Pricing

Photon's CCU-based plans scale from hobby to mega-hit and are proven in thousands of games across platforms and business models. Traffic allowances and CCU burst — plans with 500 CCU or more never cut any user from accessing — are baked in. You can upgrade or downgrade at any time.

Building a non-game application? Training, education, XR collaboration and other industrial use cases are covered by Photon Industries, not the gaming plans described here.

Cloud Tiers at a Glance

Public Cloud

For up to 2,000 CCU
20 CCU free for development and non-commercial use
100 CCU free for development and commercial use — for Fusion/Quantum games only, one app per customer
500, 1,000 or 2,000 CCU subscription plans
3 GB traffic per peak CCU and month included
CCU burst included from the 500 CCU plan upward

Premium Cloud

For up to 50,000 CCU with auto-scaling
Usage-based model with a minimum commitment of 2,000 CCU
3 GB traffic per peak CCU and month included
DDoS protection by default; optional SLAs and 24/7 NOC support

Enterprise Cloud

Minimum 2,000 CCU — no CCU limit
Dedicated bare-metal clusters
Server-authoritative logic via plug-ins
SLA for guaranteed uptime & response time, 24/7 NOC
Custom dashboards, premium dashboard and counters
Priority operations support
Multi-layered DDoS protection

Understanding CCU

What does CCU mean?

CCU stands for Concurrently Connected Users: the number of users online at the same moment, counted across your entire application — all rooms and all regions combined. It is not a per-room limit. A plan's CCU allowance supports any number of rooms, as long as the total number of simultaneously connected players stays within it.

How is my CCU total calculated?

Photon bills on Peak CCU: the sum of the monthly peak CCU per region.

Sample month: EU peak 420 CCU + US peak 230 CCU + other regions 0 → CCU total = 650, matching a 1,000 CCU plan.

The monthly peak counts even if usage drops afterward, so upgrade promptly after a spike to avoid overage charges.

What happens when my CCU limit is reached?

The behavior depends on your plan:

Plans below 500 CCU (20 CCU and 100 CCU tiers) are hard-capped. When the limit is reached, additional clients are rejected by the server and disconnected — in client code this surfaces as a disconnect with cause MaxCcuReached. Handle it gracefully by informing the player and inviting them to retry later, and upgrade your plan.
Plans from 500 CCU upward (including Premium Cloud) have CCU Burst: no player is ever cut off. The exceeding CCU is allowed immediately and billed as overage with the next invoice. After your first burst you have 48 hours to upgrade your subscription before your CCU may — at Photon's sole discretion — be capped at the agreed number.

Do single-player or offline sessions count toward CCU?

No. Sessions that never open a connection to the Photon Cloud (for example Fusion GameMode.Single or PUN 2 Offline Mode) do not consume CCU.

Are the MAU estimates a limit?

No. Monthly Active User figures are planning estimates only — nothing enforces them. The rule of thumb, based on data across thousands of launched games, is 1 CCU ≈ 20 DAU ≈ 400 MAU. Only CCU and traffic are actually metered.

Real ratios vary widely per game. Titles played in concentrated time windows (e.g. classroom or event apps used only during fixed hours) need more CCU per MAU than the average game; launch spikes also distort the ratio temporarily.

Free Plans & Licensing

Can I release a commercial game on a free plan?

20 CCU free plan: no. It is licensed for development and non-commercial use only. Publishing a game on it — including releasing on Steam or app stores — is not covered by the license.
100 CCU free plan: yes. It is licensed for launch and commercial use, limited to one application per customer and to Fusion/Quantum games only.
A game monetized only through ads still counts as commercial use.

Rules of the free 100 CCU plan

One application per studio/account (a Fusion or a Quantum app — not both).
Standalone: it cannot be combined with a paid CCU plan. The only exception is the 100 CCU "Plus" coupon from the Unity Asset Store, which stacks on top of it.
You cannot downgrade an app from a paid plan back to a free plan.
If you upgrade the app to a paid plan, the free 100 CCU slot becomes available again for another of your applications.

Can plans be stacked?

A one-time 100 CCU plan can be added on top of any monthly subscription (its CCU counts in addition to the subscription's for its 12-month duration). Only one can be applied per AppId at a time, and it does not auto-renew.
100 CCU plans are not stackable with each other. If a single application needs more headroom, the next step is the 500 CCU plan.

Traffic & Overage

How is traffic counted?

All incoming and outgoing messages to the Photon Cloud servers count toward your traffic allowance. Every plan includes 3 GB per peak CCU per month — for example, a 1,000 CCU plan includes 3 TB of monthly traffic.

What happens if I exceed the included traffic?

Photon monitors consumption automatically and sends a heads-up email in advance when projections show your app will exceed its allowance. At the end of the month, the overage (total traffic minus included traffic) is invoiced automatically at the regional per-GB rate and charged to the payment method on file. Exact per-GB rates are listed on the product pricing pages.

How do I keep traffic under control?

Player count per room is the main traffic driver. Photon recommends staying below 500 messages per second per room — a fair-use guideline rather than a hard limit — and keeping strings (room names, UserIDs, nicknames, custom property keys) as short as possible, since these are serialized into every relevant message.

Unauthorized or pirated clients are consuming my CCU and traffic — what can I do?

Cracked copies of a game still connect to your AppId and count fully against CCU and traffic. To block them, set up an authentication provider and uncheck "Allow anonymous clients to connect, independently of configured providers" in the application dashboard. Anonymous connections are allowed by default, and the option only appears once at least one authentication provider is configured. Once unchecked, unauthenticated clients — including cracked ones bypassing your store authentication — are rejected. Note this also rejects legitimate legacy client versions released before authentication was added, and platforms without a configured provider.

Managing Your Plan

Upgrades, downgrades and cancellation

You can upgrade or downgrade at any time; additional CCU is available immediately, and any fees paid but unused are credited automatically. Termination takes effect at the end of the month. Switching between Public, Premium and Enterprise Cloud is seamless, with no service interruption.

Support

Comprehensive online documentation, free samples, tutorials, and assistance with non-technical issues (account activation, billing, service status) are included with every plan. For premium development support — direct chat with Photon engineers, exclusive samples, and the Circle Discord community — see the Gaming Circle.

Exact Fees

Please visit the product pricing sites for exact fees: