Bonus Buy Slots in the UK: Why they're gone and what you can play instead

What is a bonus buy slot?

A bonus buy, also called a feature buy or bonus buy-in, is a button that lets you pay a fixed price to trigger a slot's bonus feature instantly (instead of waiting for it to land naturally during normal play).

Normally, a bonus feature, usually free spins, triggers when you land a set number of scatter symbols. That can take hundreds of spins, and sometimes it never happens in a session at all. The bonus buy removes the wait: you click the button, pay the price, and go straight into the feature where the bigger wins usually live.

So on a £1 spin, buying the feature might cost £50 to £100. The appeal is obvious: instant access to the exciting part of the game, and, for some players, the argument that buying 1 feature costs less than grinding hundreds of losing spins to trigger it. The risk is just as obvious, and it's the reason the feature ran into trouble in the UK.

Where it started: The feature is widely traced to Big Time Gaming's White Rabbit Megaways in October 2017, which let players buy directly into the Down the Rabbit Hole Free Spins feature (for 100 x bet). It spread quickly, and titles like Pragmatic Play’s Big Bass Splash and NetEnt’s Dead or Alive 2 helped make buy bonus play hugely popular in markets outside the UK, where it remains common today.

Popular bonus buy slots

These are the titles that made the buy bonus feature famous, largely through streamer clips. You'll almost certainly recognise the names. Every one of them can still be played at UK casino and slot sites, but the buy button is switched off in the UK build, so treat this as a who's-who of the feature's history rather than a list of things you can buy into from Britain.

Whilst games such as Big Bass Splash, Dead or Alive 2 and Sweet Bonanza made Bonus Buy options popular, it was Nolimit City that took Bonus Buy slots to a whole new level.

With San Quentin xWays offering a 2,000 x bet Bonus Buy option, Nolimit City introduced God Mode in November 2023 with the release of Nine to Five. God Mode, according to Nolimit City, is the ultimate bonus buy that is designed to push limits by offering a shortcut to the max win. If you take Brick Snake 2000, there is a God Mode Deluxe option costing 8,360 x your total bet!

Why did the UK ban bonus buy slots?

The UKGC banned bonus buys in October 2021 because they clash with a core principle of UK gambling rules: a game shouldn't push you to spend more than you decided to spend. That principle is written into the Remote Gambling and Software Technical Standards (RTS), the rulebook that dictates how online casino games must be built for the British market.

The specific sticking point is RTS requirement 14A, which says gambling products must not actively encourage customers to chase losses, increase their stake, or keep gambling after they've indicated they want to stop. A button that asks you to pay 50 to 100 x your normal stake in a single click is, almost by definition, encouraging you to increase the amount you gamble. That's what put bonus buys on the wrong side of the line. The reasoning behind the rule comes down to a few connected concerns:

• Impulse spending: a bonus buy lets a player commit a large sum instantly, with none of the natural friction of spinning through it stake by stake.
• Loss chasing: a player down on the session can be tempted to buy their way to a big feature to recover, which is exactly the behaviour the rules are designed to discourage.
• Play intensity: UK regulation has steadily pushed slots toward slower, more considered play. A pay-to-skip button runs against that direction of travel.

It's worth noting the UK treats gambling harm as a public health issue, and the regulator has been explicit that product design itself, not just whether a game is mathematically fair, can drive harmful patterns. Bonus buys sat right at the intersection of the behaviours UK authorities most want to limit.

When did the ban actually happen?

The timeline is a little messier than a single date, and it's worth getting right, because you'll see different years quoted across the web.

From around 2019 to early 2020, the UKGC began notifying game suppliers and aggregators that the feature had to go, warning operators who were still offering it. Some large UK operators had already chosen not to offer buy bonus play.

From October 2021 onward, the position was formalised through wider online slots design changes. UK-licensed sites released localised versions of games with the bonus buy stripped out, and operators had to make sure prohibited mechanics weren't exposed to British customers at all. In its June 2023 assessment, the Commission reaffirmed that these October 2021 game design changes were introduced specifically to strengthen protections on online slots.

So, if you want a clean way to phrase it: the UKGC signalled the end of bonus buys around 2019, and the market change was locked in through the design reforms that took effect on the 31^st of October 2021.

What happens to bonus buy slots at UK casinos?

Here's the part that confuses a lot of players: the games themselves didn't disappear. Only the bonus buy button did.

A slot like White Rabbit Megaways can still be played at UK slot and casino sites. What changes is that the UK build of the game has the bonus buy option deactivated. You can spin it normally and trigger the bonus the traditional way, by landing the scatters, but you won't see an option to purchase the feature. The same title at an overseas casino may still carry the buy button in full.

That difference, the same game existing in 2 versions, is why you'll sometimes see a slot described as a ‘bonus buy slot’ even though UK players can't buy anything in it. The label describes the original design, not what's available to you at a UKGC-licensed site. For reference, bonus buys are available in the free demo slots versions at OLBG.

Playing at non-UK sites to access Bonus Buys

You may find the bonus buy version at sites regulated outside the UK. Playing there means giving up the protections a UKGC licence provides: dispute resolution, GAMSTOP self-exclusion, deposit limits, affordability checks, and the guarantee that the game is independently tested. OLBG only covers UKGC-licensed sites, and I'd strongly steer any UK player away from chasing the feature offshore.

- Chris Taylor, Your Slots Guide 👍

Alternatives: Ante Bets & Bet Boosters

With the buy button gone, studios leaned into a different kind of feature, one that nudges your odds of triggering the bonus feature rather than selling you the bonus outright. You'll see these under a range of names: ante bet, bet booster, bonus bet, double chance, extra bet, or feature bet. They all work on a similar idea.

Instead of paying a large lump sum to jump into the feature, you increase your bet/stake by a smaller, fixed percentage on every spin, and in return the game improves your chance of triggering the bonus feature naturally. A common structure raises your stake by around 50%, roughly doubling the frequency at which free spins land. A few examples of how studios have implemented this:

• Ante Bet: raise your stake (often by 50%) to increase how often the free spins feature triggers. Pragmatic Play's Big Bass slots offer Ante Bet options.
• Bet Booster: add a set percentage (for example 40%) to your stake for a better shot at one of the game's bonus features. Hacksaw Gaming calls their version ‘FeatureSpins’.
• Extra Bet: Blueprint Gaming and others use a similar 25% add-on to lift the trigger chance on the free spins feature.
• X-iter: ELK Studios have X-iter options that allow you to increase your bet to increase your chances of triggering the feature. 
• Bonus Reels: Relax Gaming cleverly introduced a way of diving straight into the feature but with lower max win potential to compensate for the added cost.

Are ante bets just bonus buys in disguise?

This is where I'll be straight with you, because plenty of sites frame ante bets as a neat legal workaround, and that framing does players a disservice.

An ante bet is not the same as a bonus buy. A bonus buy guarantees the feature for a fixed price. An ante bet guarantees nothing: it only shifts the odds, and you pay the extra stake on every single spin whether the bonus feature lands or not. Over a session, that steady premium can add up to more than a one-off buy would have cost, and you might still never trigger the bonus feature. It's a genuinely different mechanic, not a rebrand.

But it isn't a free pass either. An ante bet still increases your stake. The reason these features are permitted where bonus buys aren't comes down to scale and framing rather than a bright legal line, and the regulator has scrutinised design levers of this kind closely.

Some mechanics that leaned too far toward replicating a buy have been reworked or removed from UK versions. So the honest position is: ante bets are available and legal in the UK today, but they are not risk-free, and they are not a clever way of getting a banned feature back.

If you do use an Ante Bet, drop your bet level first

Because the feature raises your cost on every spin, I recommend reducing your bet before switching it on, so the boosted bet amount lands closer to what you'd normally bet, rather than above it. It keeps the extra chance from inflating your spend.

- Chris Taylor, Your Slots Guide 👍

Bonus buys and the bigger picture of UK slots

The bonus buy ban wasn't a one-off. It was an early move in a much broader reshaping of how online slots work in Britain, all pointing in the same direction: slower, lower-intensity, more controlled play. If you play UK slots regularly, you've felt the rest of it:

• A minimum spin speed of 2.5 seconds per spin, so games can't run at a blur.
• Autoplay removed, and turbo, quick-spin and slam-stop features prohibited, so every spin is a deliberate action.
• No misleading win celebrations: sounds and visuals can't present a result as a win when the return is equal to or below your stake.
• Statutory stake limits: a maximum of £5 per spin for players aged 25 and over, and £2 per spin for players aged 18 to 24.

Seen in that context, the disappearance of the buy button makes sense. It was never really about that one feature. It was about a regulator deciding that how a game is built shapes how people behave and building the rules around that idea. More information on UK slot game regulations can be found in my dedicated guide:

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