Licensing and Pricing

How each game engine is licensed and priced.

Unity

Free (Personal tier) up to $200,000 in trailing revenue/funding, then paid per-seat Pro/Enterprise subscriptions; the widely criticized 2023 per-install “Runtime Fee” was cancelled in September 2024 and hasn’t returned.

Unreal Engine

Free to download and use, with a 5% royalty on lifetime gross revenue only after a game crosses $1 million — meaning most indie developers never pay anything; non-game commercial use has a separate seat-based license.

Godot

Completely free and open source under the permissive MIT license, with no royalties, revenue thresholds, or paid tiers of any kind, governed by the nonprofit Godot Foundation.

GameMaker

Free for non-commercial use on non-console platforms, with a one-time roughly $99.99 fee for a commercial license on non-console platforms; console export requires a separate ongoing Enterprise subscription.

Construct

A subscription-based license (with a limited free tier), priced per year rather than tied to game revenue or royalties.

CryEngine

Available under a “pay what you want” model with a small minimum, plus a 5% royalty on revenue after a project earns its first $5,000 — one of the more unusual pricing structures in this group.

Cocos Creator

Free and open source for its core engine, with optional paid cloud/backend services offered separately by its maintainer, Cocos.

Bevy

Completely free and open source, dual-licensed under MIT/Apache 2.0, with no royalties, funded through donations and grants via the nonprofit Bevy Foundation.

Defold

Completely free with no royalties or revenue thresholds of any kind, stewarded by the nonprofit Defold Foundation rather than sold as a commercial product.