Multiplayer And Online Game Development — small scale stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Dedicated Server Hosting (GameLift, Agones, Edgegap)
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsGameLift $0.086/hr c5.large + $0.05/GB egress, no free tier (pay-as-you-go) | Agones Free OSS + GKE $0.10/hr cluster + $0.046/vCPU-hr, $0.006/GB-hr nodes | Edgegap Free 500 server mins/mo (~8 hrs) then $0.12/hr per 2vCPU/4GB server + $0.09/GB egress | Hathora Free $25 credit/mo then $0.15/hr per server + $0.10/GB egress overage
Matchmaking Service (FlexMatch, Open Match)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsUnity Matchmaker Free 10k MAU then $0.08/MAU ( $0.05/MAU >100k), first 100k matches free | Open Match Free OSS self-hosted ~$60-120/mo for 3x n1-standard-2 | FlexMatch $0.10/1000 match requests, first 1000/day free, $0.06/1000 >1M requests
Networking Library / Netcode SDK (Photon, Mirror)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsPhoton $95/mo for 500 CCU, Free 20 CCU dev, $0.02/CCU/hr overage ($19/100 CCU buffer) | Mirror Free OSS (community-driven, self-hosted) | Normcore Free 10 CCU then $29/mo Starter 50 CCU, $0.03/CCU over | Enterprise $1850/mo for 5000 CCU + $0.01/CCU over
Real-time State Synchronization Service
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsPusher Free 200k msgs/day, 100 concurrent conn, then $29/mo 1M msgs/day 500 conn, $0.05/10k msgs over | Ably Free 6M msgs/mo, 200 conn, then $99/mo 10M msgs, $0.50 per million over + $0.25/GB | Centrifugo OSS Free self-host + $15/mo VPS | PubNub Free 200 MAU 1M msgs then $49/mo 500 MAU, $0.15/MAU over
Voice Chat Infrastructure for Multiplayer
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsVivox Free 5000 MAU then $0.02/MAU over ($0.015/MAU >50k), 3D positional included | Janus OSS Free self-host $30/mo VPS + TURN costs | Dissonance $100/mo per 1000 CCU, perpetual indie license $500 one-time | Dolby.io Free 10k mins/mo then $0.004/min + $0.015/GB egress
Relay / NAT Traversal (STUN/TURN) Service
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitscoturn Free OSS self-host ~$20/mo + bandwidth $0.09/GB | Cloudflare Free 1000 GB-hours then $5/1000 GB-hours, $0.05/GB egress | Twilio $0.40/GB TURN bandwidth, no free beyond trial $15 credit | Xirsys Free 1GB then $10/mo 50GB + $0.15/GB over
Anti-Cheat Service
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsEasy Anti-Cheat Free with Epic Online Services (unlimited MAU), integration cost ~dev time | VAC Free with Steamworks (requires Steam Direct $100 fee) | BattlEye $1000/mo base for up to 10k CCU then $0.05/CCU over, enterprise $5k+/mo | AnyBrain $1500/mo for AI anti-cheat
DDoS Protection for Game Servers
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS Shield Standard Free automatic L3/L4 | Spectrum $20/mo per game port + $1/GB over + $20/mo per app | Shield Advanced $3000/mo + $0.05/GB over + $0.10/10k req WAF over + data transfer | Magic Transit $5000/mo includes 10TB, then $0.05/GB over, $20k/yr Enterprise with 100TB
Monitoring & Telemetry for Dedicated Servers
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsPrometheus+Grafana Free OSS + $15/mo VPS + 10GB metrics ~$0 | New Relic Free 100GB ingest/mo then $0.30/GB over, $99/user/mo Pro | Datadog $15/host/mo Infra + $31/host/mo APM, first 100 custom metrics free then $0.05/metric over
In-Memory Database for Player Sessions (Redis)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Free 30MB storage, 10k cmds/day then $10/mo 1GB 100k cmds $0.20/100k over | Redis Cloud Free 30MB then $5/mo 100MB $0.20/100k ops | ElastiCache Serverless $0.125/GB-hr + $0.17/million ECPUs, ~$90/mo per 1GB always-on
Lobby & Session Management Service
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsEOS Lobbies Free unlimited sessions, 100 players/lobby | Nakama OSS Free self-host ~$40/mo + $0.02/CCU cloud (Heroic Cloud $79/mo 1k CCU) | Unity Lobby Free 1000 MAU then $0.08/CCU over, $0.05 >50k MAU | PlayFab Lobbies Free 100k MAU then $0.02/MAU over
Leaderboards & Ranking Infrastructure
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsLootLocker Free 10k MAU then $99/mo Pro 50k MAU + $0.05/MAU over, $0.01/10k leaderboard writes | Redis OSS Free self-host $10/mo VPS | Beamable Free 1000 MAU then $99/mo 10k MAU $0.01/MAU over | AccelByte Free 1k MAU then $999/mo 25k MAU $0.03/MAU over
Persistent Player Data Database (Player Profiles, Inventory)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsDynamoDB 25GB free always, 25 WCU/RCU free, then $0.25/GB + $1.25/million WCU $0.25/million RCU | Supabase Free 500MB DB 2GB bandwidth then $25/mo 8GB + $0.125/GB over | Atlas Free 512MB then $57/mo 10GB M10 $0.10/GB over | CockroachDB Free 10GB then $0.50/GB + $0.10/million RUs
Real-time Messaging / In-Game Chat Infrastructure
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsSocket.io Free OSS + VPS $20/mo unlimited | Stream Free 25 MAU 1k messages then $499/mo 5k MAU $0.05/msg over | Ably Chat Free 6M msgs then $99/mo | Sendbird Free 100 MAU then $399/mo 1k MAU + $0.09/MAU over
Game Server Orchestration / Container Management
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsAgones Free OSS + GKE Autopilot $0.10/hr per cluster + $0.044/vCPU-hr $0.0045/GB-hr spot $0.016/vCPU-hr | EKS $0.10/hr cluster $0.034/vCPU-hr Fargate $0.004/GB-hr | GKE Standard $0.10/hr + node costs $0.046/vCPU-hr | GameLift Managed EKS $0.086/hr + EKS fees
CDN for Multiplayer Asset Patch Delivery
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free unlimited BW (fair use) 100k cache purge then $20/mo Pro + $5/10M Workers req | Bunny $1/mo min + $0.01/GB NA/EU $0.03/GB Asia $0.01/10k req over | Fastly $50/mo min then $0.12/GB + $0.008/10k req over 2TB, $0.02/GB overage >1PB
Load Balancer for Game Server Fleet
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsHAProxy Free OSS + $10/mo VPS | Traefik Free OSS + $19/mo Cloud pilot | NGINX Cloud $22/mo 1M req + $0.002/1000 req over | AWS NLB $0.0225/hr ($16.20/mo) + $0.006/LCU-hr over ~$5/1M conn
Analytics & Event Tracking for Multiplayer Sessions
Lets external services notify you of events in real time. Core to integrating payments, KYC, and third-party workflows.Pricing & free-tier limitsGameAnalytics Free unlimited events <50M MAU (fair use) then Enterprise custom $5k+/mo | PostHog Free 1M events/mo then $0.000248/event ($248/1M) over | Mixpanel Free 1M events 1k MTU then $28/mo Growth + $0.28/MTU over
Crash Reporting for Dedicated Servers & Clients
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsSentry Free 5k errors/mo, 10k transactions then $26/mo Team 50k errors $0.00039/error over | Backtrace Free 500 crash dumps then $100/mo 10k dumps $0.01/dump over | Datadog $15/host/mo + $0.20/1k error events over
How this small scale multiplayer and online game development checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a small scale multiplayer and online game development build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.