Menu
  Log out
 

Game Backend Cost Planning: Sizing Plans by MAU, Servers, and API Calls

Game Server Backend Guide • Updated Apr 18, 2026

Game Backend Cost Planning: Sizing Plans by MAU, Servers, and API Calls

Game backend cost is almost always a function of four numbers: monthly active players (MAU), active dedicated servers, API calls per month, and document storage. This guide walks through the math in plain terms and shows how to map your game's numbers to a tier instead of guessing.

Why this matters: usage-metered platforms can quietly 10× your invoice during a viral week, while flat tiers can over-provision for steady games. Understanding the shape of your traffic is more important than the per-unit rate.

The Four Drivers

Driver Proxy for How to estimate
MAU Auth load, documents stored ~3–5× average daily active (DAU) for most live games
Active servers Registry load, heartbeat traffic Observed fleet size at peak hour
API calls / month Read/write volume ~10–40 calls/session + server heartbeats
Document storage Player data volume Max doc size × registered players × avg docs/player

Worked Example: A Small Survival Game

Assume 1,500 MAU, 20 public servers online at peak, each player triggers ~25 API calls per session averaged over 8 sessions/month, each server sends a heartbeat every 20s during 12 active hours/day.

Player API calls: 1,500 MAU × 8 sessions × 25 calls  =   300,000 / month
Heartbeats:       20 servers × 180/hr × 12 × 30      = 1,296,000 / month
Total API:                                           ~ 1.6M / month
Documents:        ~2 docs/player × 5,000 accounts    =    10,000
Active servers (peak):                                        20

This game fits inside the Scale tier (5M API calls, 500 servers, 500K documents). The Launch tier at 500K calls would be too tight once heartbeats are counted — a common surprise.

Hidden Costs to Watch

  • Heartbeats eat API quota. A 5-second heartbeat across 100 servers is ~51M calls/month. Heartbeat at 20–30s.
  • Oversized documents. Progression blobs balloon over time; cap key sizes and split hot fields.
  • Polling for config. Have servers poll the active version id, not the full bundle, and only download when it changes.
  • Historical seasons. Retaining 24 seasons of a 100K-entry leaderboard is serious storage.
  • Egress on GameLift-style services. Multiplayer bandwidth can dominate the invoice more than compute. Price egress before picking hosting.

Supercraft GSB Tier Ladder

Tier Price MAU API / month Active servers Best for
Dev Free 200 200,000 3 Evaluation, local dev, prototype
Launch $10/mo 500 500,000 50 First live game
Scale $49/mo 5,000 5,000,000 500 Active commercial game
Custom Contact Custom Custom Custom Studios, partners

Practical budgeting tip: pick the tier for peak-week traffic, not average. Under-provisioning during a feature-page or a storefront sale event is the most common avoidable mistake.

Related in This Hub

See the full plan table on the Supercraft Game Server Backend page.

← Back to Game Server Backend Guides
Top