PlayFab vs Crux (2026): Pricing Models and Features Compared

The phrase “PlayFab free tier” now refers to different things, which is why pricing summaries conflict. Foundation Mode is tied to the Xbox publishing ecosystem and blocks excluded APIs. Development Mode is a limited evaluation mode. Paid live-title plans meter services such as events, profile operations, statistics, storage, Party, and Multiplayer Servers. Choose the row that matches your title before estimating a bill.

PlayFab plan pricing in 2026

Mode or plan	Base price	Who it is for	Important limit
Foundation Mode	$0 for included services	Eligible studios shipping or planning to ship on Xbox	Preview eligibility; excluded services are blocked
Development Mode	$0	Evaluation and development	Up to 1,000 lifetime player accounts per title; up to 10 development titles
Pay-as-you-go	$0 monthly minimum	Live titles that want usage billing	Pay per service meter
Standard	$99/month	Live titles needing included usage and support tickets	Included meters valued at $400, then pay-as-you-go
Premium	$1,999/month	Larger titles needing a bigger meter bundle and emergency escalations	Included meters valued at $8,000, then pay-as-you-go
Enterprise	Starts at $10,000/month	Custom commercial and support requirements	Contact Microsoft

Foundation Mode: free, but not a generic free tier

Foundation Mode is available to developers who register a studio, ship or plan to ship on Xbox, and link the PlayFab account to the relevant Partner Center studio and product. During the documented preview it is for new PlayFab titles; Microsoft documents an existing-title migration path separately.

Included services cover identity, title data and communications, Azure Functions invocation, system-generated telemetry and reports, Lobby, Matchmaking, Party networking, friends, groups, bans, modern leaderboards/statistics, profiles, game saves, catalog, and inventory. Microsoft says the included services have no monthly usage caps, although API rate limits still apply.

Not everything is included. Foundation Mode blocks PlayFab Multiplayer Servers, UGC, classic CloudScript, Segmentation, Experimentation, Churn Prediction, CDN, custom telemetry ingestion, Event Archive, Rules/Actions/Webhooks, and several legacy APIs. Azure Functions compute is billed separately through Azure.

Development Mode vs the old “100K players free” headline

Microsoft's current plan table says Development Mode supports up to 1,000 lifetime players per title. The same pricing page also carries a broad “$0/month before your title passes 100K players” marketing line, but that is not the Development Mode account limit. Do not treat 100K as a blanket entitlement: check the specific service meters and the mode selected for the title.

What pay-as-you-go meters

PlayFab's bill is the sum of the services a title uses. Examples on the official rate card include PlayStream and telemetry events, profile reads/writes/storage, statistics operations, data egress, Party traffic and voice, and Multiplayer Servers compute and egress. Payload-size blocks and regional egress make call count alone an incomplete estimate.

Standard and Premium are not unlimited flat plans. They add a monthly base charge, included usage bundles, and different support access; usage beyond the included meters is still billed. Current customers should use the Billing Summary's month-to-date estimate and downloadable CSV instead of reconstructing an invoice from MAU.

PlayFab Multiplayer Servers cost

Multiplayer Servers is separate consumption-priced compute. The evaluation allowance documented by Microsoft includes 750 Dasv4 core-hours in East US and 750 in North Europe, plus 10 GB of network egress in each of Zones 1 and 2, with simultaneous-core limits. A live fleet also pays for standby capacity and regional egress. Use Microsoft's MPS calculator with players per process, processes per VM, standby percentage, average concurrency, peak concurrency, and egress per player.

How PlayFab compares with Crux pricing

Question	PlayFab	Crux
Free production path	Foundation Mode for eligible Xbox titles and included features	10,000 MAU with every shipped Crux feature
Paid base	PAYG $0 minimum; Standard $99; Premium $1,999	Launch $10; Scale $79
Primary billing model	Per-service meters and plan bundles	Capacity tiers based mainly on MAU, API calls, and storage
Dedicated server hosting	Available as separately metered MPS compute	Bring a host; Crux supplies registry and matchmaking, not the compute fleet
Feature breadth	Broader enterprise Game Stack and LiveOps surface	Smaller backend primitive set for indie and mid-size teams

That makes neither product universally cheaper. An Xbox title whose needs fit Foundation Mode can pay $0 for a broad PlayFab core. A non-Xbox indie that wants predictable backend primitives may find Crux's flat tiers easier to budget. A large title should model actual service meters and support requirements.

How to estimate your PlayFab bill

1. Choose Foundation, Development, PAYG, Standard, or Premium based on eligibility and launch state.
2. List the exact services the title will call; do not estimate from MAU alone.
3. Measure average payload size, reads/writes per active player, events, retained storage, and egress.
4. Model Multiplayer Servers and Party separately.
5. For an existing title, use Billing Summary and its CSV as the source of truth.

Pricing, alternatives, and migration are separate intents

This page owns PlayFab pricing. If the decision is which product to choose, read PlayFab alternatives for indie studios. If the decision is how to leave, use the PlayFab migration guide or the Crux-specific checklist.