The best cloud gaming services could represent the future of gaming. The days of buying a single game for a single system and being married to said system forever seem to be behind us. Now, players can start a game on a PC in the morning, continue it on a console in the afternoon, and pick it up on a smartphone before bed, not to mention tablets, web browsers, and even smart TVs themselves. It’s never been easier or more convenient to play whatever you want, wherever you want.
Currently, there are not that many cloud gaming services on the market. Some as Xbox Game Pass, have made great progress in recent years; others, like Google Stadia, have already disappeared into the digital ether. In any case, the concept of cloud gaming is still a work in progress. Each of these services comes with some caveats. Many are technically still in beta; some of them may eventually disappear.
For now, however, each of these cloud gaming services has at least one big point in its favor. If you’re tired of being tied to a gaming console or PC, try them out and see which one suits your habits and budget.
To choose the cloud gaming services on this list, I tested each one on a variety of platforms, working on single-player action/adventure games and multiplayer first-person shooters where possible. I also made sure to play each service for a few consecutive hours to see how stable the connection was over time.
Today’s best cloud gaming services
Xbox Game Pass is basically the best game streaming service you can subscribe to today, as well as one of the best gaming services overall. That’s because the Ultimate tier not only gives you a very generous library of games for Xbox and Windows PC, but also a solid streaming service.
The streaming element allows you to stream games from the cloud to all types of devices, from an older Xbox One to Android phones, tablets, iPads, laptops, MacBooks, and more. All you really need is a compatible Xbox controller, although a suite of games offers touchscreen controls. At around $15 a month, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate isn’t the cheapest service and you’re limited to streaming games in the Xbox library. But the overall service and streaming experience is top-notch and very hard to beat.
Nvidia GeForce Now has the potential to be one of the most expensive cloud gaming services, or one of the cheapest, depending on what games you already own and how often you need to play them over the cloud. Instead of giving you a ready-made library, GeForce Now lets you stream PC games you already own on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, and Ubisoft Connect. You can’t play every game on those platforms, but you can play over 1,500, which beats most of the competition by a wide margin.
The Nvidia GeForce Now free tier lets you play for an hour straight on servers that sometimes have queues. Works well for casual cloud gamers. But you can also pay $10 per month for priority server access and 1080p resolution, or $20 per month to stream from an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 machine, with 4K resolution and eight-hour sessions. In my testing, I found the free tier’s queues to be inconvenient, but performance was good.
PlayStation Plus Premium may not be Sony’s GamePass killer, but it’s still the best service if you primarily play on PS5 and PS4. In 2022, PlayStation Plus was split into three different services, with PS Plus Premium being the most expensive tier. With it, you can access more than 300 streaming titles from PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 and PSP, and play them on a PlayStation console or on your PC. When I installed the PC app on our test machine, I found it clunky and tedious, but it’s the only (legal) way to play some of Sony’s classic games without a PlayStation console.
The big draw of PlayStation Plus Premium is that you have access to a ton of games that you simply couldn’t stream anywhere else, including the original God of War, Infamous, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time, and many others. Sony exclusives. However, the library is still missing some fan favorites from previous PlayStation consoles, and the inability to download classic games for offline play on PS5 remains disappointing. As it stands, PlayStation Plus Premium is imperfect.
One of the most uneven streaming services, Amazon Luna still has its charms, especially if you’ve already invested heavily in the Amazon ecosystem. For $10 a month, Luna gives you access to over 100 games, which you can stream on a variety of systems, including Amazon Fire tablets and Fire TV streaming devices. As such, if you have a Fire TV box or device connected to your TV, Amazon Luna makes sense as an out-of-the-box gaming platform.
The main drawback is that there is absolutely no way to download any of these games, save for a few that come courtesy of the Ubisoft Connect service (which costs an extra $15-$18 a month, naturally). In my experience, the Amazon Luna controller was also cumbersome and required specialized software to work properly on both mobile devices and PCs. Although it is not strictly necessary to play.
How to choose the best cloud gaming service for you
The most important consideration when choosing a cloud gaming service is whether you want to own streaming titles or rent them indefinitely. Nvidia GeForce Now relies on games that you own outright, meaning you can continue playing them for as long as you want, even if GeForce Now removes them from the service or shuts them down entirely. Games from other services, such as Amazon Luna, belong directly to Amazon; you are only paying for temporary access. Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Premium fall somewhere in between, as you can own some of the games outright and bring your own save data.
It’s also worth asking if you want to download some of the games or just stream the whole thing. GeForce Now is based on games from Steam, GOG, etc., so downloading them is not a problem. Likewise, you can download many games from Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. Amazon Luna is streaming all the time.
How we test cloud gaming services
Jugo Mobile tests cloud gaming services by playing a variety of different games, on a variety of different platforms. We try to test every device that supports a service, from game consoles to web browsers to smart TVs. We also review games from different genres, particularly immersive action/adventure and competitive first-person shooter titles, to ensure a service handles single-player and multiplayer experiences well. Once that’s done, we’ll try to sit down and play a single game for hours at a time to see if the connection is stable and how many hiccups we encounter along the way.
Beyond that, we evaluate cloud gaming services based on numbers: how many games are offered, how much each one costs, how much data each one consumes, etc. Nvidia GeForce Now offers more than ten times as many games as Amazon Luna, for example, and GeForce Now can be the cheapest or most expensive service, depending on what you want to stream.
