Game Dev Cheat Sheet

Multiplayer CCU Cost Estimator for Unity

Estimate monthly server hosting costs for your multiplayer game based on concurrent users, architecture, tick rate, and cloud provider.

Multiplayer game server costs depend on many factors: how many players are online simultaneously (CCU), your server architecture, tick rate, packet size, and which cloud provider you use. This estimator models costs across AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and Hetzner so you can budget before committing to infrastructure.

Frame time budget
33.3 ms
Outgoing traffic per player
7.7 KB/s
Monthly outgoing traffic
6.6 TB

1,000 concurrent players

256 B

Monthly Cost Comparison

AWS (EC2)$2.8k - $5.0k/mo
Google Cloud$2.4k - $4.6k/mo
Azure$2.7k - $4.9k/mo
Hetzner (EU shared cloud)$547.50 - $1.1k/mo
Edgegap$1.9k - $5.2k/mo

Provider Breakdown

AWS (EC2)

Auto-scaling, global reach

Monthly cost$2.8k - $5.0k
Cost per CCU/mo$2.787 - $4.977
Bandwidth/mo6.6 TB
Instances needed25

Google Cloud

ML integration, global reach

Monthly cost$2.4k - $4.6k
Cost per CCU/mo$2.439 - $4.629
Bandwidth/mo6.6 TB
Instances needed25

Azure

Enterprise, Xbox integration

Monthly cost$2.7k - $4.9k
Cost per CCU/mo$2.721 - $4.911
Bandwidth/mo6.6 TB
Instances needed25

Hetzner (EU shared cloud)

Budget, EU-focused

EU shared cloud assumption: 20 TB outgoing traffic per instance, then $1.20/TB. US and Singapore allowances and rates differ. Traffic checked 21 September 2026. Provider traffic policy

Monthly cost$547.50 - $1.1k
Cost per CCU/mo$0.547 - $1.095
Bandwidth/mo6.6 TB
Instances needed25
Included traffic per instance20 TB

Edgegap

Edge locations, low latency

Monthly cost$1.9k - $5.2k
Cost per CCU/mo$1.908 - $5.193
Bandwidth/mo6.6 TB
Instances needed25

Compute rates are illustrative planning ranges retained from March 2026, not current quotes. Traffic assumptions are shown where updated. Confirm the provider, region and plan before budgeting.

The model spreads global peak CCU equally across regions, rounds up to whole instances, and keeps those instances running for 730 hours per month. Outgoing traffic assumes eight hours at peak CCU per day for 30 days; incoming traffic is excluded. Player capacity and the 1.5x cloud headroom factor are examples, not benchmarks. Relay estimates model self-hosted instances, not a managed relay tariff.

Managed multiplayer services use their own billing models. Check their pricing separately; these instance estimates do not represent their tariffs.

Related Tools

Tick Rate Calculator

Calculate bandwidth per player by tick rate, packet size, and session length for multiplayer games.

Platform Capabilities

Which platforms support haptics, HDR, ray tracing, VRR, and more. Filterable matrix.

Frame Budget Calculator

CPU/GPU budget breakdown by platform and target frame rate.

Frequently asked questions

What does CCU mean in multiplayer games?
CCU stands for concurrent users: the number of players connected to your servers at the same instant. It is the number you size infrastructure against, not total downloads or daily active users. Peak CCU drives your worst-case bill.
Which cloud provider is cheapest for game servers?
Hetzner and OVH are typically the cheapest for raw compute and bandwidth, often half or less than AWS, GCP, or Azure. The hyperscalers cost more but offer global edge regions, managed networking, and tooling that reduce engineering overhead. The right pick depends on whether your bottleneck is cost or operational complexity.
How much bandwidth does a multiplayer game server use per player?
If each player sends and receives one 1.5 KB packet per tick at 30 Hz, traffic is 30 x 1.5 x 2 = 90 KB/s, or 5,400 KB per minute (decimal units). Actual traffic depends on send rates, packet sizes, replication and protocol overhead.
Is Unity Multiplay Hosting still available?
Unity deprecated its Multiplay Hosting service on 1 April 2026, with an exception for customers already migrating to Multiplay by Rocket Science. It is excluded from this estimator. Compare currently available hosting plans using your measured server workload.

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