How Much Money Should You Put in a Slot Machine? (Hourly Losses)

Wondering how much money you should put in a slot machine?

The answer depends on a lot of factors.

In this post, I’ll discuss slot machines and budgeting. The focus of this post is on helping gamblers decide how much to spend playing slot machines.

If you’re heading to your nearest casino to play slot machines, read this post first to help you budget your gambling. It’s a whole different ball game from budgeting the money to buy or build your own casino, I promise.

How Much Do Slot Machines Cost?

I’ll answer the question, but I want to point out a flaw in it first.

Asking how much a slot machine costs is a lot like asking how much a bottle of wine costs.

Some bottles of wine are mass-produced and affordable. I can get a decent bottle of budget-friendly cabernet sauvignon for $10 at my local wine shop. Other bottles are rare, precious, or mega-popular and demand a much-higher price. That same wine shop will sell me a bottle of 2013 Dana Estates Lotus for $650.

Slot machines come in as many varieties as you can imagine. Some games have video screens, others use mechanical reels. Some slot games are based on popular movies and TV shows, like the Wheel of Fortune series of slot machines.

But the biggest difference between different slots games?

Their denominations.

A slot’s denomination refers to the cost of a single credit. Penny slots cost $0.01 per credit. Nickel slots cost $0.05 per credit. Quarter slots cost $0.25 per credit. And on and on.

Does that mean dollar slots are better than penny slots?

Not necessarily. More on that later.

Complicating things further, a slot’s denomination doesn’t give you its total cost. That penny slot that costs $0.01 per credit may allow you to bet hundreds of credits per spin. A $1 slot is likely to have a maximum bet of four or five credits per spin.

Not only do you need to know a slot’s denomination, but you also need to know how many credits per spin you’ll be playing.

Once you know those two things, you’re ready to think about how much a slot machine costs to play.

Should You Always Bet the Maximum Number of Credits?

Betting the maximum number of credits on a slot machine is known as placing a max bet, or “betting max.”

Generally, the more credits you bet, the better your chances are of winning more money. This is reflected in a slot machine’s pay table. A pay table is a list that explains the payouts for various winning combinations.

Slot players who bet the maximum number of credits per spin do so because it gives them the best possible rewards for spinning winning combos.

Why wouldn’t you want to “bet max” on every spin?

For starters, it can get really expensive.

Modern penny slots have max bets in the hundreds of credits. That means per-spin bets of $3 and $4, a far cry from the giant $0.01 sign hanging over the penny slot section. At 600 spins per hour, you could easily bet $2,400 an hour on that penny slot.

Players on a tight gambling budget may choose not to bet the max so their bankroll extends a little further. Sure, the payouts are lower, but in theory they’ll get more entertainment value by betting less than the max amount per spin.

Deciding How Much Money to Spend on Slots

Clearly, a lot goes into deciding how much money to put in a slot machine. Picking a slot denomination involves a little bit of math and lot of personal experience. But deciding exactly how much money to spend on slots involves taking a few more steps.

We have a few more things to think about before we can set a slot machine gambling budget.

Think about your goals for your time playing slots.

Some people play slots to win jackpots. Other people play slots to kill time and have fun.

These two types of slots players will probably require different financial considerations.

Playing slots purely for entertainment most likely requires a smaller bankroll than playing to win. That’s because it doesn’t matter as much how much you bet per spin. If winning isn’t part of your goal, you can play a penny slot at one credit per spin for hours and hours on very little money.

If your goal is to win as much money as possible, you’ll need a larger bankroll and a lot more patience. That’s because you’ll need to keep yourself playing at a maximum bet as long as your money lasts.

Setting your goal will help you pick a denomination and type of machine to play as well. If you’re in it to win big money, you’ll probably want to chase progressive jackpot machines. These are good machines to avoid for the budget-conscious, as they have worse odds than games with fixed jackpots.

Think about slot volatility, RTP, and other slot statistics.

This category can be tricky.

When I talk about things like “slot volatility” and “RTP,” I’m using jargon that not everybody is familiar with.

These slot statistics can be useful tools in helping you pick games, but they’re also soft.

Slot machine manufacturers sometimes tell you a given machine’s return to player or RTP. This is a number indicating how much of the money you bet on a game is likely to come back as a payout.

Sounds good, right?

Unfortunately, you can’t really trust what you read online. That’s because casinos have games designed on spec. That 96.5% RTP game may actually be set to 94.5% or 98.5% and you have no way of knowing.

Casinos are understandably shy about sharing specific RTP figures for their slot games. No law in America requires casinos to post or share this specific information with the public.

But we can use what we do know to help us make good decisions about how much to spend on a slot.

If you’re gambling in Las Vegas, for example, you can go to the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s website and find information on average RTP for different slot denominations.

For the month of June 2022, for example, the best odds slots in Las Vegas were nickel slots with an average RTP of 94.84%. That’s more than 2% better than the average slot machine in all of Vegas for that month.

My advice is you do your research before you go out to gamble. If you’re playing in a jurisdiction that reports statistics like the ones from Vegas I just shared, use that information to help you decide how much to put in a slot and which slot to play.

Think about how much a slot will cost you to play per hour.

This is a big part of my decision about how much to spend on slots.

If I’m gambling in Vegas, and I know that those nickel slots give me the best edge against the house on average, then I would try to sit down and calculate how much my favorite nickel slots cost me to play per hour.

Here’s how I’d do it:

First, I’d keep that 94.84% figure in mind. That’s my average RTP on all the nickel slot games I play.

Next, I’d write down how many credits I’d need to bet to “max bet” my favorite nickel slots.

For example, if I want to play the Tabasco slot machine at $0.05 per credit, I know I’m spending $0.60 per spin. That’s because a max bet on Tabasco is 12 lines. If I figure 600 spins per hour, my total outlay is $360 hourly. If I get a 94.84% return, I’m looking at winnings of $341.42.

That means placing a max bet on the Tabasco slot machine at $0.05 per credit should cost me around $18.58 per hour.

Here’s another example:

Penny slots in Vegas had an average RTP of 90.05% this past month. If I play Buffalo Grand at the max bet of $4 per spin, I’m looking at $2,400 in bets over the course of an hour. My return on that should be around $2,161.20.

That means an hour of chasing a Buffalo Grand progressive payout costs me around $238.80 per hour.

Conclusion: How Much Money Should You Put in a Slot Machine?

At this point, you have everything you need to make a successful slot budget.

Understanding your bankroll, the volatility of the games you want to play, and your goals for playing helps keep you on track.

If nothing else, knowing how much to put in a slot machine can prevent you from making bad financial decisions while gambling.