Game subscriptions

A year long card costs more than a monthly one. That is obvious and tells you nothing. Only dividing the price by the months it buys shows which denomination is genuinely cheaper. That is why every entry lets you switch on the rates and see the figure per 1 month, and sort the whole list by best rate. Without it, comparing codes of different lengths is guesswork.

We worked out the rates for every subscription we track and something turned up that no single page reveals. On one Game Pass tier the three month card is cheapest and the six month one is the dearest per month. On another it is the reverse: the six month wins and the three month comes off worst. On a third the plain monthly card takes it. On PS Plus the annual always wins. No single rule covers those cases, so checking beats assuming.

From the number of stores carrying a given denomination. Where the same code has a dozen sellers, competition drives the price down and the rate per month falls with it. Where a denomination has two or three, there is nothing to drive down and the longer card can end up dearer per month than a shorter one. It shows most clearly on PS Plus, where effectively only the maker's own store sells, so the ladder is even because no market shapes it.

First the variant: trial cards work only on accounts with no history of that subscription, and cards marked non-stackable will not add to a running one. Second the region, because some codes are tied to one and will not work on an account registered elsewhere. Third whether you already hold the service as part of another bundle, since some subscriptions include others. Those three account for most failed activations and wasted purchases.