The Best Slot Sites in the UK in 2024 – Play Casino Slots Online

Magic Red – Daily Spins Frenzy

Each day at Magic Red, you will receive a new Daily Spin Frenzy challenge. The challenge runs every day from midnight, and you need to wager (not spend) £100 in order to get 10 free spins. Wagering £500 will see you gain 25 freebies and £1,000 will secure the maximum of 50 free spins. Once received, you must use your free spins within 24 hours and free spins winnings must be wagered 35 times over before you can cash them out.

All British Casino – Marvellous Midweek

We all get the midweek miseries … well, you can blow some of them away if you are a member of the All British Casino. Watch your casino inbox between Tuesday and Thursday to see if a tasty bonus titbit lands in there. The All British Casino regularly hands out super deals for its eligible members, such as 40 bonus spins on Rainbow Riches Megaways. Of course, it’s not all just the All British Casino being nice, as you have make a deposit during the week of at least £10 or more to get your midweek mystery promotion.

Winomania – Spinomania

You can really step up your slots game with Winomania’s Spinomania. You can earn extra freebie slotting spins every day by simply making a deposit. The number of bonus spins you acquire depends upon the size of your deposit, up to a maximum of 200 bonus spins. All you really need to do is check out the site’s promotions page for the daily bonus code and make sure you apply it when you make your deposit. If all goes well, a number of bonus spins will then appear in your Winomania casino account.

Video Slots

Video slots were invented in the US in the late 1970s. Following the success of arcade games such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man, casino industry experts Fortune Coin Co. invented a slot where the usual mechanics were replaced by electronics and a video screen. Instead of the usual three reels and a single winning pay line, video slots had five reels, three rows and multiple pay lines.

Before long, wilds, scatters and bonus games were added to slots to make them more interesting. Most online video slots are based on this set-up, but each slot has its own set of rules, symbols, pay lines and bonus features to try and make them uniquely interesting and entertaining in order to get people to play them.

Pub Fruities

People in the UK of a certain vintage will remember slots – or ‘one-armed bandits’ as they are known – in seaside amusement arcades and pubs. Simpler than video slots, a ‘pub fruity’ or classic slot has three reels and a single pay line. They may have features such as holds and nudges to increase a player’s chances of winning.

The symbols of such slots are often fruits such as cherries, melons, lemons and strawberries, hence the name ‘fruit machine’ or ‘pub fruity’. Such slots can be played online too, although they are not as popular as video slots.

Note: In Australia, playing card symbols were used on such machines, and the aim was to achieve a decent three-card poker hand on the winning pay line. These machines were known as ‘poker machines’ or ‘pokies’ for short, which is why down under slots are more commonly known as pokies.

Cascading Slots

These slots, which can also be called ‘avalanche slots’, all have a distinctive feature. After a spin, any symbol that forms part of a winning line is removed from the playing grid, with fresh symbols ‘cascading’ down from above to fill in the gaps. This can then trigger fresh wins, and so on, until a cascade triggers no winning combinations. Cascading wins may also increase a multiplier so the overall value of a win is doubled, trebled and so on until the cascading wins cease.

NetEnt’s ‘Gonzo’s Quest’ was the first to feature cascading symbols. Released in 2011, this slot changed the face of slots forever, as prior to that, online slots were just copies of existing video slots. NetEnt was the first online slots company to truly embrace the potential of online slots away from the real-world video slots they evolved from.

Cluster Slots

Cluster slots work differently from any other kind of slots. They feature large playing arenas with upwards of sixty-four symbols. Instead of achieving pay lines, the aim when playing a cluster slot is to land a cluster of identical symbols that touch each other vertically or horizontally (but not diagonally). There will be a minimum limit on the size of a cluster that generates a payout, and the bigger the cluster, the bigger your prize will be.

Typically, cluster slots act as cascading slots, too. All symbols that form part of a qualifying cluster vamoose from the playing grid, and new symbols pop up to replace them and possibly trigger further wins.

Feature Trail Slots

One typical mechanic of video slots is the feature trail. To qualify for a feature trail side game, players usually have to land a specified selection and number of qualifying symbols. Once the feature has been triggered, the reels are pushed aside, and the feature trail is displayed.

You can think of a feature trail as a simple board game. A dice may be thrown, or a spinner spun to determine how far along the trail you can progress. The dice or spinner will also have a resolution that ends your progress should you be unlucky to land it.

The trail is likely to be filled with bonuses such as free spins and cash payouts. Naturally, the further the progression you achieve, the better the benefits rewarded to you.

Megaways Slots

The Megaways concept was created by Big Time Gaming and applied to one of their own slots, Bonanza. The number of reels was increased from five to six, and each reel, upon landing, could have between two and seven symbols. The slot was also ‘all ways pay’, so any winning combination of successive symbols triggered a payout, no matter the position they landed upon each reel. As a result, a Megaways slot was capable of generating an amazing 117,640 potential pay lines.

Bonanza Megaways proved to be so successful that BTG applied it to its other games. Other companies noticed the popularity of Megaways and approached BTG to apply the concept to their own slots—which BTG agreed to for a leasing fee. These days, there are well over 200 Megaways slots for slotting fans to take for a spin.

Cinematic Slots

Even non-slots players know how a slot, fruit machine or one-armed bandit looks. It has reels, flashing lights, bells and whistles and a lever or (more likely) a button you press to set the reels in motion and other buttons to use when features are triggered. A larger percentage of online slots are built in exactly the same fashion – online, they look and act as if they are real-world slots.

Many slots companies have taken slots to the next level though, making their slots truly unique experiences in terms of how they look and operate. These kinds of slots cannot be aped by real-world slots. The aforementioned Gonzo’s quest was the first cinematic slot that had a pre-game animation and other animations, the type of which were ground-breaking.

Sadly, due to licence issues, Betsoft, the king of cinematic slots, does not offer its slots to UK players. However, other providers with excellent cinematic slots include NetEnt, Playtech, Play’n GO, Microgaming, and Pragmatic Play.

Progressive Jackpot Slots

The concept of progressive jackpot slots was first created in Vegas in the late 1970s. A series of identical concept slots were linked together by radio across different casinos. A small percentage of each play’s fee per spin was held and contributed to an ever-rising (or progressive) jackpot. A then rare combination of winning symbols at any linked slot at any casino would trigger the award of the jackpot which by then could have risen to over one million dollars.

Curiously, the US government made it law that any progressive slot jackpot must pay out at least one before the jackpot be decommissioned. This led to a Las Vegas slot named ‘Lion’s Share’ finally paying out in 2014 after over two decades of accumulating its progressive jackpot of $2.4 million. After the payout, the slot was swiftly decommissioned.

Progressive jackpot slots now exist online, too, linked across multiple online casinos by the internet. Some slots have their own jackpot, while others share their jackpot with other slots made by the same software provider. The current progressive jackpot slots record stands at £42 million won in December 2023 by a player on one of the slots in Microgaming’s WowPot range.

NetEnt

For a decade, NetEnt were kings of the slotting empire. From the slots-shattering brilliance of Gonzo’s Quest and the thrilling Starburst, the release of NetEnt’s next slot was always keenly anticipated. Sadly, though, they ran out of ideas around 2021 and began re-skinning their old slots, much to their fans’ dismay. Classic NetEnt titles are still very much worth playing, though.

Best slots: Gonzo’s Quest, Starburst, Finn’s Swirly Spin, Dazzle Me.

Microgaming

If slots were fine wines, then Microgaming would be the vineyard producing the most vintage ones. Microgaming began life (way back in 1994) as an online casino but swiftly found they could make more money leasing their games to other providers. Microgaming are the kings of progressing jackpot slots such as Mega Moolah and Major Millions, and they have made many people millionaires. Despite all this, Microgaming seem now to be taking a back seat when it comes to slots, having sold their slots platform Quickfire to Games Galore. There are still plenty of Microgaming classics for you to enjoy, though.

Best slots: Immortal Romance, Mega Moolah, Thunderstruck II, Games of Thrones.

Playtech

Microgaming may be the granddaddy of slots, but Playtech can claim to be the grandmomma of all slots. Created in 1999, Playtech are casino all-rounders creating slots, casino games, and even running live casino studios. They are famed for franchise-based slots series such as Age of the Gods and Kingdoms Rise. They also pioneered the ‘buy feature’ option, giving the players the chance to buy a feature in one game and use it on another. Unfortunately, the UKGC didn’t like the idea of allowing players the opportunity of spending money just to trigger free spins and banned the concept from UKGC-licensed casinos in the United Kingdom.

Best slots: Buffalo Blitz, Age of the Gods (series), Kingdoms Rise (series), Frankie Dettori’s Magic Seven.

Pragmatic Play

Nearly all of Pragmatic Play’s slots come with an added benefit – ‘Drops and Wins’. If you are playing any Pragmatic Play slot at any online casino, there’s a chance you’ll win a random cash prize. There are over 1,000 random drops every day, with the biggest prize being 2,500 times the value of your stake. Pragmatic Play are the kings of live casino play (apart from live casino-only Evolution), but they have provided many classic slots, too.

Best slots: Wolf Gold, Big Bass Bonanza, Wild Wild Riches, Gates of Olympus.

Play’n GO

This Swedish-based company caused a stir in 2020 when they vowed to release one slot per week every week of that year. Despite that being the infamous COVID year, Play’n GO were almost true to their word (they released 50) and managed to release countless new classics. For a while, Play’n GO snatched the crown of ‘top slots provider’ from rivals NetEnt, and they still top most slots players lists when it comes to spinning the reels. They are also responsible for introducing the world to slots archaeologist Rich Wilde and his daughter Kat.

Best slots: Rich Wilde & the Book of Dead, Genix 2, Reactoonz, Reactoonz 2.

Big Time Gaming

If you have been paying attention then you may recall we have mentioned Big Time Gaming previously, as the creator of the ‘Megaways’ concept. It was a superbly innovative idea that has generated ‘mega moolah’ for BTG ever since. It propelled a previously unheralded software company right to the front of the slotting world, and they have remained there. While their best slots sites titles are undoubtedly Megaways slots, BTG have also created many other great titles, funded no doubt in a mega way by their Megaways success.

Best slots: Millionaire Rush, Star Clusters Megapays, Wheel of Fortunes Megaways, Vikings Unleashed.

Blueprint Gaming

Real-world slots have been forced to jump ahead to keep up with the online slotting world. Many slots now come in a single cabinet, with options to play any video slot from all the slots that are available. In the UK, the biggest company to do this is Blueprint Gaming and you can play their top slots in the comfort of your own home, out and about via mobile or at your local pub, arcade or bookie. Blueprint are part of Merkur who do the same thing around Germany and other European nations.

Top Slots: Eye of Horus, The Goonies, Fishin’ Frenzy, Top Cat: Most Wanted