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
Bandwidth per player
15.0 KB/s
Total monthly bandwidth
12.1 TB

1,000 concurrent players

256 B

Monthly Cost Comparison

AWS (EC2)$3.3k - $5.5k/mo
Google Cloud$3.1k - $5.3k/mo
Azure$3.2k - $5.4k/mo
Hetzner$547.50 - $1.1k/mo
Unity Multiplay$2.8k - $6.1k/mo
Edgegap$2.1k - $5.4k/mo

Provider Breakdown

AWS (EC2)

Auto-scaling, global reach

Monthly cost$3.3k - $5.5k
Cost per CCU/mo$3.302 - $5.492
Bandwidth/mo12.1 TB
Instances needed25

Google Cloud

ML integration, global reach

Monthly cost$3.1k - $5.3k
Cost per CCU/mo$3.126 - $5.316
Bandwidth/mo12.1 TB
Instances needed25

Azure

Enterprise, Xbox integration

Monthly cost$3.2k - $5.4k
Cost per CCU/mo$3.179 - $5.369
Bandwidth/mo12.1 TB
Instances needed25

Hetzner

Budget, EU-focused

Monthly cost$547.50 - $1.1k
Cost per CCU/mo$0.547 - $1.095
Bandwidth/mo12.1 TB
Instances needed25
Included bandwidth20 TB

Unity Multiplay

Unity projects, scales to zero

Monthly cost$2.8k - $6.1k
Cost per CCU/mo$2.808 - $6.093
Bandwidth/mo12.1 TB
Instances needed25

Edgegap

Edge locations, low latency

Monthly cost$2.1k - $5.4k
Cost per CCU/mo$2.137 - $5.422
Bandwidth/mo12.1 TB
Instances needed25

Prices are estimates based on publicly available pricing as of March 2026. Actual costs vary by region, commitment, and usage patterns.

P2P with relay architecture significantly reduces server costs but increases client bandwidth and may affect latency.

Photon Fusion/Quantum uses a per-MAU model rather than per-server; see the Photon pricing calculator for that use case.

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.

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?
A rough rule of thumb: tick rate (Hz) times packet size (KB) times 2 (in plus out), times 3600 for an hour. A 30 Hz competitive shooter at roughly 1.5 KB per packet is around 300 to 600 KB per minute per player, which scales quickly at high CCU.
Is Unity Multiplay or Edgegap better for hosted dedicated servers?
Unity Multiplay (formerly Multiplay) is deeply integrated with Unity Gaming Services and good for studios already on UGS. Edgegap focuses on automatic edge deployment across many regions. Both are dedicated server hosting; pick on integration and pricing for your scale.

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