three-tier buy at 100x, 400x and 2,000x
• July 2021: Germany’s new State Treaty on Gambling (GlüStV 2021) takes effect, capping bets at 1 euro per spin
• November 2023: Nolimit City’s Nine To Five introduces a 1,370x ‘God Mode’ buy
• February 2024: Play’n GO publishes its own survey saying 55% of Swedish slot players support a bonus buy ban

The Starting Point - Big Time Gaming’s Feature Drop

The company credited with first turning bonus buy into a product is Australia’s Big Time Gaming, the very company that created Megaways. Many industry review outlets present White Rabbit from 2017 as the first bonus buy slot. Big Time Gaming’s official page does not use the phrase “world first,” but it says the game lets players buy the feature at any time and describes this as “our own Feature Drop system.”

White Rabbit, October 2017

The publication date on Big Time Gaming’s official game page is October 25, 2017. White Rabbit is a Megaways slot themed on Alice in Wonderland, with up to 16,807 ways in the base game and up to 248,832 ways in free spins, where cake symbols expand the reels. The official RTP is 96.42%.

The buy in White Rabbit was a little different from today’s bonus buy. When you start the game, the feature price is set, and each time a “BTG” coin lands on the reels, that price drops. Players can wait until the price falls far enough, or buy right away. The name Feature Drop itself carries the meaning of “the price drops.” Review outlets present the starting price as 100x the bet.

Extra Chilli and Book Of Gods - 50x and the Free Spins Gamble

Extra Chilli, released on April 4, 2018, is a Megaways follow-up to Bonanza. The official description calls Feature Drop ‘a feature that lets you trigger a feature at any time’ and Free Spins Gamble ‘a feature that lets you wager your free spins.’ The gamble stakes your free spin count on a spinning wheel; according to the official description, the first gamble is 50-50, later gambles are 60-40 in the player’s favor, and you can build up to 24 spins. The buy price is 50x the bet according to review outlets, half of White Rabbit’s.

Book Of Gods, released on May 24 of the same year, also got Feature Drop. The official page’s feature list carries the trademark notation ‘Feature Drop™.’ As a 243-ways book-style game rather than a Megaways game, it signaled that Big Time Gaming had started using the buy feature as a company-wide feature rather than tying it to a specific mechanic. The story of bonus buy and Megaways coming from the same company is also covered in the Megaways Fully Explained guide.

Becoming an industry standard

Once Feature Drop became popular, other providers began adding similar features. Unlike Megaways, however, bonus buy did not spread as a licensed technology. Each provider implemented it on its own under its own name.

• Relax Gaming: Added a buy feature to Money Train in 2019, and the official description says ‘jump straight into the action with the in-game buy feature.’ The whole Money Train series has carried this structure forward.
• NetEnt: Serengeti Kings, released on January 23, 2020, has a base game built around collecting lion and leopard symbols, and according to the official description the buy price changes with the current bet and the number of symbols you have collected. You can also choose between 3, 4 or 5 scatters.
• Pragmatic Play: added a 100x bet buy in games such as Wild West Gold in 2020, and has since put a buy button on most of its flagship titles, including Gates of Olympus and the Sweet Bonanza series.
• Nolimit City: In San Quentin, released on January 12, 2021, buys that start the bonus with 3, 4 or 5 bonus symbols were sold at 100x, 400x and 2,000x respectively. It is a representative example of a multi-tier buy where the quality of the bonus you enter varies with the price tier.
• Hacksaw: likes to offer several bonuses with different characters, as in Wanted Dead Or a Wild, and let players pick and buy the bonus they want.

Not every provider followed. Play’n GO promised in 2021 not to make bonus buy games, and in its 2024 announcement it said it gave up hundreds of millions of kronor in revenue because of this decision. In the same announcement, the CEO made clear his position that bonus buys are harmful to players and the industry as a whole.

Why It Was Blocked - How Regulation Differs by Country

The UK - The Button That Vanished With One Notice

The UK Gambling Commission was the first regulator to publicly take issue with bonus buys. The timing is described a little differently depending on the source. Industry media reported in early October 2019 that the Commission was sending operators messages to remove buy features or the games themselves. The Commission’s official notice came on January 17, 2020. That is why both ‘the 2019 ban’ and ‘the 2020 ban’ circulate as explanations.

The official notice says the following. The Commission found that six operators were offering a ‘feature buy-in’ function in slot-style games. It let players put down a large stake and jump into the bonus without playing the early stages, and one game was charging more than 3,000 pounds to enter the bonus. The Commission cited Remote Gambling Technical Standards (RTS) 3A and 14A. 3A requires that game rules be shown accurately and in an easy-to-understand way before betting, and 14A says a game must not actively encourage chasing losses or increasing stakes. All six removed the feature, and according to the Commission’s guidance document, instructions were given to withdraw similar games as well, and the same request was passed on to other operators.

What is worth noting is that this was not a new law but the result of applying existing technical standards. That is why UK versions of the same games still have no buy button today. Nolimit City, Pragmatic Play and others add a note to the game description saying ‘the buy feature may be removed in some regulated markets.’

Germany – the 1 Euro Cap

Germany legalized online slots with the new State Treaty on Gambling, which took effect on July 1, 2021, while imposing strong restrictions. Section 22a of the treaty caps the bet per spin at 1 euro, requires each spin to take at least 5 seconds on average, and bans autoplay and jackpot accumulation. The words ‘bonus buy’ do not appear directly in the text, but the general industry explanation is that games licensed by Germany’s regulator, the GGL, do not offer a buy feature. This is because paying 100x the bet in one go does not fit the 1 euro cap.

The Netherlands and Sweden

The Netherlands opened its legal online casino market in October 2021. Play’n GO’s 2024 announcement said that, along with the UK, the Dutch regulator (KSA) also bans bonus buy games, and Dutch local media give the same explanation. However, it is hard to find an official document that names the provision on which the ban is based.

Sweden is a market that has not banned bonus buy. So in February 2024, Play’n GO cited its own opinion poll to argue that Sweden should follow the UK and the Netherlands. In the survey, 69% of general respondents and 55% of respondents who play slots at least once a month supported a ban. It is worth keeping in mind that the poll was commissioned by a company that does not build buy features.

Anatomy of a Price Tag – Buy RTP and Expected Value

The Actual Numbers from Official Data

The math of bonus buy is simpler than you might expect. Multiply the buy price by the buy RTP and you get the long-run average return. That is the expected value of this feature.

Looking at the settings that Pragmatic Play’s demo game server sends down when a game opens, the original Gates of Olympus has a buy price of 100x the base bet, and the base RTP, ante bet RTP, and buy RTP are all the same at 96.50%. Calculated with a base bet of 1,000 won, it looks like this.

• One bonus buy: pay 100,000 won, recover 96,500 won on long-run average, average loss of 3,500 won
• 100 regular spins: stake 100,000 won, long-run average return of 96,500 won, average loss of 3,500 won

If the RTP is the same, the average loss for the same amount wagered is also the same. What changes is the distribution and speed of results. 100 regular spins produce results in small pieces, but with one buy, the outcome of 100,000 won is concentrated in a single bonus round. That is why a buy is described not as a ‘gain’ or ‘loss’ but as ‘a way to receive the same expected value in a rougher form.’

Not every game matches its RTPs exactly. Here are a few examples based on the same server settings.

• Sweet Bonanza 1000: base 96.53%, 100x buy 96.52%, 500x buy 96.55%
• Sugar Rush 1000: base 96.53%, 100x buy 96.52%, 500x buy 96.44%
• Zeus vs Hades – Gods of War: RTP of the four buy options varies between 96.01% and 96.14%
• Big Bass Splash: 96.71% for both the base game and the 100x buy

Big Time Gaming’s Extra Chilli lists its RTP on the official page as a range from 96.15% to 96.41%, and review outlets report that it rises to 96.82% when you use Feature Drop. It is often cited as a rare case where the buy RTP is higher than the base RTP. Even if the gap is only around 0.1 percentage points, the buy price is large, so over the long run it is not a negligible difference.

Is a pricier buy better?

Recent games offer several buy options at different prices. The expensive options start with higher multipliers or go into an enhanced bonus where certain symbols appear more often. That does not mean the expected value improves in proportion. Gates of Olympus 2500 offers four buys at 100x, 250x, 500x, and 1,250x, and per the server settings the RTP of all four options is 96.50%. The more expensive the option, the bigger the swing in a single round, but the average return relative to the amount staked is the same.

Another approach is to look at the price and the max win together. Gates of Olympus’s max win of 5,000x is 50 times the 100x buy price. By contrast, Nine To Five‘s God Mode costs 1,370x to enter, and according to Nolimit City’s official information the game’s max win is 9,217x, only about 6.7 times the buy price. Even among ‘bonus buys,’ what you are buying differs this much.

Ante bets and other variations

Ante Bet - Pay a Little More and Buy the Odds

An ante bet is an option where you pay a little more on each spin in exchange for a higher chance of triggering the bonus. If bonus buy is buying “big, all at once,” an ante is buying “in small installments.” It is especially common in Pragmatic Play games.

Looking at the server settings for Gates of Olympus, a base spin is 20 coins and an ante spin is 25 coins. That means turning on the ante raises the actual cost by 25% at the same base bet. The RTP stays the same at 96.50% with the ante on. In Gates of Olympus Super Scatter, the ante goes from 20 coins to 30 coins, a 50% increase in cost.

There is one more number to read here. The max win multiple is calculated on the base bet before the ante is added. That is why the same server settings list a separate max win based on the ante. Gates of Olympus is 5,000x at base, but 4,000x measured against the amount actually paid (ante included). Super Scatter is 50,000x at base and about 33,334x on an ante basis.

Gates of Olympus 2500 splits the ante into five levels. The cost per spin is 1.25x, 2.75x, 5.5x, 20x and 250x the base. The most expensive level costs 250x the base bet per spin, so the line between ante and bonus buy is effectively blurred. At this level, the max win is shown as 100x of the amount paid.

xBet, Gamble, God Mode

Nolimit City calls an option in the same family as the ante an xBet, part of its x-mechanics. The official explanation is that you pay an extra cost per spin to raise the chance of entering the bonus mode, while symbol payouts do not change.

Nolimit City’s Nine To Five has an especially varied buy menu. According to the official information, 10 Middle Management spins cost 75x, 12 Ivory Tower spins cost 200x, Lucky Draw costs 125x, and God Mode costs 1,370x. God Mode is a single spin aiming for the xGod feature that can award the max win in one go, so there is also a large chance of getting nothing.

Like the free spins gamble in Extra Chilli, there is also a “gamble” family where you stake the bonus you earned to grow it into a better one. The official page for Nolimit City’s San Quentin also notes that the buy feature and the “gamble to the bonus” feature may be removed in some markets.

Buy Styles by Provider

• Big Time Gaming: the originator. It added player-chosen elements such as a falling-price Feature Drop and the free spins gamble.
• Pragmatic Play: uses the combination of a 100x buy and a 25% ante almost as a standard. Recent releases have expanded to several buy options such as 100x and 500x and multi-level antes.
• Nolimit City: Synonymous with multi-tier buys. The price range is wide, from dozens of times to thousands of times, and it includes extreme options like xBet and God Mode.
• Hacksaw: creates several bonuses with different characters and lets you pick the one you want to buy.
• Relax Gaming: Lets you buy a Hold & Spin style bonus right away, as in the Money Train series.
• NetEnt: Tried a method where the price changes with progress, as in Serengeti Kings.
• Play’n GO: a major provider that has publicly declared it will not make bonus buy games.

The games registered on AI Slot show a similar trend. Pragmatic Play has the largest absolute number of bonus buy games, while for Big Time Gaming, Hacksaw Gaming and Nolimit City, most registered games have a buy feature. Conversely, the more older classic games a provider has, the lower the share of buy games.

Things to watch when reading the numbers

Same Game, Different Version

Bonus buy is a feature that can be switched off depending on the country of operation. The UK version has no button, and it is also removed in markets with bet caps, such as Germany. A buy screen you saw in an overseas review or video may not exist in the same game in another market.

The same goes for RTP. Many providers keep several RTP versions of the same game and let operators choose. The Hacksaw Gaming official page, which lists multiple RTPs side by side for one game, such as 96.38%, 94.55%, 92.33% and 88.42%, is an example. These values are not buy RTPs but per-version RTPs chosen by the operator. Check the exact value in the rules screen of the game you actually open.

The price changes based on your current bet

The buy price is not a fixed amount but a multiplier. If you raise your bet, the price rises by the same ratio. Some games, like Serengeti Kings, change the price based on progress, and others, like White Rabbit, lower the price when certain symbols land.

The max win cap stays the same

Buying a bonus does not change a game’s max win cap. When you hit the cap, the bonus ends on the spot. San Quentin’s official description also states that the bonus ends when total winnings exceed 150,000x. You should also note that the more expensive the buy option, the smaller the max win multiple relative to its price.

Expected value is only a long-run average

A buy RTP of 96.50% is the average when you buy a bonus a great many times. The result of a single bonus can be a fraction of the price or dozens of times the price. You can read more about the meaning and limits of expected value in the wiki’s expected value entry.

Points to Check in the Demo

The safest way to understand bonus buy is a free demo that runs on virtual credits. Here is what is worth checking in a demo.

• How many times the base bet the price shows when you press the buy button
• If there are several buy options, what is different about each
• Whether the base RTP and buy RTP are listed separately on the game’s rules screen
• How much the spin cost goes up when you turn on the ante, and whether the buy button is still there
• How uneven the results of a few bonuses you bought are compared with the price

However, PG Soft games do not support the buy feature in the demo. And just because the demo results were good, there is no reason the real results would be the same. It is best to use the demo only as a tool for understanding the features.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the first bonus buy slot?

The industry often points to White Rabbit, released by Big Time Gaming in October 2017, as the first case. The game let players buy free spins at any time under the name “Feature Drop,” and the idea carried over to Extra Chilli and Book Of Gods the following year.

Is buying a bonus better than regular spins?

If the buy RTP equals the base RTP, the long-run average loss for the same amount wagered is also the same. What changes is that the result is concentrated in a single round. Some games design the buy RTP slightly higher or lower, so check the game’s rules screen.

Why can’t I use bonus buy in the UK?

This is because in a January 2020 notice, the UK Gambling Commission said buy features lead users to stake large amounts and encourage bet increases, and it demanded removal citing technical standards 3A and 14A. Industry reports say the removal requests began in October 2019.

What is the difference between an ante bet and a bonus buy?

Bonus buy means paying a large amount at once to enter the bonus right away. An ante bet means paying roughly 25% more on each spin to raise the chance of triggering the bonus, but it does not guarantee one. Some games, such as those with multi-level antes, now blur the line between the two.

Do more expensive buy options have a higher RTP?

That is often not the case. In Gates of Olympus 2500, all four options from 100x to 1,250x have the same RTP, and in Sugar Rush 1000, the RTP of the 500x buy is actually lower than that of the 100x buy. The pricier options only mean greater variance.

How is the bonus buy price determined?

It is usually set by dividing the average payout of the purchased bonus by the target RTP. For example, if the bonus’s average payout is 96.5x the bet and the target RTP is 96.5%, the price comes to 100x. That is why even the same 100x price means a different bonus content and character from game to game.

Related reads

The story of the company that first created bonus buy is in our Megaways Complete Guide, and the history of the cascading features that often pair with buy features is in our Tumble Complete Guide. To see the original Feature Drop for yourself, open the White Rabbit and Extra Chilli demos. To compare multi-tier buys, try the San Quentin and Gates of Olympus 2500 demos. You can find the full meaning of ante bet in the wiki.

Sources: Big Time Gaming official game pages (White Rabbit, Extra Chilli, Book Of Gods, Bonanza), UK Gambling Commission notice (Games warning for online operators, Jan 17, 2020), RTS 14 and licensing authority guidance, Article 22a of Germany’s 2021 State Treaty on Gambling, Play’n GO press release (Feb 28, 2024), Nolimit City official game pages, NetEnt official game pages, Relax Gaming official pages, Hacksaw official pages, Pragmatic Play demo game server settings, Vegas Slots Online (Oct 7, 2019)