Photon Fusion Pricing 2026: CCU Costs, Free Tier & Real Monthly Cost
Photon Fusion costs $0 for one launch app up to 100 CCU, then $125/month for 500 CCU, $250 for 1,000, and $500 for 2,000. See included traffic, overage rates, Premium Cloud pricing, and the dedicated compute Photon does not include.
The answer: Photon Fusion's public-cloud game plan is free for one app up to 100 concurrent users. The paid steps are $125/month at 500 CCU, $250 at 1,000 CCU, and $500 at 2,000 CCU. Those prices include Photon Cloud networking and a traffic allowance. They do not include the machines that run your authoritative Unity server build.
That last distinction is why two studios can choose the same Photon plan and report very different monthly costs. Photon charges for concurrent connections and traffic. If you use Fusion Host Mode, a player's machine runs the simulation. If you use Server Mode, you also pay a compute provider for the headless game-server fleet.
Photon Fusion pricing table
| Plan | Photon fee | Traffic included | Dedicated compute | Illustrative total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Development, 20 CCU | $0 | 60 GB/month | Local or test VM | $0-$40/month |
| Launch, 100 CCU | $0 for one app | 0.3 TB/month | Not included | $20-$80/month |
| 500 CCU | $125/month | 1.5 TB/month | Not included | $205-$425/month |
| 1,000 CCU | $250/month | 3 TB/month | Not included | $410-$850/month |
| 2,000 CCU | $500/month | 6 TB/month | Not included | $800-$1,700/month |
The total column is a planning range, not a Photon quote. It assumes a modest authoritative fleet on commodity compute and no traffic overage. Physics load, tick rate, players per process, regions, redundancy, and idle capacity can move compute far outside the range. If you use Host Mode and rent no servers, the Photon fee can be the whole networking bill.
What the free tier includes
The launch tier covers one game app, 100 simultaneous connected users, and 0.3 TB of traffic per month. Photon describes it as suitable for roughly 40,000 MAU, but MAU is not the billing unit: CCU is. A game with sharp launch peaks can outgrow 100 CCU even when its monthly audience is comparatively small.
Photon also lists a development-only 20 CCU plan with 60 GB of monthly traffic. Use that for internal development, not as the production plan hidden behind a small audience.
Traffic overage and burst pricing
The 500, 1,000, and 2,000 CCU public-cloud plans include CCU burst and 3 GB of monthly traffic per contracted CCU. Additional traffic is currently $0.05/GB in Europe, Eastern Canada, Russia, and the US regions listed by Photon, and $0.10/GB in the other listed regions. Check the official calculator before launch because region mix and state-sync frequency matter.
Premium Cloud starts at $1,000/month
Photon Premium Cloud is usage-based at $0.50 per CCU with a $1,000 monthly minimum. That minimum includes 2,000 CCU and 6 TB of traffic; the service can scale up to 50,000 CCU before enterprise arrangements. This is a networking/operations plan, not a dedicated Unity compute bundle.
The cost Photon does not include
Fusion can connect clients through Photon Cloud while your own Linux headless builds hold state authority. You still need to build, deploy, place, monitor, and scale those processes. Budget for:
- CPU and memory for each active game-server process;
- idle or warm capacity so matchmaking does not wait for boot;
- multiple regions and failure headroom;
- logs, crash dumps, build distribution, and orchestration;
- a persistent backend for accounts, progression, inventory, and match results.
The implementation path is covered separately in Photon Fusion dedicated-server architecture. Keeping the pricing and architecture intents separate lets this page answer the bill first and the implementation guide stay technical.
How to estimate your real monthly cost
- Measure peak CCU, not registered users or average DAU.
- Choose the smallest Photon tier above the peak and model burst behavior.
- Load-test one headless process to find players per core and memory per match.
- Multiply active processes by regional headroom and compute-hour prices.
- Add Photon traffic overage, compute egress, observability, and the persistent backend.
Bottom line
For a small game, Photon Fusion can genuinely cost $0 for networking. At 500 CCU, the public Photon line item is $125/month; at 2,000 CCU it is $500/month. For an authoritative game, your real total is that fee plus the server fleet and backend. Price those three layers separately before deciding whether Photon is cheap or expensive for your game.
Sources
Technical, pricing, and product claims were checked against these primary sources on the verification date above.