The Xbox Game Pass price increase, and the cut that followed

Microsoft announced on 1 October 2025 that Ultimate was going from $19.99 to $29.99, effective immediately rather than at the next renewal. A 50% rise in one step made it, briefly, the most expensive mainstream gaming subscription anywhere.

It was not a bare repricing. The same announcement bundled Fortnite Crew into Ultimate, widened the library past 400 games, committed to more than 75 day-one releases a year, and raised cloud streaming to 1440p. Core was renamed Essential and Standard became Premium, both holding their prices — so the increase landed entirely on the top tier.

None of that carried the announcement. The reaction was immediate and public, cancellation screenshots circulated widely, and Xbox's own chief strategy officer later acknowledged the service had lost millions of subscribers in the months that followed.

On 21 April 2026 Microsoft cut Ultimate to $22.99 and PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99. The additions from October stayed. That makes the current price the interesting one: $3 above the pre-increase price, $7 below the peak, for a service that is measurably larger than it was before either change.

Two practical consequences. If you cancelled in October 2025 on price, the number you left over no longer exists. And if you are budgeting off a figure you saw in coverage from late 2025, it is $7 too high.

The longer pattern is worth naming plainly: a rise roughly every twelve to eighteen months since 2023, one of which was rolled back under pressure. That is not a prediction — it is the only honest thing the record supports.

There is also no annual plan to lock a rate in with. Ultimate is sold by the month and a year costs twelve months at whatever the rate then is, which is covered in full on Xbox Game Pass 12 months.

Price coverage tends to stop at the number, which is the least useful part. The number that decides it is how many games a month you would otherwise have bought.

One mid-price game costs more than one month of Ultimate. So break-even is about a single game a month that you would genuinely have paid for. Below that, buying the two or three games you actually want is cheaper. Above it, the subscription wins comfortably and the price change barely moves the conclusion.

What the increase did change is the margin for people sitting near that line — which is exactly who cancelled. If that is you, the April cut may have moved you back over it.

This site exists to make that check possible rather than rhetorical: every catalogue title is listed with the real Microsoft Store price of the same game, so you can add up what you would have bought instead of guessing. The tier comparison covers Essential, Premium, PC and Ultimate, and Game Pass price by country shows how far the spread goes between markets.