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Feature buy: what the button actually buys
A feature buy is an option to enter the bonus round straight away. Here is when it became common, how many titles carry it by studio, and what the button does not change — all from catalogue figures.
What the button does
A feature buy (bonus buy, buy spins) lets you pay a set price to start the feature round instead of waiting for scatters to land. The price is usually shown as a multiple of the stake.
What the button buys is entry. The rules inside the round, the symbol set and the win cap — the game's design — stay the same. Some games list a separate RTP for a bought round, so it is worth checking whether the info screen has such a line.
Buy prices are not part of this site's catalogue data. To see one, check the demo's info screen or the button itself.
When it became common
Pragmatic Play lists “Buy Spins” in each game's feature list. Split this site's 729 Pragmatic titles by release year and the shift is clear: none of the 64 titles from 2015–2018, 2 of 28 in 2019, 14 of 49 in 2020, 33 of 65 in 2021 and 51 of 97 in 2022.
From 2023 it is the norm: 95 of 106 in 2023, 102 of 112 in 2024, 92 of 121 in 2025 and 76 of 87 so far in 2026 — 465 of 729 overall.
In the same list, an “Ante Bet” (a slightly larger stake that changes how the feature triggers) appears on 219 titles, 207 of which also have Buy Spins.
How much each studio carries it
Four studios record this per game. Nolimit City has a feature buy on 116 of 138 titles, Pragmatic on 465 of 729, Habanero on 53 of 204 (6 more are marked “unspecified” by the studio) and NetEnt on 53 of 230.
The other studios' catalogues do not carry the field, so this site does not say their games lack a feature buy — only that it is not recorded. Habanero's six “unspecified” titles are left out of the “no” count for the same reason.
It moves with the win cap, but does not cause it
Titles with a feature buy tend to publish higher win caps. By median: Pragmatic 7,260× against 4,000×, NetEnt 5,000× against 1,700×, Nolimit City about 25,000× against 2,241×.
That does not mean the button raises the cap. The cap is fixed in the game's design whether you buy in or not. This data alone cannot separate why the two move together; newer games carrying both more feature buys and higher caps may be part of it.
How to read a win cap is covered in “What a win cap says, and what it does not”.
Terms used here
- Feature buy
- Paying a set price (a multiple of the stake) to start the feature round directly.
- Ante bet
- A slightly larger stake that changes how the feature triggers — a separate option.
- Entry
- What a feature buy purchases. The round's rules and cap stay the same.
- Not recorded
- The catalogue has no such field — not the same as the feature being absent.