How bonus buys work
In most online pokies, you spin until enough scatter symbols land to trigger the bonus round, usually free spins. In a game with a feature buy, a button lets you pay a set price to skip that wait. The price is shown as a multiple of your current stake, and the round that follows is random like any other.
Some games offer more than one buy: a standard bonus, an enhanced version with better features at a higher price, or a "bonus boost" that raises the chance of triggering naturally for a higher stake per spin. The exact options are listed in each game's help screen.
Example: what a buy really costs
Imagine a game where the buy costs 100 times the stake. At a A$1 stake, one buy costs A$100. The bonus round might return A$20 or A$400; you cannot know. Five buys is A$500 gone in a few minutes, where the same A$500 at A$1 per spin would be 500 spins. The expected return over many buys is set by the game's RTP for the feature, so buying does not change the house edge; it only changes how fast and how hard the swings hit.