Overview
A couple of years ago, Unity’s short-lived Runtime Fee sent studios everywhere — ours included — scrambling to price out a possible engine switch. At Slidefactory, we ran the numbers before spending many hours changing our pipeline, since we use Unity for projects here such as McFarlane Digital, Broom Magic Mayhem, and Motusi. The Runtime Fee is gone now (more on that below), but the underlying question hasn’t changed: what does each engine actually cost as your project grows? Here’s the 2026 picture.
Unity vs Unreal Cost at a Glance (2026)
| Unity | Unreal Engine | |
|---|---|---|
| Free while | Revenue/funding under $200,000 per year (Unity Personal) | Gross revenue under $1,000,000 per title |
| Then you pay | Unity Pro: $2,310 per seat per year ($210/month) | 5% royalty on gross revenue above $1,000,000 (games) |
| Big-studio tier | Enterprise required above $25M revenue (custom pricing) | Non-game industries over $1M/year: $1,850 per seat per year |
| Per-install fees | None — Runtime Fee canceled in 2024 | None |
Who Doesn’t Pay Anything?
First, let’s start with a comparison of when you DO NOT need to pay fees to these different game engines.
Unreal
- Before you make $1,000,000 gross revenue from your Unreal game/product you owe nothing. Students, educators, and hobbyists are always free.
Unity
- You are using Unity Personal and your personal revenue that comes from Unity, or your total business revenue and funding, is under $200,000 in the last 12 months.
Unity License Cost in 2026
Past $200,000 in revenue or funding, you are required to upgrade to a paid Unity subscription license. Unity doesn’t let you mix and match plans on a project — everyone on the team needs a seat at the same tier.
- Unity Personal – Free under $200,000 in annual revenue/funding.
- Unity Pro – $2,310 per year per seat (or $210/month), required above $200,000. Pro and Enterprise prices went up 5% on January 12, 2026.
- Unity Industry – A higher-priced tier for non-game sectors (automotive, AEC, simulation); quoted through Unity sales.
- Unity Enterprise – Required above $25 million in annual revenue/funding; custom pricing through Unity sales.
One silver lining to the 2026 price bump: Unity removed seat charges for cloud-hosted Unity Version Control and expanded the free cloud storage tier from 5 GB to 25 GB.
Unreal Engine Pricing in 2026
Unreal’s model is the same one it’s had for years, and it’s simpler:
- Games: Free until a title passes $1,000,000 in lifetime gross revenue. After that, Epic takes a 5% royalty on gross revenue above the first million. No seat licenses required.
- Non-game industries: Companies above $1 million in annual gross revenue (film, architecture, automotive, simulation) pay for an Unreal Subscription at $1,850 per seat per year instead of royalties.
What Happened to the Unity Runtime Fee?
If you’re comparing engine costs from articles written in 2023–2024 (including the earlier version of this one), throw out the per-install math. Unity’s Runtime Fee — the per-engagement charge that would have kicked in after $1,000,000 revenue and 1,000,000 installs — was officially canceled in September 2024, about a year after it was announced. Unity went back to a straight seat-subscription model and has raised subscription prices instead. The result: Unity’s costs today are predictable and capped by headcount, not by how well your game sells.
Cost Analysis Example Scenarios
Here, we’ll compare different Unity vs Unreal cost scenarios. Assumptions: a team of 3 on Unity Pro (remember, above $200,000 in revenue or funding you need Pro), 2 years of development. That makes the Unity side the same in every scenario: $2,310 × 3 seats × 2 years = $13,860. What changes is Unreal’s royalty.
Scenario 1 – Indie Scale: $500,000 Gross Revenue
Unreal Engine Cost
- $500,000 is under the $1,000,000 royalty-free threshold: $0
Unity Pro Cost
- Subscriptions: $13,860 (no other fees)
Winner: Unreal. Below $1M gross, Unreal is literally free while Unity charges for seats the moment you cross $200K in revenue or funding.
Scenario 2 – Crossing the Threshold: $2,000,000 Gross Revenue
Unreal Engine Cost
- Royalty = 5% of ($2,000,000 − $1,000,000) = $50,000
Unity Pro Cost
- Subscriptions: $13,860
Winner: Unity — and this flips fast. For a 3-seat team over 2 years, the break-even point is roughly $1.28M gross revenue; above that, Unreal’s 5% outgrows Unity’s flat seats.
Scenario 3 – Breakout Hit: $25,000,000 Gross Revenue
Unreal Engine Cost
- Royalty = 5% of ($25,000,000 − $1,000,000) = $1,200,000
Unity Pro Cost
- Subscriptions: $13,860 (note: at $25M you hit Unity’s Enterprise threshold, so expect a custom — higher — contract from here up)
Winner: Unity, by a mile. Even a generously priced Enterprise agreement is a rounding error next to a seven-figure royalty.
Unity Vs Unreal Cost Conclusion
With the Runtime Fee dead, the 2026 comparison is refreshingly clean: Unreal costs nothing until you succeed, then takes 5% of the upside; Unity costs a predictable per-seat fee from your first $200K onward, no matter how big you get. If you’re pre-revenue or expect to stay under $1M gross, Unreal is the cheaper engine. If you’re building toward (or past) seven figures, Unity’s flat subscription becomes dramatically cheaper — a few thousand a year versus a percentage of every additional dollar.
It’s important to note that both models are based on gross revenue, which doesn’t account for your costs. If your gross revenue AND costs are $2,000,000, you’d still owe Epic $50,000 even if you didn’t make any profit — and you’d still need Unity Pro seats even in a break-even year.
Of course, licensing is rarely the deciding factor by itself — team experience, platform targets, and asset pipeline usually matter more. But at least now the pricing math is simple enough to fit on one table.
Choosing an engine for a commercial project? Our Unity development team helps studios and businesses budget, prototype, and ship. Talk to us before you commit to a stack.
