Player services
We charge for each day's busiest moment (your peak concurrent users, or PCCU), then add up all 30 days. A quiet Tuesday costs less than a busy Saturday. Rates step down as a day's peak grows. Private Cloud adds a monthly base price per environment.
Your week and your day
Your weekly pattern sets each day's busiest moment. Your daily pattern sets how many players are online the rest of the day. Server machines and custom logic follow the hour-by-hour pattern; player services only look at each day's busiest moment.
| Daily pattern | Busy hours | Rest of the day | Average |
|---|
| Mostly a few hours each evening | 4 hours | 16% of the busiest level | 30% |
| Spread across the day | 8 hours | 40% of the busiest level | 60% |
| Fairly steady around the clock | 12 hours | 60% of the busiest level | 80% |
Dedicated servers
For every busy and quiet block of each day, we count the players in matches in each region, divide by how many players fit on one machine, and round up to whole machines. Cloud machines are billed by the hour; each region without bare-metal machines keeps one cloud machine running. Bare-metal machines are billed for the whole month and take the steady part of your traffic, with cloud machines covering the peaks. We test every number of bare-metal machines in each region and suggest the cheapest.
Bandwidth is the data your servers send to players: players online × bandwidth per player × hours, converted from kilobits per second to GiB (8 kbps = 1 KB/s), then priced per GiB in each region's published tiers.
Custom logic (Extend)
An app runs at least one copy on one machine all month ($143). More copies start as the work grows, following your daily pattern. You can add up to 3 apps; their copies share machines, packed largest first. Each copy also runs helper processes beside your app, which take part of the machine. The examples start from our load tests of template apps; an app that does more work each time handles fewer requests per copy. Data sent and logs are priced per GB. A database, if you add one, is priced by its average capacity over a 30-day month, reads and writes, and stored data (at least 10 GB for NoSQL and SQL). Messaging is free up to 15 topics, 15 subscribers and 10 million subscriber-events a month.
Assumptions we are working with
- Bandwidth tiers are applied per region. If they apply across your whole account instead, bandwidth would cost the same or less.
- A bare-metal machine hosts as many matches as a cloud machine with the same cores and memory. Confirm with load tests before you commit.
- Unless you choose a machine, we pick the cheapest one that fits your matches and players. Each machine holds back 1 vCPU and 1 GiB for the system, or 1/8 of a smaller machine.
- Every region you add keeps at least one machine running all month, so small regions cost more per player.
- Each bare-metal machine includes free bandwidth each month (NA East 20,002 GB, NA West 20,002 GB, Europe 20,002 GB, Asia SE 2,002 GB), then $0.06 a GB. Cloud-machine bandwidth uses the tiered rates on the AMS pricing page.
- When you enter monthly players, we assume a share of them is online at your busiest moment: competitive multiplayer 2%, co-op with friends 1.5%, extraction or large lobby 2%, turn-based or asynchronous 0.5%, single-player with online features 0.5%, something else 1%, persistent online world 3%. These are typical starting points, not measurements of your game.
- A deployed custom logic app keeps one machine running.
- The three daily patterns are typical shapes, not measurements of your game.
- The model month has 30 days, starting on a Monday, so 8 of them are weekend days.
Not included
Taxes, free trials and credits, negotiated discounts, relay costs for games where players host matches, Extend security assessments, and costs from other services.
Rates
Published rates as of 6 October 2026: player services, dedicated servers and custom logic.
Words we use
Busiest day: your peak concurrent users (PCCU) on that day. Bare-metal machine: a physical server you rent by the month, always on. Cloud machine: a virtual machine (VM) billed by the hour. Custom logic (Extend): code for your own game rules, which we run for you on Extend.
