What is Volatility in Slot games?

You probably already saw Volatility scales or icons on slot games in some casinos. Something like this

And you most likely wondered “What is Volatility in Slots games?”

We are here to answer that for you and to help to choose when to play high volatility games and when to play low volatility games.

Definition of Volatility
We won’t use some heavy terms to define volatility. Let’s put it plain and simple. Volatility can be thought of as a risk. Think of it like this…How risky it is to play a certain slot. Higher volatility in slot games means that you will have fewer winnings, but you will have big payouts!

The perfect example of a game with high volatility would be the Book of Dead developed by Play N’go or Monkey warrior developed by Novomatic.

We absolutely LOVE both of these games because they don’t pay often, but when they do, payouts are HUGE! Both of these games can be played at casino.com. One of our favorite casinos!

monkey warrior slot
Monkey warrior intro screen


Low volatility games will bring winnings more often. You can expect a win in every 4th or 5th spin! These wins, however, will be small ones and you will need a lot of luck to score big on low volatility games.

When to play high volatility slots and when to play low volatily slots?
You should play high volatility slots when you have a lot of time on your hands and you want to score big. Like really big! Needless to say, you will need to have some money that you are ready to spend as well.

From our experience, it can take 3-4 hours in front of the screen or a slot machine before that big payout spin comes. So the key is to be patient. The big score will come, that is guaranteed!

When it comes to low volatility games, we play those when we just want to chill and have some good old fun with slots.

Low volatility games will give you just about enough to keep on playing. Of course, in some cases, you will score big wins on these slots as well, but at that point, it will be mostly because of the lucky star you were born under!

How to recognize high volatility slot games?
Unfortunately, the majority of casinos and game designers aren’t too eager to give out the information about the volatility of their games. So how to actually recognize high volatility game?

First of all, slots that are having progressive jackpots are almost certainly highly volatile ones. The second sign of a highly volatile game would be big payouts in a paytable or more then three scatters needed to activate free games. Third, and in all honesty, the most important way to find out if the game is highly volatile is the simple playing of the game!

No, we are not suggesting that you should waste your money trying out games. We are simply suggesting that you test certain slot games in demo/free mode before you play for real money. That way you will already know the patterns and “behaving” of the game before you play for real money.

So to summarize! Play high volatility games when you have a lot of time and money to spend. Play low volatility games when you want to relax and have some fun.

We hope you learned something from this article and that you will be able to choose your games more precisely. Good luck and let us know about your big winnings!