Buy-to-Play vs Free-to-Play vs Subscription MMOs: What the First Year Really Costs

Free-to-play MMOs cost the least to get into, and buy-to-play MMOs cost the least to own outright. We checked 14 games on October 21, 2026. Four free-to-play games cost $0 to play. Three games you buy once cost $9.99 to $24.99 with no required subscription. The two big subscription games cost $202.88 to $229.87 for a first year at US monthly rates. Free games that lock part of the world behind a membership sit in between, at $179.88 to $240.00 a year for full access. So if you play in bursts, a box or a free game is usually cheapest. The more months a year you play, the more a subscription costs compared with a one-off box.

Below are the table, the formula behind it, the maths for every total, and a way to price your own play pattern. Two launch-season games are included: AION 2, which is free-to-play with an optional membership, and ArcheAge Chronicles, which is buy-to-play with a box price that hasn’t been announced yet.

How We Worked Out the First-Year Cost

Every total in this post uses one formula:

First-year list cost = up-front price + (12 − months included) × monthly price of the required plan

• Up-front price is the cheapest official purchase that lets you play the newest content. That can be a box, a “complete” edition or the current expansion. For free games it’s $0.
• Required plan is a subscription or membership you need for that content. Some free games lock part of the world behind a membership (RuneScape, EVE Online, SWTOR). For those, the total includes the membership, and the $0 free tier is shown next to it. Optional plans, like ESO Plus or AION 2’s membership, are priced separately and left out of the total.
• Monthly price is the one-month or 30-day rate. Multi-month discounts are noted in the maths section. For games billed every 30 days, 12 periods cover 360 days, not 365.
• Months included is free game time that comes with the purchase. Final Fantasy XIV’s Complete Edition includes 30 days, so its year has 11 paid months.
• Left out: cash-shop spending, sales, taxes, hardware, and any expansion that’s been announced but not priced.
• Region and date: US list prices in USD, retrieved October 21, 2026. Every source is listed at the end.

The result is the list-price floor for a year of current content. It isn’t a forecast of what you’ll spend.

14 MMOs, Priced: The Comparison Table

US list prices, retrieved October 21, 2026. “Not verified” means we couldn’t confirm a price on an official page, so it isn’t in any total.

Two publishing changes could affect prices later: Amazon Games is handing Throne and Liberty to NC in Q4 2026 and Lost Ark to Smilegate in early 2027, and both games will keep running (Massively OP, August 12, 2026).

Optional subscriptions, priced for a year

These aren’t needed to play, so they’re not in the table’s totals. If you know you’ll keep one, add it.

The Maths Behind Each Total

Subscription games

• World of Warcraft: $49.99 (Midnight Base Edition) + 12 × $14.99 = $49.99 + $179.88 = $229.87. The subscription covers levels 1 to 80 and WoW Classic, and Midnight is sold separately. On Blizzard’s 12-month offer ($155.88), the year comes to $205.87.
• Final Fantasy XIV: $59.99 (Complete Edition, 30 days included) + 11 × $12.99 (Entry plan) = $59.99 + $142.89 = $202.88. The Starter Edition ($19.99) plus Dawntrail ($39.99) also comes to $59.99. On the Standard plan ($14.99), the year is $224.88. Evercold, the next expansion, is due in January 2027 with no announced price, so a first year that starts today will cost more by whatever Evercold costs.

Free games with a membership tier

• EVE Online: $0 + 12 × $20.00 = $240.00 for Omega all year. The 12-month plan is $144.00. Alpha costs $0, with fewer ships and slower training.
• RuneScape and Old School RuneScape: $0 + 12 × $14.99 = $179.88. One membership covers both games, per the Steam listing. Jagex’s 12-month plan is $131.88.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: $0 + 12 × $14.99 = $179.88. Two 180-day plans ($77.94 each) cost $155.88.

Buy-to-play and one-off purchases

• Guild Wars 2: $24.99 + 0 = $24.99. Visions of Eternity includes the core game and a max-level boost, and there’s no subscription. To own all six expansions at list price: $29.99 (the first two, sold together) + $29.99 + $24.99 + $24.99 + $24.99 = $134.95.
• The Elder Scrolls Online: $19.99 + 0 = $19.99. If you add ESO Plus at the monthly rate, the year is $199.87; with the 12-month plan, $159.98.
• Black Desert: $9.99 + 0 = $9.99.

Free-to-play

• Lost Ark, Throne and Liberty, Albion Online, AION 2: $0 + 0 = $0. Keeping AION 2’s membership for 12 periods costs 12 × $14.99 = $179.88 per server. Albion Premium at the monthly rate is $179.40, or $143.40 on the 360-day plan.

When a Monthly Plan Overtakes a Box

The table shows a full year, but you might not play for a full year. This chart shows how each model’s cost builds month by month, so you can see where they cross.

Two things stand out. A $14.99 monthly plan passes Guild Wars 2’s $24.99 expansion during the second month, so any optional membership you keep all year costs more than any box price in this list. And Final Fantasy XIV has the higher up-front price ($59.99 against $49.99) but ends the year $26.99 cheaper, because its Complete Edition includes the first 30 days and its Entry plan is $2 a month cheaper.

How to Price Your Own Play Pattern

The table assumes 12 months of play, every required purchase, and no shop spending. Your year is probably different. Swap your own numbers into this version of the formula:

Your first year = up-front price + (months you’ll actually pay for × monthly price) + expansions you’ll buy + your cash-shop cap

1. Count the months you’ll really play. A subscription stops when you cancel. Four months of World of Warcraft around a launch is $49.99 + 4 × $14.99 = $109.95. Three months of Final Fantasy XIV from a new Complete Edition is $59.99 + 2 × $12.99 = $85.97.
2. Decide which expansions you’ll skip. Guild Wars 2 sells each expansion separately and has no subscription, so a year where you skip the new one costs $0. In World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV, the newest content needs the expansion and the subscription.
3. Only prepay if you’ll play the whole period. WoW’s 12-month offer saves $24.00 against paying monthly for a year. But if you stop after four months, you’ve paid $155.88 instead of $59.96.
4. Give the shop a number before you open it. The free-to-play totals are a floor. Passes renew: Throne and Liberty’s Battle Pass is monthly, and ESO’s Tamriel Tomes run each season. Budget for them as a recurring cost, not a one-off.
5. Use your local price. Publishers set prices by region. Jagex’s March 2026 list puts one month of membership at $14.99 in the US, £10.99 in the UK, €13.49 in the eurozone, AU$20.99 in Australia and CA$18.99 in Canada. Put the price your store shows into the formula.
6. Know when gold can pay instead of money. A WoW Token is bought for real money and sold to other players for gold, and a token bought with gold can be redeemed for 30 days of game time. EVE’s PLEX can be bought for ISK on the in-game market and spent on Omega time. A RuneScape Bond, bought or acquired in game, is redeemable for 14 days of membership. That turns play time into a subscription, at whatever rate the market sets that day.

If your MMO sub sits next to Game Pass, PS Plus or other services, the subscription audit calculator adds them up into a yearly total, and our 2026 gaming subscription budget guide covers the non-MMO side. To total boxes, passes and top-ups across all your games, use the gaming spending calculator.

What Each Cash Shop Sells

“Pay-to-win” is a judgement call, so here’s what each official store or established press source says is on sale. We sort it into three kinds: cosmetic, convenience, and progression or power.

• Mostly cosmetic and convenience. Final Fantasy XIV’s online store sells attire, mounts, emotes and housing items, plus main-story and level skips, and says most items can’t be sold or traded to other players. World of Warcraft sells mounts, transmog, pets and housing decor, plus character boosts, transfers and the WoW Token. The Elder Scrolls Online’s Crown Store sells houses, mounts, pets, costumes and older DLC packs. Guild Wars 2 sells cosmetics and storage and character slots, plus Black Lion Chest keys, which open chests with random contents.
• Progression and boosts for sale. EVE Online sells skill points and training boosts alongside Omega time and PLEX. Albion Online’s Premium adds +50% fame, +50% gathering yield, +50% silver and loot from mobs, and halves market tax. Guild Wars 2 sells XP boosters. Throne and Liberty’s 2024 business-model post says shop outfits are “purely cosmetic”, but its Battle Pass point shop includes items “to help with progression”.
• Where the “pay-to-win” label comes from. In 2016, PC Gamer reported Black Desert players protesting “pay-to-win” changes after Pearl Shop costumes and pets, previously real-money only, became sellable to other players for in-game currency. It noted that pets offered advantages like automatic looting. Lost Ark’s 2021 business-model post says its premium service was rebuilt to “avoid potential pay to win mechanical advantages”. In RuneScape, Jagex removed Treasure Hunter and purchasable XP on January 19, 2026, after a community vote.

If you want games where $0 is a genuinely good experience, our list of free games with no pay-to-win ranks them by what you get at zero spend. For where free games make their money, see the hidden cost of free-to-play games.

The Two Launch-Season Examples

AION 2: free-to-play, membership optional

AION 2’s Global version launched free-to-play on Steam on October 5, 2026. NCSOFT’s Special Quai Membership costs $14.99 per 30 days, per server, with a limit of three purchases per server per month. On Global, it’s needed for the Market, personal trades and the Kina ↔ Quna Exchange. Quna, the premium currency, buys shop items and the premium Daeva Pass, which NCSOFT lists at 1,500 Quna for the faction passes.

So a year of AION 2 costs $0 if you never trade on the Market, and $179.88 per server if you keep the membership for 12 periods. For more on the game’s currencies and tools, see the AION 2 toolkit. To log what you’ve really spent, in your own currency and without counting the Daeva Pass twice, use the AION 2 spending calculator.

ArcheAge Chronicles: buy-to-play, price not announced

ArcheAge Chronicles is the one game in the table we can’t total yet. Here’s what’s known, labelled by how it’s sourced:

• Confirmed: XLGAMES develops it and self-publishes it on Steam.
• Confirmed: It’s buy-to-play with optional cosmetics, and the developers say it won’t include pay-to-win mechanics (MMORPG.com developer Q&A, July 7, 2026).
• Reported: There will be no in-game store at Early Access launch, per a developer video (MMOHuts, October 7, 2026).
• Not announced: The box price, editions and pre-orders. Steam showed no price on October 21, 2026.
• Reported: A cash shop is expected with the full release, and the developers have mentioned additional content, customisation and convenience items for it (MMOHuts, October 7, 2026).
• Confirmed: Steam’s Early Access notes say the price may change at full release, with changes announced in advance.
• Confirmed: Early Access comes first on PC through Steam and is expected to last 9 to 12 months.
• Confirmed: The PC minimum is 16 GB of RAM, an RTX 2060 SUPER or RX 6600 with 8 GB of VRAM, and 100 GB of storage on an SSD (the SSD is required).

When the price is announced, it slots straight into the formula. If no subscription is required (none has been announced), the first-year list cost is the box price, plus any PC parts you need to meet those specs. The ArcheAge Chronicles price page tracks the status of each fact, and the PC upgrade budget calculator turns the spec gap into a cost using your local part prices. Both are part of our ArcheAge Chronicles tools.

The name carries history, which is why players keep asking about pay-to-win. The original ArcheAge was a free-to-play MMORPG (Mein-MMO). When its buy-to-play ArcheAge Unchained servers launched in 2019, Massively OP described them as stripped of “pretty much everything that made people cry ‘pay-to-win’” at the original. Kakao Games closed the original game’s North American and European servers on June 27, 2024 (TheSixthAxis). We haven’t verified the status of servers in other regions. None of the original’s or Unchained’s prices apply to Chronicles.

Final Takeaway

Free-to-play is the cheapest way in, and buy-to-play is the cheapest way to own a whole game. Subscriptions cost the most if you play all year, and far less if you only subscribe for the months around each big patch. Before you commit, run the formula with your own months, your own expansions and your own shop cap, using your local store’s price. The cheapest MMO is the one whose pricing matches how you actually play.

Sources

Prices and store contents were retrieved on October 21, 2026. Dates in parentheses are publication dates. AION 2’s Daeva Pass and business-model details come from our AION 2 data file, last checked against NCSOFT’s notices on October 9, 2026; the membership price was rechecked on October 21.

• Final Fantasy XIV product and subscription page (Square Enix): https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/product/
• Final Fantasy XIV Online Store (Square Enix): https://store.finalfantasyxiv.com/ffxivstore/en-us/
• Final Fantasy XIV on Steam (editions, Dawntrail, free trial contents): https://store.steampowered.com/app/39210/
• Square Enix press release, Evercold for January 2027 (April 24, 2026): https://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/bastion-uk/pressreleases/square-enix-announces-evercold-latest-final-fantasy-xiv-expansion-set-for-january-2027-3445016
• World of Warcraft: Midnight editions (Blizzard): https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/world-of-warcraft-midnight
• World of Warcraft subscription (Blizzard): https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/world-of-warcraft-subscription
• World of Warcraft shop and free trial (Blizzard): https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/family/world-of-warcraft
• WoW Token (Blizzard): https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/world-of-warcraft-token
• Midnight release date (Blizzard Watch, November 26, 2025): https://blizzardwatch.com/2025/11/26/world-warcraft-midnight-release-date/
• The Elder Scrolls Online on Steam (editions, ESO Plus, Crown packs): https://store.steampowered.com/app/306130/
• ESO Plus benefits (ZeniMax): https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/esoplus
• Introducing Seasons to The Elder Scrolls Online (Bethesda, January 8, 2026): https://bethesda.net/en/news/introducing-seasons-to-the-elder-scrolls-online
• Guild Wars 2 buy page (ArenaNet): https://www.guildwars2.com/en/buy/
• Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity FAQ (ArenaNet): https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/45409206470419-Guild-Wars-2-Visions-of-Eternity-FAQ
• Guild Wars 2 on Steam (expansion release dates): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1284210/
• Black Desert on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/582660/
• Black Desert players protest “pay-to-win” changes (PC Gamer, August 5, 2016): https://www.pcgamer.com/black-desert-online-players-protest-pay-to-win-changes-with-in-game-picket-signs/
• Lost Ark on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1599340/
• Lost Ark Business Model (Amazon Games, October 25, 2021): https://playlostark.com/en-us/news/articles/lost-ark-business-model
• Throne and Liberty on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2429640/
• Throne and Liberty Business Model (Amazon Games, July 16, 2024): https://www.playthroneandliberty.com/en-us/news/articles/tl-business-model
• Amazon will cease publishing Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty (Massively OP, August 12, 2026): https://massivelyop.com/2026/08/12/amazon-will-cease-publishing-lost-ark-and-throne-liberty-sending-them-back-to-smilegate-and-ncsoft/
• Membership and Bonds price change (Jagex, March 10, 2026): https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/membership—bonds-price-change?oldschool=1
• Old School RuneScape on Steam (membership covers both games): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1343370/
• RuneScape on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1343400/
• Treasure Hunter removed January 19 (Jagex, November 12, 2025): https://www.jagex.com/news/the-players-have-spoken-runescape-treasure-hunter-microtransactions-to-be-removed-january-19th
• Albion Online shop, Premium (Sandbox Interactive): https://albiononline.com/shop/subscriptions
• Albion Online shop, featured offers: https://albiononline.com/shop
• EVE Online on Steam (Omega plans, PLEX, skill packs): https://store.steampowered.com/app/8500/
• Star Wars: The Old Republic on Steam (subscription, Cartel Coins): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1286830/
• AION 2 on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3393110/
• Special Quai Membership notice (NCSOFT): https://aion2.plaync.com/en-us/board/notice/view?articleId=6a850010fa34c1011d6273b2
• Daeva Pass product notice (NCSOFT): https://aion2.plaync.com/en-us/board/notice/view?articleId=6abbb27d71f8fb7c2a7a32a9
• Team Update: Business Model (NCSOFT, July 8, 2026): https://aion2.plaync.com/en-us/board/notice/view?articleId=6a4d7d47a729ca5877f5e1ef
• ArcheAge Chronicles on Steam (XLGAMES): https://store.steampowered.com/app/3218230/
• ArcheAge Chronicles developer Q&A (MMORPG.com, July 7, 2026): https://www.mmorpg.com/news/archeage-chronicles-developer-qanda-answers-on-monetization-mmo-features-combat-pvp-and-a-new-focus-group-test-2000138441
• ArcheAge Chronicles Early Access will have a box price and no cash shop (MMOHuts, October 7, 2026): https://mmohuts.com/news/archeage-chronicles-early-access-will-have-a-box-price-and-no-cash-shop
• ArcheAge closes after 10 years (Mein-MMO, April 26, 2024): https://mein-mmo.de/en/archeage-schliesst-server-free2play-mmorpg,1118902
• ArcheAge NA/EU servers closing June 27 (TheSixthAxis, April 27, 2024): https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2024/04/27/archeage-servers-in-europe-and-north-america-will-be-shutdown-on-june-27th/
• Buy-to-play ArcheAge Unchained is live (Massively OP, October 15, 2019): https://massivelyop.com/2019/10/15/buy-to-play-archeage-unchained-is-officially-live-today-with-the-shadows-revealed-update/

Alger Makiputin

Software developer (9+ years) · Investor (6+ years) · Creator of Hunter Vault

Not a financial advisor; just someone who built the budgeting tool he wanted and learned by managing his own money.

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