These are the Best Cloud Gaming Services in 2025
Oh, the cloud. What would we do without it? Personally, I would be without my music, photos, passwords, and games; in short, I'd be fucked. That's because these days the cloud is more than a storage space for digital data. It can, for example, let you play high-end PC and console quality games on a phone, if you wanted to. That's the quick, dirty pitch for the possibility of cloud gaming and—while flawed in its current state—it may just be the future of video games.
Cloud gaming obviates the space and cost of dedicated hardware like a gaming console, eliminates long download times, and says sayonara to the days of manual synching save data across devices. The promise is that if you have good enough internet, you can play any game (regardless of graphical fidelity) on any phone, tablet, computer, or licensed device like a TV or projector. Hell, some even let you use a VR headset as a screen.
Right now, NVIDIA and Amazon are leading the charge on PC cloud gaming, while Microsoft and Sony each have its own equivalent for consoles. Don't get it twisted, cloud gaming and subscription gaming are technically different services. This can be confusing when it comes to Xbox Game Pass where, for example, the top tier of the subscription service includes cloud gaming, same with PlayStation Plus. And another wrinkle. The console streaming services are technically in beta, which is why they are offered as a bonus instead of sold separately.
Looking at the field as it stands, there are are four massive corporate owned cloud gaming services you can pay for. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, PlayStation Plus Premium, NVIDIA GeForce Now, and Amazon Luna. They aren't all equal, but depending on what type of gamer you are, you may find one fits the bill better than the rest. To help guide you to the wisest purchase, here is a full breakdown of every cloud gaming offering.
The Current Options
Game Pass Ultimate
Pardon the pun, but Game Pass is the ultimate subscription for cloud gaming. If you want to start from absolute zero and have access to a momentous library of games streamed to any device that supports the Windows PC app. From PCs to phones to Smart TVs, and now including VR headsets, a Game Pass Ultimate subscription is about so much more than the Xbox. It's about playing games literally wherever you go on whatever device you have on you. When it comes to that vision of cloud gaming, Xbox is the currently the closest to delivering.
When you subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you are doing it for the games. From the latest amazing Indiana Jones game to FC25 (to dozens of indie gems), any gamer can find a thousand hours of fun in this catalogue. It's what you're paying for, actually, and the cloud streaming is more of a bonus. It's not always priority number one for Microsoft and it shows in the inconsistent performance across titles and connections.
Recent updates have made improvements across the board. The service started letting subscribers use their VR headsets as screens in late 2023. And last year, Ultimate subscribers were given the ability to stream select titles they own from their Xbox library. A little too late but we'll take it.
GeForce NOW
If Game Pass is for the people, GeForce Now is the professional choice. Realistically, it works pretty differently and is aimed at another market entirely. Gamers with large libraries of PC games.
NVIDIA's cloud gaming service is the industry standard at the high-end, allowing for 4K streaming with HDR and RTX lighting effects on and DLSS upscaling purring. Normally, you would need to spend thousands of dollars to get a PC that could do all this and still maintain steady frame rates over 100 FPS. With GeForce Now, all you need is a good connection (starting at 45 Mbps for everything I just mentioned)—and the games themselves. Unlike Game Pass, this isn't a subscription service. GeForce Now connects with Steam, Epic Games, GOG, and even your Xbox game library.
You can opt in at one of three tiers—Free, Performance, or Ultimate. The free tier limits session length to under an hour so it's more like a glorified demo for the perfectly viable Performance tier. For $10, a month being able to stream pretty much any PC game you own to your phone or tablet is a good deal. Then there's Ultimate, the only tier that lets you stream in 4K at 240 FPS. At £20 a month, it's a solid stopgap for gamers with an aging PC rig who still aren't ready to upgrade.
GeForce Now works on Steam Deck and other PC handhelds too, which lets you enjoy titles those machines wouldn't normally be able to handle. If you have the internet bandwidth and the games, this is the current cloud gaming service to beat.
PlayStation Plus Premium
If you take "Cloud" streaming literally, you have to go with PlayStation Plus. That joke isn't even factually true, since Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has made it to PC, but it's iconic spiky-haired protagonist may as well be the face of the PlayStation 4 and 5's game streaming program.
You can only get into PlayStation's cloud gaming beta if you pay for the most expensive tier of PS Plus, Premium. With it, you'll get online feature and access to hundreds of streamable titles including Death Stranding and God of War as well as a healthy library of throwbacks from the PS1 and PS2 era. You don't need the strongest internet to start streaming on PS Plus, and it even has the lowest minimum required network specs at 5 Mbps.
This is all great until you release how limited the options are compared to the competitors. No streaming on your phone or smart TV, just on PlayStation and PC—two places where games can already be played sans cloud nonsense. So, what's the point? I see it as an added bonus for the PlayStation Portal. This remote handheld has mixed results in Remote Play mode, and using cloud streaming smoothes out those issues.
With the Xbox app, it doesn't matter whether you're cloud streaming on PC or playing a title downloaded through Game Pass on your console (or vice versa), your save will sync to the cloud and be there regardless of where you choose to play next. The process is not as seamless on PS Plus and will often require a manual sync.
On the whole, it is the most limited of the major options. Between being stuck to the PlayStation app or PS console and these cloud save issues, it doesn't yet feel like a feature Sony would be able to justify charging for on its own.
Amazon Luna
The black sheep of the cloud gaming race is Luna. Amazon is not a gaming company and pretty much every foray into the form has resulted in failure, so it's easy to approach its cloud gaming service with skepticism. Luna is not a complete bust, and it will be right for some players, but neither the library nor the tech are more impressive than its top competitors. So where does it fit?
Price, for one. For £8.99 Luna+ offers a rotating library of over 100 titles. It's a decent variety of stuff, everything from Sonic to Tomb Raider and The Witcher. If you already subscribe to Prime, there's a handful of games you can try out for free to stream including a couple Fallout titles and co-op favorite Overcooked. You can also opt to pay separate subscription fees to get Jackbox games or Ubisoft titles via Luna as well. It's a welcoming starter price, with plenty of opportunities to spend your money down the line. It also makes the store and ecosystem feel claustrophobic, fractured because you're always seeing something you don't have access to.
Then there's the Luna controller. I've used it during some demo sessions and it's not awful, but not very impressive either. You're still better off just using an official Xbox controller. Although at that point, Game Pass is right there albeit at twice the cost. If you don't have a PC and can somehow can justify £9 a month on what is basically game rental, but not £20, then give Luna+ a shot.
The Elevator Pitch for Cloud Gaming
Unless you're a gamer, it's not immediately obvious what cloud gaming really entails. Here's a primer
How it works: In the simplest terms, when you boot up a game it is not downloaded locally. Instead, they exist on a server somewhere—we call this "the cloud"—and are remotely streamed from the server directly to a player's device. This means when you press an input, it sends that input to the server and streams back the response—this leaves more room for input lag, especially on an unstable connection, and why connection is so important.
Why choose cloud gaming: With cloud gaming, how good your games look and how well they run are largely dependent on bandwidth. If stable internet is no issue, there are good reasons to choose it. You can run games on your older PC or last-gen console that they wouldn't normally support without having to pay the upfront cost of hardware upgrades. If you don't have room for a beefy PC, these will help you run your Steam and Epic libraries on a laptop. On console, it can be a great way to try out a game before having to commit to a download.
The Alternatives to Cloud Gaming
Cloud gaming vs gaming subscriptions: If you've read this far (and didn't skim) you should know the difference. Cloud gaming lets you stream games you own to a device. Gaming subscriptions give you access to a rotating library of titles... until you unsubscribe. Many services have components of both, but it's worth knowing the difference of fundamentals.
Cloud streaming vs Remote Play: On PlayStation, you can do something called Remote Play. This uses Wi-Fi (or data) to stream any game from your console to either a mobile device or PlayStation Portal and has been around since the PS4. Using Sony's cloud streaming (included with PS Plus Premium), you can also stream titles directly from the cloud to your PC or Portal. On the handheld in particular, this is a big upgrade from Remote Play in terms of stability and reliability of connection.
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