AWS 2026 Price Increase Alternative with a Migration away from AWS Gamelift
AWS is raising prices 30–40% in 2026. Game studios relying on AWS GameLift for dedicated game server hosting can likely expect an immediate and significant increase in total cloud costs this year due to AI hyperscaler demand.
Migrating from AWS GameLift to Edgegap takes minutes. Edgegap's dedicated plugins for Unity and Unreal Engine make the switch straightforward. No complex re-architecture required.
Reduce game server hosting costs by up to 30-45% by moving to Edgegap's multicloud orchestration, which automatically routes traffic to the most cost-effective providers. Including those unaffected by AWS's price increase.
AWS GameLift alternatives don't have to mean compromise. Edgegap's platform offers instant access to the world's largest network of 615+ locations worldwide, 99.99% availability, and the ability to scale to 14M CCU in 60 minutes.
Cloud server compute prices are rising as hardware shortages, driven by AI hyperscalers' datacenter demand, push cloud providers to increase their cloud compute rates.
Most recently, Hetzner confirmed it increases its prices by up to 50 percent due to “drastic component price increase” starting April 1st 2026.
Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) has apparently notified customers of an upcoming “30% to 40% rate increase” in 2026.
This means that game studios and game developers with game server hosting with AWS Gamelift can expect an instant increase in total cloud cost of 30% to 40% in 2026.
Edgegap is a multicloud game server orchestration platform. Edgegap has the ability to deploy game servers across 17+ providers which allows Edgegap to move traffic to cloud networks whose prices have not increased. Ensuring game studios have the most cost-effective game server hosting available. Make sure to discover Edgegap’s single universal price to all its 615+ locations regionless network on-demand.
AWS Gamelift - Alternatives
AWS Gamelift is a traditional, managed, service using fleet-based orchestration providing dedicated game server hosting and scaling capabilities.
AWS Gamelift pricing is based on charging studios by usage per location, and multiplies across AWS’s zones, exponentially increasing price as coverage increases, using traditional unoptimized fleets that waste capacity.
Meanwhile, Edgegap offers a modern, highly optimized, multicloud game server orchestration on the world’s largest edge network.
With instant, regionless access to all of Edgegap’s 615 locations worldwide,
that delivers 58% average reduction vs. public cloud for games,
the ability to scale to 14 million concurrent users (“CCU”) in 60 minutes,
and 99.99% availability thanks to a multicloud orchestration across 17+ providers.
AWS Gamelift vs Edgegap - Comparison
The following is a quick “head-to-head” comparison between AWS Gamelift and Edgegap.
Here is our in-depth comparison of AWS Gamelift vs Edgegap for more details across products, performance, security, price and more.
| AWS Gamelift | Edgegap |
|---|---|---|
Hosting & Orchestration Type | Traditional fleet-based orchestration. Requires manual fleet and scaling configuration, and charges for idle server capacity. | Modern, multicloud, just-in-time orchestration. No fleet pre-configuration. Servers deploy from cold start on demand and you only pay for compute actually used. |
Network & Infrastructure | Limited to ~35 AWS locations worldwide. Developers must select and pay for each region individually. | 615+ locations across 17+ cloud and bare metal providers. All available on-demand, no region selection required. |
Pricing Model | Per-region, fleet-based billing. Idle capacity is charged, IPv4 addresses cost extra, and a 30–40% price increase is expected in 2026. | Single worldwide price, pay-per-use, 100% compute utilization. IPv4 included. Multicloud routing minimizes cost automatically. |
Integrations & SDKs | Plugins for Unity and Unreal. Requires GameLift SDK integration and manual AWS permission setup. | Native plugins for Unity and Unreal. Additional integrations for Mirror, Photon Fusion, PlayFab, Nakama, Epic Online Services, and more. |
Scalability | Fleet-based scaling with manual capacity planning. Region selection required before scaling. | 40 deployments/second sustained for 60 min, reaching 14M CCU. Instant, regionless scale with 99.99% uptime. |
Documentation & Support | Detailed documentation for Unity and Unreal. No dedicated developer support community. | Full docs, video tutorials, and biweekly platform releases. Active community with engine and tool creator endorsements. |
How to Migrate from AWS Gamelift to Edgegap
If you are looking to migrate your multiplayer game from AWS Gamelift to Edgegap’s game server hosting & orchestration, the following simple steps will get you running in no time.
Make sure to refer to our “Switching from Gamelift to Edgegap” documentation for the latest updates to this process.
Before getting started, we expect that:
You currently use AWS Gamelift
You currently have a working game server build on Gamelift
Step 1: Remove AWS Gamelift SDK
The first step to switch to Edgegap is to remove the code that initializes AWS Gamelift within your game server. This is to reduce overhead and prevent errors. The code you are looking to remove probably looks like the the following (see links).
Unity (C#): Link to code
Unreal Engine (C++): Link to code
Step 2: Containerize your game server
The second step towards switching to Edgegap is to containerize your game server. You can follow the following guides for each engine, which takes around 5-20 minutes for projects in development.
Unity: Documentation, tutorial video
Unreal Engine : Documentation, tutorial video
Step 3 : Identify & Replace features
Review and identify services and features you currently use in AWS Gamelift, to be replaced with:
AWS Gamelift - Feature | Edgegap - Feature |
|---|---|
Authentication | Optionally, add fine-grained access controls: |
Hosting SDK (Unity, Unreal Engine) | No SDK required! ServerConfig replaced by Apps and Versions. |
Create a Build | Try our quickstart tools - Unity / Unreal Engine. |
Build Configuration | Fully Automated. Optionally expose additional ports or variables. |
Fleet | Private Fleets with Persistence and Cloud Overflow. Optionally add later on, or default to Match-Bound cloud. |
Lobby | |
Matchmaking | No-code matchmaker, test for free, integrate with lightweight SDKs. |
A/B testing | Configurable Profiles (Queues) and ⏩ Rolling Updates. |
Server Analytics |
Step 4 : (Optional) Setting up Fleets
Edgegap also offers an optional feature similar to AWS Gamelift’s fleets, if that is something from before you switched to Edgegap that you would like to keep using. Discover our Fleet Manager for persistent servers.
Written by
the Edgegap Team
