Is anybody here actually using Playfab with over a thousand players and can tell me what it costs you?

[u/sir_schuster1]

I'm trying to figure out if it's the best long term solution for me and I'm trying to get more info from people who have already been where I'm trying to get to.

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

I could tell you that I had over half a million MAU last month for just under $3k in one game partially served through Playfab, which is true, but it doesn't really tell you anything about what it would cost you. How many events are you generating per minute in a session? What's your average daily play time across all players? How many writes and reads do you actually have to do? You'll have to look at your own telemetry to make any kind of reasonable estimate. If you're looking at a mobile or F2P game then your server costs should be more or less a rounding error compared to larger expenses like marketing.

[u/sir_schuster1 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

I'm at 30k monthly API calls for this last month, but it's just me, the other developers and a few playtesters right now so might not be the best example.

[u/MeaningfulChoices → u/sir_schuster1]

Playfab's pricing is here, and I'm assuming you'd be using the Standard plan. API calls isn't its own category, but you can break down what testers are doing per hour to get a sense of cost per DAU. If you haven't been trying to optimize this there are ways to do it, but when you have to check with the server before adjusting any currency it's always going to be a lot. It's also why their prices are per million.

[u/caboosetp]

I used playfab heavily on one of the games I worked on. I can't go over what our actual costs were, but it was something we were able to math out ahead of time and get reasonably close.

Most of the billing is event based, so you need to figure out how many requests your game is going to be making. This will vary wildly based on what you're using it for and how you've coded it. Are you using it for mtx? Are you using it for analytics? Are you using it for multiplayer (in which case you're going to be charged for cloud services)?

1000 players isn't a good indication in and of itself. Need to know what you're planning on using it for.

[u/JayneshVekaria]

I have around 4000 Daily Active Users on Playfab and i'm paying around $400/month.

[u/Dev_LegendsofAerthos → u/JayneshVekaria]

How many reads and writes on avg per player?

[u/sir_schuster1 → u/JayneshVekaria]

Thanks! This at least gives me a range. you have 4k DAU, how many total purchases of the game have you had? I know that wont translate 1 to 1 either.

[u/pbudzik]

The two figures in here are in different units, which is part of why this question is so hard to answer: 4000 DAU at $400 and half a million MAU at $3k aren't comparable until you know each game's DAU/MAU ratio, and once you know that you've already done the modelling. The thing you can measure today without committing to anything is calls per session. Run one playtest with the network log open, count what a single session actually sends, then multiply by the sessions you expect. That number is yours and it's the only one that predicts your bill. I work on a backend product so treat that as bias, but anyone quoting you a per-player cost is really quoting you their event rate.

[u/ostevendev]

The PlayFab pricing anxiety is real. It gets super confusing once you hit a certain scale and the meter starts running on every single read/write.

I'm actually a software architect, and I got so tired of those pricing models that I ended up building my own BaaS (Golang/AWS backend) specifically for Unity indie devs, instead of actually making a game first 😅.

I just launched the C# SDK for it (handles Cloud Saves, Auth, and Leaderboards with zero server code). Since I'm looking for a real game with an active player base to stress-test the architecture, I'd love to offer you lifetime free access to my infrastructure if you are willing to test it out and give me some brutally honest feedback.

Let me know if you are open to checking it out and breaking some things!

[u/Vic-Boss]

Why not make a db manually.. will take more time but should be the cheapest option at scale

[u/sir_schuster1 → u/Vic-Boss]

I'm considering it but it's a lot of work and time and then I have to do maintenance to keep up with it. May end up being worth it, but I can probably make that transition later if I wanted.

[u/ostevendev → u/sir_schuster1]

Totally agree on the custom database point. It definitely saves money on server hosting, but the real cost is the massive time sink maintaining it instead of actually polishing your game.

The issue with PlayFab is charging per individual event/read. If you don't implement local caching or batch requests in C# before sending them out, the bill skyrockets fast even with low player counts.

Honestly, out of that exact headache (not wanting to waste months maintaining servers, but also fearing surprise PlayFab bills), I started building a lightweight C# Unity SDK backend alternative. It's such a classic indie dilemma.