Microsoft Game Pass: Tiers, Prices and What Changed in 2026

Summary: Microsoft Game Pass is Microsoft's gaming subscription, sold in four tiers from $9.99 to $22.99 a month in the US as of September 2026. Ultimate sits at $22.99 after Microsoft cut it from $29.99 in April 2026, and that cut came with a trade attached: new Call of Duty games no longer land on day one. From November, cloud streaming stops being unlimited on every tier.

Four tiers in the US: Essential $9.99, PC Game Pass $13.99, Premium $14.99, Ultimate $22.99 a month
Ultimate fell from $29.99 to $22.99 on 21 April 2026, still $3 above its pre-2025 price
New Call of Duty releases now arrive around a year after launch rather than on day one
Cloud gaming gets capped in November: 15 hours on Ultimate, 10 on Premium, 5 on Essential

What Microsoft Game Pass Actually Is

Microsoft Game Pass is a subscription that gives you a rotating library of games for a flat monthly fee, playable on Xbox consoles, Windows PCs, or streamed from the cloud depending on which tier you hold. Microsoft's own first-party games arrive in the library on release day, and that is the single feature separating it from every other games subscription.

The naming is a mess and worth clearing up, because it makes finding answers harder than it should be. Microsoft Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft Xbox Game Pass all refer to the same service. The tier names changed in October 2025 as well: Core became Essential and Standard became Premium, so older guides and forum threads describe plans that no longer exist under those labels.

Microsoft Game Pass Tiers and Prices in 2026

Four tiers, all US monthly prices before tax, current as of September 2026:

Essential, $9.99. Online console multiplayer and a smaller rotating library. The old Core plan.
PC Game Pass, $13.99. Windows only, with day-one access to Microsoft's PC releases and EA Play included.
Premium, $14.99. The console back catalogue and online multiplayer, but no day-one releases. The old Standard plan.
Ultimate, $22.99. Console and PC, day-one releases, EA Play, and cloud streaming. Retailers list this one as Microsoft Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which is the same thing.

One question the search results keep surfacing: no, Game Pass is not $30 a month any more. It was, between October 2025 and April 2026. There is also no official twelve-month US plan, so the yearly figure people quote is simply twelve monthly payments. On Ultimate that comes to $275.88 before tax.

Microsoft PC Game Pass vs Ultimate

Microsoft PC Game Pass at $13.99 is the better deal for a lot of people, and the tier most often skipped for the wrong reason. It carries day-one access to Microsoft's PC titles and bundles EA Play, but it does not cover console play, console multiplayer, or cloud streaming. If you only game on Windows, the $9 a month gap up to Ultimate buys you nothing you will use.

Mac owners have a harder time, since PC Game Pass needs Windows and there is no native Mac client. Cloud streaming in a browser is the realistic route and works on macOS today. If you want a Windows environment on a Mac for other reasons, Parallels is the usual way to get one, though virtualised Windows is not where demanding games run well.

The Microsoft Xbox Game Pass Price Increase, and the Rollback

The Microsoft Xbox Game Pass price increase people still search for happened in October 2025, when Ultimate went from $19.99 to $29.99 a month in the US, a rise of roughly 50 per cent, alongside the tier renaming. It did not hold. On 21 April 2026 Microsoft cut Ultimate back to $22.99 and dropped PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99.

Two things are worth taking from that. Ultimate is cheaper than it was a year ago but still $3 above where it sat before the hike, so the rollback was partial. And the cut was paid for elsewhere: the same announcement confirmed that future Call of Duty releases would join Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season, roughly a year after launch, rather than at release. Existing Call of Duty games already in the library stayed put.

The Cloud Gaming Caps Starting in November

Cloud streaming has been unlimited on eligible plans until now. From November it is metered. Microsoft announced on 3 September 2026 that each tier includes a fixed monthly allowance: 15 hours on Ultimate, 10 on Premium and 5 on Essential. Once the allowance is gone you either wait for the next billing cycle or buy more hours through the Xbox Store, and Microsoft has not published what extra hours cost. Available hours and purchasing options vary by market.

Microsoft expects the change to affect 4 per cent of subscribers, which is accurate and also beside the point for anyone inside that 4 per cent. If you stream to a TV, a handheld or a Meta headset rather than playing locally, those hours are the whole subscription rather than a bonus feature, and 15 hours works out at about half an hour a day.

Xbox Game Pass Criticism: Where Microsoft Lost Goodwill

Most of the criticism aimed at Microsoft over Game Pass in the past year is not about the library, which keeps growing. It is about the service changing shape under people who had already subscribed. Three moves account for nearly all of it.

The price whiplash: a 50 per cent rise held for six months, then partly reversed, leaving anyone who cancelled in between looking sensible and anyone who stayed feeling overcharged.
Call of Duty losing day-one status, when it was the franchise most often used to justify Ultimate in the first place.
Unlimited cloud streaming becoming a 15-hour allowance, presented as a minor change on the grounds that few people use it heavily.

The through-line is that the flat-fee promise has been quietly qualified twice inside a year. That is a fair thing to weigh before committing to twelve months of payments, and it is the part Microsoft's own pages will not tell you.

How Microsoft Xbox Game Pass Removals Work

Games leave the library, and the searches spike every month around whichever batch is going. The mechanic is simple: Microsoft licenses most third-party titles for a fixed term, and when the term ends the game rotates out. Microsoft's own first-party games stay indefinitely, which is why the removals lists are almost entirely other publishers' work.

Two habits cover it. Check the leaving-soon section in the Game Pass app, which flags titles roughly two weeks ahead, and buy anything you are partway through before it goes, since subscribers get a discount on library titles and saves carry over either way. For what is arriving rather than leaving, we track every confirmed day-one release.

Is Microsoft Game Pass Worth It?

Ultimate at $275.88 a year is roughly four full-price games. So the honest test is how many Microsoft first-party releases you would actually have bought in a year. Three or more and the subscription pays for itself before you touch the back catalogue. One, and you are better off buying that one.

The tier matters more than the yes or no. Plenty of people hold Ultimate for a console they rarely switch on, or sit on Premium wondering why new releases are missing. If you are weighing it against Sony's service instead, there is a direct comparison of PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass worth reading first.

Changing or Cancelling a Microsoft Game Pass Subscription

Cancelling runs through your Microsoft account subscriptions page rather than the Xbox app, and switching off recurring billing leaves your access running until the paid period ends rather than cutting it immediately. Refunds are handled case by case. The steps, the refund rules and the cheaper ways to keep playing are covered in our full guide to cancelling Game Pass.

Paying for Microsoft Game Pass with a Gift Card

You do not have to keep a card on the account. An Xbox gift card adds balance to your Microsoft account, and in most regions that balance can cover a Game Pass subscription, which stops a renewal landing silently on a card you had forgotten about. It also turns the subscription into a workable gift, because the recipient picks their own tier rather than being handed one.

Which Microsoft Game Pass Tier Is Worth It in September 2026

PC-only players belong on PC Game Pass at $13.99 and should check they are not paying Ultimate prices out of habit. Console players who want Microsoft's new releases on the day they land need Ultimate and will have to accept the Call of Duty delay. Everyone else is usually better served by Premium at $14.99, or by Essential if online multiplayer is the only reason the subscription exists at all.

If you would rather load a set amount onto the account than leave a card on file, browse Xbox gift cards and top up from that instead.