Xbox Game Pass vs PlayStation Plus

Xbox Game Pass is the better subscription if you play on an Xbox or a Windows PC and would otherwise buy new games: Game Pass Ultimate ($22.99 a month) added 50 games on their launch day in the past 12 months, including Microsoft's own Forza Horizon 6 and Gears of War: E-Day, and PC Game Pass ($13.99) brings almost the same catalog to a PC. PlayStation Plus is the better value if you own a PS5 and are happy to play big games a year or more after release: PlayStation Plus Extra costs $134.99 a year, half of Ultimate's $275.88, and on our count it includes exactly as many Game Awards nominees, 22. Against Game Pass Premium, the closer match in price at $179.88 a year, it has three more.

Overall, Game Pass scores 7.5 and PlayStation Plus 6.4. The whole lead comes from new releases and PC play; PlayStation Plus wins on price and ties on acclaimed games. For a player who doesn't care about new releases, PlayStation Plus scores higher on our own numbers (7.25 to 7.08). In practice the console you own decides most of this, because Game Pass doesn't run on a PlayStation and PlayStation Plus doesn't run on an Xbox, so the more useful question is which tier is worth paying for, which Which one should you choose? answers.

What each tier costs in 2026

Both companies changed their US prices this year. Microsoft cut Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 to $22.99 a month and PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99 in April 2026 (Xbox Wire), six months after raising them from $19.99 and $11.99 (Gematsu, October 2025). Sony raised its monthly and three-month prices for new members in May 2026, and left the 12-month prices where they have been since September 2023 (Push Square); members who joined before then keep their old monthly price.

Tier	What it adds	Monthly	Cheapest year
Game Pass Essential	Online multiplayer, 98 games	$9.99	$79.99 (12-month card)
Game Pass Premium	460 games; Xbox games within a year of launch	$14.99	$179.88
Game Pass Ultimate	694 games on console and PC, new games on launch day, EA Play, Fortnite Crew, Ubisoft+ Classics	$22.99	$275.88
PC Game Pass	557 PC games, new games on launch day, EA Play	$13.99	$167.88
PlayStation Plus Essential	Online multiplayer, three monthly games	$10.99	$79.99
PlayStation Plus Extra	457 games, Ubisoft+ Classics	$16.99	$134.99
PlayStation Plus Premium	Adds 172 classics, game trials, cloud streaming, up to 100 Sony films	$19.99	$159.99

Prices are from Microsoft's store pages for Ultimate, Premium, Essential and PC Game Pass and from Sony's PlayStation Plus page, all read on the day we counted the catalogs in November 2026; game counts are ours, from the same day (see the catalogs, counted). Sony sells 12-month plans on every tier at 33% to 39% off paying monthly. Microsoft's only real yearly discount is a 12-month Game Pass Essential card at $79.99, sold through retailers such as Target; its catalog lists 12 months of Ultimate at $275.99, 11 cents more than 12 monthly payments.

How many games a tier has to replace to pay for itself: new games from Microsoft and Sony cost $69.99 in the US in 2026 (for example Gears of War: E-Day and Saros). A year of Game Pass Ultimate costs as much as 3.9 of those, Game Pass Premium 2.6, PC Game Pass 2.4, PlayStation Plus Premium 2.3 and PlayStation Plus Extra 1.9. So Ultimate pays for itself against buying from the fourth launch-day game a year. Against Game Pass Premium, which gets Microsoft's games about a year later for $96 a year less, it pays off from the second. That sum only works for games you would really have bought at full price at launch; a game you'd have waited to buy on sale saves you less. And because Game Pass is sold by the month, a single month of Ultimate ($22.99) is the cheapest way to play one big new Microsoft game.

The catalogs, counted on the same day

On one day in November 2026 we downloaded every catalog list behind Xbox's game browser and PlayStation's game finder and counted each title once, whatever its versions (console and PC, PS4 and PS5) and editions.

Tier	Games	Game Awards nominees (of 68)
Game Pass Ultimate	694	22
PlayStation Plus Premium	629	22
PC Game Pass	557	21
Game Pass Premium	460	19
PlayStation Plus Extra	457	22
Game Pass Essential	98	6

A few things in those numbers that the companies' own "hundreds of games" don't tell you:

• Ultimate's count includes two other subscriptions. Of its 694 games, 122 come from EA Play and 70 from Ubisoft+ Classics; without them it has 502, which matches the "500+" on Xbox's plan page. Xbox's lists also include some free-to-play games, such as Albion Online and Wuthering Waves, that Game Pass carries for their in-game perks.
• The other Xbox tiers have more than Xbox says. Premium's list holds 460 games against the "200+" on the plan page, Essential's 98 against "50+" and PC Game Pass's 557 against "300+"; those figures seem to be floors rather than counts.
• Half of Extra is PS4 games. 226 of its 457 games have no PS5 version, and Sony said in January 2025 that PS4 games would "only be occasionally offered" from January 2026 (PlayStation Blog). Ubisoft+ Classics accounts for 68 of Extra's games.
• Premium's extra 172 games come from the Classics catalog: PS1, PS2, PSP and PS3 games, many of them older versions of games you can now buy remastered.

Perplexity's answer in our November 2026 sample called PlayStation Plus the broader back catalog and Game Pass "smaller but better curated". At the top tier it is the other way round, 694 games to 629.

Acclaimed games: a 22 to 22 tie, with different games

We matched both catalogs against the 68 games nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards from 2014 to 2025 (Wikipedia's list of Game of the Year nominees). Game Pass Ultimate and PlayStation Plus Extra each include 22. Eleven of the 68 are Nintendo games neither service can carry, so 57 was the most either could reach. Premium adds no nominee over Extra.

• PlayStation Plus Extra's 22: Bloodborne, Uncharted 4, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War (2018), Marvel's Spider-Man, Red Dead Redemption 2, Death Stranding, The Last of Us Part II, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Fallout 4, Doom (2016), Persona 5 Royal, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Celeste, Doom Eternal, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Resident Evil Village and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.
• Game Pass Ultimate's 22: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fallout 4, Doom (2016), Inside, Titanfall 2, Persona 5 Royal, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Control, Death Stranding, Resident Evil 2, The Outer Worlds, Doom Eternal, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Hades, It Takes Two, Deathloop, Psychonauts 2, Resident Evil Village, Balatro, Hades II, Hollow Knight: Silksong and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.

The two lists share nine games. The difference is where the hits come from: 12 of PlayStation Plus's 22 are Sony's own big single-player games, while Game Pass's list leans on independent games (Hades, Balatro, Hollow Knight: Silksong) and on EA Play, which supplies three of its 22. Game Pass Premium includes 19, Game Pass Essential six. One Gemini answer in our sample said PlayStation Plus has "the highest average quality of single-player blockbusters"; by this measure the two are level, and which list you'd rather play is a matter of taste. Every match is listed in the scoring sheet.

New releases: the real difference

This is the one criterion with a wide gap. Game Pass scores 9, PlayStation Plus 3.

Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass get Microsoft's own games on launch day, with one exception since April 21, 2026: "future Call of Duty titles won't join Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch" and arrive about a year later (Xbox Wire). Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 joined on its launch day in November 2025, before the change, and stays in the library. Xbox's own "Play day one" list has 50 games that joined on their launch day in the 12 months to November 2026 and are still in the catalog, among them Forza Horizon 6 (May 2026), Halo: Campaign Evolved (July) and Gears of War: E-Day (October). Fable is on its coming-soon list for February 2027. Game Pass Premium gets Microsoft's games "within a year of launch", Call of Duty excluded (xbox.com), and no other launch-day games.

PlayStation Plus doesn't put Sony's new games in the catalog at launch. In June 2025 Sony's vice president of global services said first-party games arrive "when they're 12, 18 months old or older" (VGC), and in May 2026 a Sony executive put the number of launch-day games at "between four and six a year", "largely for indies" (Push Square). We found four in the past 12 months, none of them Sony's: Skate Story in Extra in December 2025 (VGChartz), Big Walk in the monthly games in August 2026 (Gematsu), RuneScape: Dragonwilds in Extra in September (PlayStation Blog) and Mycopunk in Extra in October (PlayStation Blog). Premium's game trials let you play a few hours of some new releases before buying.

Some assistants still get Call of Duty wrong. In our November 2026 sample, two Gemini answers said new Call of Duty games launch on Game Pass on day one. They haven't since the April change.

Where you can play: PC and cloud

Game Pass scores 8, PlayStation Plus 6.

• On a PC. Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass download and play games natively on Windows. PlayStation Plus has no PC catalog to download: Sony lists cloud streaming only for the PS5 and PlayStation Portal (Sony's cloud streaming page). Some AI answers in our sample said Premium streams to a Windows PC through the PlayStation Plus PC app. Sony's support pages still link to that app, but when we checked in November 2026 its support page and its installer link both returned errors, and Sony's plan pages name only the PS5 and Portal, so we didn't count it. If it does work, PlayStation Plus's total rises to 6.8, still behind Game Pass.
• Cloud play elsewhere. Every Game Pass console tier streams games to phones, tablets, browsers and some TVs, "including select games you own" (xbox.com); PC Game Pass has no cloud play. PlayStation Plus Premium streams PS5 games, including select digital games you bought, to a PS5 or a PlayStation Portal (PlayStation Blog). On our count 548 of Ultimate's games stream and 351 of Premium's.
• Hour caps. From November 2026, Game Pass cloud play is capped at 15 hours a month on Ultimate, 10 on Premium and 5 on Essential (Xbox Wire, September 2026), five months after Microsoft promised Ultimate members "unlimited Xbox Cloud Gaming" (Xbox Wire, April 2026). Xbox says subscribers will be able to buy more hours but hasn't published prices; in an Xbox Insider test since October 2026, people without Game Pass can buy 10 hours for $3.99 at introductory prices (Xbox Wire, October 2026). Microsoft hadn't named the exact start day when we checked. PlayStation Plus Premium's streaming has no published cap. Downloads are unlimited on both.

The two, scored

Xbox Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass scores 7.5 and is the better subscription for anyone on an Xbox or a Windows PC who would otherwise buy new games: Ultimate added 50 games on launch day in the past 12 months, including Microsoft's own (new Call of Duty games now arrive about a year after launch, Xbox Wire), it plays on console, PC and in the cloud, and its catalog was the biggest we counted, at 694 games. Its weakest score is price: Ultimate costs $275.88 a year with no yearly discount, and its cloud play is capped at 15 hours a month from November 2026.

PlayStation Plus

PlayStation Plus scores 6.4 and is the better value for PS5 owners who don't need new games at launch: Extra costs $134.99 a year, less than half of Game Pass Ultimate, and includes the same number of Game Awards nominees on our count, 22, 12 of them Sony's own; against Game Pass Premium, the closer match in price at $179.88, it has three more. Its weakest scores are new releases and platforms: Sony's games join a year or more after launch (VGC), only four games joined on launch day in the past year, none of them Sony's, and nothing downloads to a PC.

Which one should you choose?

• You own a PS5: PlayStation Plus Extra on the yearly plan, $134.99. Step up to Premium ($25 more a year) only if you'll use cloud streaming on a PlayStation Portal, the classics or game trials.
• You own an Xbox and would buy two or more of Microsoft's new games at launch each year: Game Pass Ultimate. Against Game Pass Premium, which gets the same games within a year for $96 a year less, it pays off from the second game. Otherwise Premium.
• You only want one or two big new games a year: buy them, or subscribe for the month you play them. A month of Ultimate is $22.99, and Game Pass has no yearly commitment.
• You play on a Windows PC only: PC Game Pass at $13.99 a month. It has 557 games and launch-day releases; Ultimate adds the console, cloud play, Fortnite Crew and Ubisoft+ Classics for $108 a year more.
• You only want to play online: either Essential tier, $79.99 a year on a 12-month plan. Free-to-play games such as Fortnite play online without any subscription on both consoles.
• You mostly play Call of Duty: buy it. New Call of Duty games now reach Game Pass about a year after launch.
• You're choosing a console partly for the subscription: Game Pass, if new games matter to you; PlayStation Plus, if you're happy to play acclaimed games a year or more after launch and want the lower bill.

How we scored

We scored the two services on five criteria with weights set before scoring: Price (25), Acclaimed games (20), New releases (20), Where you can play (20) and Catalog size (15). Price averages all three console tiers; the other criteria judge each service's top tier, Game Pass Ultimate and PlayStation Plus Premium. Each score follows written anchors in the scoring sheet, which also lists every Game Awards match and the source for every score. This page is desk-researched: prices come from both companies' own US price data and pages, and the catalog counts are our own, made from the lists behind each company's game browser on one day in November 2026. We didn't play the games, test download speeds or measure cloud streaming quality. Catalogs change every month, so a count a few weeks later will differ by a few games.

Questions people ask

Is Game Pass Ultimate worth it in 2026? If you'd buy four or more new $69.99 games a year that come to Game Pass at launch, yes: a year costs $275.88, as much as 3.9 of them. Against Premium it pays off from two, if you'd otherwise buy them at launch rather than wait a year. If you mostly play on PC, PC Game Pass is $108 a year cheaper and has almost the same games.

Does Game Pass still get Call of Duty on day one? No. Since April 2026, new Call of Duty games join Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season, about a year after launch. Earlier ones, including Black Ops 7, stay in the library.

PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium? Extra for most people. Premium adds 172 classics, cloud streaming to a PS5 or PlayStation Portal, game trials and up to 100 Sony films for $25 more a year, but no extra Game Awards nominee on our count.

Can I play PlayStation Plus games on a PC? Not as downloads. Some assistants say Premium streams to a Windows PC through the PlayStation Plus PC app, but when we checked in November 2026 Sony's support page for that app and its installer link both returned errors, and Sony's cloud streaming page lists only the PS5 and PlayStation Portal. Game Pass is the subscription for PC players.

Does PlayStation Plus have a yearly discount? Yes, on every tier: $79.99, $134.99 and $159.99 a year, 33% to 39% off paying monthly. Game Pass has one only on Essential, as a $79.99 12-month card.

Do games leave Game Pass and PlayStation Plus? Yes. Both remove games from their catalogs every month, so a game you plan to play later may be gone by then. Monthly games you claim on PlayStation Plus stay playable while you subscribe.