Love your slot machines? Well, you’ve got plenty of choices online. There are thousands and thousands of slot machines to choose from. When you’re browsing for slot machines, you’ll likely stumble across both free and real-money slots. But what is the difference between the two? Let’s take a look!
The obvious difference
The main difference between free slots and real-money slots is obvious. With free slots, you can’t win anything. Well, you can, but it’ll be nothing but numbers on a screen. Real-money slots will, of course, potentially win you real-money prizes.
Of course, the potential to win real money will come at a price. You need to put some money on the line. Sure, some online slots can be played for no more than a couple of pennies, but there is still a risk with every single spin. This means that you could potentially lose money, and honestly, people do lose money with real-money slots. Not everybody can be a winner, after all.
On the other hand, if you play free slots online, you don’t need to spend a penny to play. However, you also won’t be winning any money. Anything you do win will just be a number on the screen. That number will be virtually valueless too. This is because most of the free play slots that you find online will give you a good number of credits to play the games anyway. Most people will play free play slots as a way to check out an online slot before they put some cash on it. It is a great way to figure out how a particular slot machine works (and there are some with complicated features) before you commit yourself to playing.
The main similarity
For the most part, a version of a real-money slot machine will be the same as a free version of the slot machine. This means that there’ll be the same Return to Player (RTP), the same chance of winning, the same features etc. This is because most of the free-play slot machines are designed to be a demo of the real thing, so they need to be as close as possible to the real slot machine.
However, at this point, it is worth pointing out that while they may offer the same game, how you access them will be slightly different.
When there is money on the line with a real-money slot machine, you’ll need to create an account with an online casino. There is no way around this. It satisfies licensing requirements and it provides a way for the online casino to check how old you are (remember, in the UK, you can’t gamble if you’re under the age of 18).
If you gamble on a free-play slot machine, then you likely won’t need to create an account. This isn’t always going to be the case, though. There are still some online casinos that will hide them behind an account wall, but this is very rare. We’ll talk more about how you can access the games a little bit later on.
The game selection
Not all slot machines will be available as a free-play variant. Although, honestly, this is going to be incredibly rare. All of the big developers release free-play variants of their games as demos, and if you can’t find them at your chosen online casino, then you’ll be able to find them on the game developer’s website.
So, 99% of the time, most of the games that you want to play will be available as a free-play variant. However, we cannot guarantee it. The only way you can guarantee that you can play your favourite slot machine is if you pay to play it.
Where you play
Most online casinos will offer some free play slot machines on their site, but for obvious reasons, they may limit how much you can play on them. This is because the whole goal of an online casino is to make money. They don’t want people to play their games for free, right? In fact, very few businesses ever give anything away for free to customers. Of course, there are still some online casinos that do offer a ton of free play games, so it is worth checking out.
Alternatively, you can head to a game developer’s website, and 90% of the time, they’ll have free-play demos of their games available.
The thrill
Do bear in mind that some people may not enjoy playing the free slot machines as much. This is because many people play slot machines for the thrill of winning money, and since free slot machines essentially give you an unlimited number of credits to play about with, it isn’t always worth it. Still, if you’re not too fussed about wanting money and just want to test out some cool slot machines, it is always fun to play those demo games.
Final thoughts
So, there you have it. The main difference between free and real-money slot machines is whether you can win money or not. It is as simple as that. In almost all cases, everything else about the games will be the same.
