- Reels
- Six, each showing 2–7 symbols
- Ways range
- 64 to 117,649 per spin
- Ways formula
- Multiply the six symbol counts
- Engine owner
- Big Time Gaming, licensed out
What the variable-reel engine actually does
A conventional pokie fixes its grid before you arrive — five reels, three rows, a set number of paylines — and a spin only changes which symbols fill those cells. The Megaways engine removes the fixture: each of its six reels is dealt a height as it stops, anywhere from two symbols to seven, so the board's shape is an outcome of the spin rather than a frame around it. Two spins at one stake can show a twelve-cell board and a forty-two-cell wall.
With a variable grid, paylines cannot be drawn in advance, so the engine does not use them. It evaluates every left-to-right path instead: one symbol from reel one, one from reel two and so on across six columns, each distinct combination of positions counting as its own way. The number of paths is the product of the six heights, and that is the ways figure reported on screen for the spin in progress.
Some builds add a horizontal reel above the middle columns, contributing one further symbol to each column it covers. That is a height modifier rather than a seventh reel: a symbol delivered from above joins the column beneath it and takes part in paths as a native symbol does, and it is the usual route to the widest boards.
Two things stay fixed while everything else moves. The stake does not rise when the board opens to thousands of ways or fall when it collapses to a few dozen: a 117,649-way spin costs what a 64-way spin costs. The paytable is equally static, stating the prize for a run of three to six matching symbols as a multiple of total stake regardless of board height. A paying run needs matches on consecutive reels from reel one, normally three at minimum, the longest match paying on each path.
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The ways count, worked through with real numbers
The arithmetic is one multiplication, worth doing because the headline figure is otherwise meaningless. Multiply the six reel heights. All six at the minimum of two gives 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2, which is 64 ways. All six at the maximum of seven gives 117,649 — the number most licensed titles are branded on. Neither end is a typical spin.
The middle is where spins live, and the multiplication is unforgiving. Six reels all at four gives 4,096 ways; all at five, 15,625; all at six, 46,656. A mixed board of three, five, seven, four, six and two gives 3 × 5 = 15, times 7 is 105, times 4 is 420, times 6 is 2,520, times 2 is 5,040. Note what one short column does: that board holds a seven-symbol reel and still returns a twenty-third of the maximum, because a reel showing two symbols halves whatever the other five produce.
A top reel's contribution reads the same way. Six main columns at six symbols each, with a horizontal reel adding one to the four middle columns, gives 6 × 7 × 7 × 7 × 7 × 6 — 86,436 ways from a board whose main reels are nowhere near their ceiling, which is why the outer columns most often cap the figure.
The part that matters more than the ways count: it is not the number of ways you are paid. Winning ways for a symbol are the product of how many positions show it on each consecutive reel of the run — twice on reel one, three times on reel two, once on reel three and absent from reel four gives 2 × 3 × 1 = 6 ways at the three-of-a-kind rate. Take an illustrative paytable figure: if that three pays 0.2 times total stake, six winning ways return 1.2 times stake, identically on a 64-way board and a 117,649-way one.
Who owns the engine and who licenses it
Megaways is a Big Time Gaming invention and trademark, licensed to other developers rather than kept in house. That explains most lobby confusion: the name on a tile may belong to the studio that built the game, the studio that owns the engine, or both, and the two are frequently different companies with different paytable conventions and attitudes to variance.
So the badge describes an engine, not a game. A licensed title inherits the variable heights, the path evaluation and the arithmetic above; it inherits no feature set, hit pattern, cap, stated return or house style, and two titles with the same badge can behave nothing alike. Bonanza Megaways established the format, and its design is one tradition among several rather than a template.
Attribution is readable, in the game's information panel rather than on the lobby tile: that panel names the developer and carries the engine's licensing attribution. Several studios run their own variable-reel engines with names built on the word ways, Nolimit City's xWays family being the clearest case, and six-reel games with large advertised counts and no connection to the licensed engine are common — different machines, which the arithmetic above may not describe.
The dossier behind this page lists the providers each partner carries, and the lists run across the industry: Pragmatic Play, Playson, BGaming, Nolimit City, Hacksaw Gaming, Yggdrasil, Relax Gaming, Playtech, NetEnt and dozens more. What it does not state is which of them has a licensed Megaways title loaded in either lobby on a given day, and this page will not guess. The mechanics sit on the Megaways mechanic page, the licensor on the Big Time Gaming profile.
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Cascades, free spins, variance and the cap
Most licensed builds pair the engine with tumbling reels, which makes a round rather than a spin the unit of play. Winning symbols are removed, those above drop into the gaps, fresh ones fill from the top and the board is evaluated again; because heights change as columns refill, the ways count is recalculated at every step. The tumbling reels page works through the sequencing.
Modifiers sit on top and belong to their title rather than the engine: reel modifiers acting before a spin resolves, symbol upgrades, persistent wilds. Free-spin rounds hold the distinguishing idea, usually a multiplier rising with each cascade that either resets at the next spin or carries through the round. Whether it resets is the clause that most changes how a round behaves.
The ceiling is the honest part of the pitch, and the fixed maths budget behind it is why such an outcome is rare — funded by many spins returning nothing or less than the stake. No return percentage for any title appears here: the same game ships in several configurations, and the integrated one is the version you are playing. The volatility page and the RTP page cover both points.
Win caps matter more here than almost anywhere, because the outcomes a cap truncates are the ones the engine is sold on. A maximum expressed as a multiple of stake stops paying at that multiple whatever the board would have produced, and caps differ between titles and between configurations — see the max win cap page. A short board is not a defective spin either: heights are drawn alongside the symbols, so the counter forecasts nothing.
Figures differ between builds and lobbies. Read the live game's information panel before you rely on any of them.
Play here →Reading a lobby's Megaways filter for real depth
A Megaways filter is a marketing category assembled by the operator, not an index kept by the engine's owner. It can be built from a supplier feed's genre tag, a keyword match, or by hand, and all three produce errors in both directions: licensed titles missing because nobody tagged them, unrelated six-reel games swept in because their names contain the word ways.
Four checks establish what a collection contains. Count studios rather than tiles: two hundred titles from four studios is a narrower catalogue than eighty from twenty. Open three or four titles and read the attribution in each panel. Search the lobby for the word Megaways as well as using the filter, since the two methods return different sets. And cross-check the provider filter, since a licensed title is often easier to find under its builder's name.
Then separate sequels and reskins from distinct games. A long list is often a handful of underlying designs in several costumes — the same engine, feature set and round structure under a different theme. Depth in tiles overstates depth in things that behave differently.
On the partners' own collections the dossier is specific in one case, silent in the other. WinCrown's own page lists Megaways as a named collection alongside Instant, Hold & Win and curated sets — yet while it publishes counts for other categories, 4,712 Bonus Buy titles, 2,010 High Stakes and 2,919 in the jackpot category, it attaches no figure at all to Megaways. For Safe Casino, regional reviews report between 13,000 and 16,000-plus titles — sources disagree, and the dossier records that rather than resolving it — from more than 100 providers, with no Megaways category among those listed and no licensed Megaways build among the titles reviews single out. A catalogue that size plausibly holds some; the dossier does not say so, and neither will this page.
Bonus buys, ante bets and what a slots bonus reaches
Bonus buy and ante-bet options appear on a large share of Megaways titles, and they are purchases rather than shortcuts. A bonus buy pays a stated multiple of stake to enter the free-spin round immediately; an ante bet raises every spin's cost by a stated percentage for a better chance of triggering it. Both are priced inside the same maths model, both often carry a different stated return for that mode, and both raise turnover sharply.
This is the one category where the dossier gives a usable depth figure. WinCrown's own page states 4,712 Bonus Buy titles and 2,010 High Stakes titles — the clearest numerical claim either operator makes about anything a Megaways player would filter on. It is the operator's own number, reported rather than counted here, and covers bonus-buy titles generally rather than licensed Megaways builds.
Where a welcome offer is involved, the contribution table decides whether this play counts at all — and unlike table games, slots usually do. Safe Casino's package, as its published terms were recorded in August 2026 and reported rather than verified here, listed four first deposits at 100% up to €1,000 each, up to €4,000 and up to 1,200 free spins in total with 300 on the first deposit, a minimum deposit usually €10, wagering 40 times the bonus and the free-spin winnings, and slots usually counting 100% while live casino and table games counting 0%. On those stated terms a €100 bonus at 40 times needs €4,000 of qualifying turnover, which slot play generates rather than exhausts.
Two clauses bind hard on this format. The maximum bet while wagering was recorded at €5, which rules out the stakes a bonus buy on a high-variance title invites, and a buy is often treated as a bet of its full purchase price. And the wagering window is the figure the dossier flags as genuinely unsettled — 7 days in some sources, 30 in others. Read the condition shown inside your own account, and check there whether buys are permitted while a requirement is outstanding.
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What the information panel states, and what a demo can teach
Everything this page declines to assert about a specific title is written in that title's own information panel, and the panel is the only authority on the build loaded in front of you. It states the developer's name and the engine's licensing attribution, the stated return for the configuration integrated, the volatility label the studio applies, the maximum win expressed as a multiple of stake, the minimum and maximum stake accepted, and, where the options exist, the bonus-buy price and the ante percentage. Not one of those can be read off a lobby tile, and any of them can differ between two tiles carrying the same badge.
A reading order that answers more than the ways number does: find the attribution first, because it settles whether the arithmetic on this page describes the machine at all; then the cap, because it decides how much of the long tail you are actually being sold; then the bonus-buy price as a multiple of stake, because it converts a button into a cost; then the free-spin clause that says whether the cascade multiplier resets at each spin or carries through the round. Those four take under a minute and sort builds that look identical on a tile.
A demo teaches rhythm rather than maths. Most lobbies will load a licensed build in play-for-fun mode, and a few dozen rounds show things a description cannot: how often a cascade chains, how long the counter sits in the low thousands rather than near its ceiling, how a board collapses to a short column mid-round, how quickly the buy button empties a balance. What a demo cannot do is measure the stated return or the hit rate — a few hundred spins is far too small a sample, and a demo balance carries no risk to calibrate against. The demo play page covers what a practice session is worth, and the RNG and certification page covers why outcomes cannot be read backwards from a short run.
Limits are set before a lobby opens, not after a round disappoints. Budget in rounds rather than spins, since a cascading round takes longer and costs more attention than a single spin, and since a bonus buy charges a stated multiple of stake in one press — a budget framed as a hundred spins can be gone in a dozen presses. Set deposit and loss limits in the cashier and a session reminder while nothing is spinning, and treat the stake you chose then as fixed for the session rather than as an opening bid.
Which of the two partner lobbies suits this reader
Read what follows as a hand-off rather than a verdict, every figure reported by the operators' own pages or by regional reviews rather than measured here, dated where the dossier dates them. For a reader whose interest is the Megaways collection as a labelled category, WinCrown is the one whose own page names it: a new 2026 brand, almost entirely a casino, stating 10,651 games and 113 providers, with about 1,371 live games. There is no sportsbook and no live-betting section; sports appear only inside seasonal promotions.
For breadth across the catalogue, and for sport on the same account, Safe Casino is the wider platform. Launched around 2025 as a pure casino, it is reported by regional reviews at between 13,000 and 16,000-plus titles from more than 100 providers, with a live area of more than 1,000 tables from roughly fourteen studios. It now also carries a sportsbook — prematch markets, boosted odds, an express of the day, Australian rules football and esports among the sports — though the dossier calls it recent and noticeably weaker than a dedicated bookmaker's.
Both run promotion calendars, each described by the operators' own pages or by regional reviews rather than verified here, and only one part of that touches a Megaways reader: whether a promotion counts slot turnover at all, which the contribution table above answers, and what a maximum bet while wagering does to a bonus buy on a high-variance build. Which brand's offers are worth more, and how the two rank against each other, is a Pokies Ledger question and is deliberately left unanswered here.
One caution does carry across from the promotional material, because it governs how any figure on an operator's own page should be read: WinCrown states a welcome headline on its front page while separate deposit cards state different percentages, so the specific card, the currency and the cashier's rules govern rather than the headline. Safe Casino holds a Curaçao licence, and WinCrown is operated by Novatrix SRL in Costa Rica under Tobique Gaming Commission licence №0000002. Neither of those is an Australian authorisation; the ACMA's position is that online casino services cannot lawfully be provided to people in Australia, and nothing above calls either brand safe, better value or certain to pay. Operator rankings and bonus value belong on Pokies Ledger, payments and withdrawals on Pokies Cashout.
What this page did not verify
No return percentage, hit frequency, win cap, bonus-buy price, ante percentage or volatility rating for any Megaways title appears above as a fact about a game you can reach: each is set per build and per integration. What carries across every licensed build is the arithmetic — six heights multiplied together, winning ways counted as the product of matching positions on consecutive reels, and a stake that moves with neither figure.
Nor does this page assert that either operator has a particular Megaways title loaded today, from a particular studio, at a particular stake. The dossier names no Megaways game in either lobby — none of the titles it records, Gates of Olympus 1000, Sweet Bonanza 1000, Book of Dead, Starburst and Big Bass Bonanza 1000, is a licensed Megaways build — its only Megaways reference being WinCrown's own listing of the collection, with no count attached. Where sources disagree, on the title range and on the wagering window, the disagreement is stated rather than settled.
Nothing above is a strategy or a claim about winning. The engine takes no input beyond the stake and the spin: ways counts are drawn rather than earned, cascades cannot be extended, multiplier ladders reset or carry by a rule fixed in advance, and no staking plan alters what a build costs per unit turned over.
The levers a reader holds are the stake, the number of rounds, whether the bonus-buy button gets pressed, and which build is open. Decide the first two before a title loads, keep both clear of money needed for anything else, and let the panel in front of you override anything written here. Sponsored links on this page can earn the publisher a commission, which changes none of the arithmetic. If chasing the last round has become the reason for starting the next one, close the lobby and open the support guide instead.
Questions people actually ask
Where can I play Megaways pokies from Australia?
Licensed Megaways titles reach Australian screens from offshore lobbies only. The ACMA's position is that online casino services cannot lawfully be provided to people in Australia, so any lobby you reach from here is licensed elsewhere — Safe Casino in Curaçao, WinCrown under Tobique Gaming Commission licence №0000002 in Costa Rica — and neither holds Australian authorisation. WinCrown's own page lists Megaways as one of its collections; the dossier behind this page names no specific Megaways title in either lobby, so check the lobby itself.
How does Megaways get to 117,649 ways?
Six reels each stop showing between two and seven symbols, and the ways available are the product of those six heights. All six at seven gives 7 × 7 × 7 × 7 × 7 × 7, which is 117,649. All six at two gives 64. A mixed board of three, five, seven, four, six and two symbols gives 5,040, so a single short column costs more than a tall one gains — and the stake is identical in every case.
Does a bigger ways count mean a bigger win?
Not on its own. The ways count describes how many left-to-right paths the board contains, while a payout is based on winning ways only — the product of how many positions show your matching symbol on each consecutive reel. A symbol appearing twice, three times and once across reels one to three gives 2 × 3 × 1 = 6 winning ways, and those six pay the same whether the board reported 64 ways or 117,649.
Which studios make Megaways games?
Megaways is Big Time Gaming's engine and trademark, and the studio licenses it to other developers, so licensed titles are built by a range of companies and carry the engine's attribution in their information panel. That panel is the only reliable way to confirm a title is a licensed build rather than a different variable-reel engine with a similar name — Nolimit City's xWays family being the common source of confusion. This page does not assert which licensees either partner operator has integrated.
Is a lobby's Megaways filter a reliable list?
Treat it as the operator's claim rather than an index. Collections are assembled from supplier tags, keyword matches or by hand, so licensed titles go missing and unrelated six-reel games get swept in. Count studios rather than tiles, read the attribution in three or four information panels, search the lobby by name as well as using the filter, and check the provider filter separately, since reskins of one design inflate a tile count without adding anything that behaves differently.
Are Megaways pokies high volatility?
Most licensed builds are designed around a long tail, and a fixed maths budget means a high ceiling has to be funded by many spins returning nothing or less than the stake. Labels vary by title and by configuration, and no rating or return percentage is quoted here because the same game ships in several versions and the integrated one is the one that applies. The stated return and the volatility label are both in the title's information panel.
Does a maximum win cap matter on Megaways titles?
More than on most formats, because the outcomes a cap truncates are the ones the engine is marketed on. A cap expressed as a multiple of stake stops paying at that multiple regardless of what the board and multiplier ladder would otherwise have produced, and in a high-variance model a meaningful share of theoretical return can sit near it. Caps differ between titles and sometimes between configurations of the same title, and the rules panel states the one that applies.
Can I clear a welcome bonus playing Megaways?
Slots generally contribute where table games do not. Safe Casino's package recorded in August 2026 lists wagering at 40 times the bonus and free-spin winnings, with slots usually counting 100% and live casino and table games 0%, so a €100 bonus needs €4,000 of qualifying turnover that slot play does generate. A €5 maximum bet while wagering binds hard on bonus buys, and sources disagree on whether the window is 7 or 30 days — read the condition shown inside your own account.
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