Software Alternatives & Reviews

PlayFab VS Photon Engine

Compare PlayFab VS Photon Engine and see what are their differences

PlayFab logo PlayFab

PlayFab is a backend platform for games, delivering powerful real-time tools and services for LiveOps.

Photon Engine logo Photon Engine

Independent networking engine and multiplayer platform.
  • PlayFab Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-14
  • Photon Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-25

PlayFab videos

GameSparks vs PlayFab: Best Price? Trust? Features? Current+Future Value?

More videos:

  • Tutorial - PlayFab Tutorial - Multiplayer Back-End for Unity
  • Review - Meet Playfab - The Intelligent Backend Platform for Games

Photon Engine videos

Unet vs Photon Engine - A comparison

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to PlayFab and Photon Engine)
Developer Tools
63 63%
37% 37
Game Development
63 63%
37% 37
App Development
59 59%
41% 41
Game Engine
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using PlayFab and Photon Engine. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, PlayFab should be more popular than Photon Engine. It has been mentiond 16 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

PlayFab mentions (16)

  • Multiplayer developers, how do you store player data?
    I think the best way to get started is PlayFab they have a great C++ & Blueprint UE plugin. Source: 6 months ago
  • Any suggestion for a backend as a service for highscore/ranking data that is more customizable than Google Play?
    I’ve used playfab in the past to good success https://playfab.com/. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Magtatanong lang po.
    Kung gusto mo multiplayer game you can use Azure Playfab: https://playfab.com may "free" tier sila for development. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Leaderboard online in Unreal Engine 4.26
    Look into Microsoft's Azure PlayFab for something like this. There's a plugin for Unreal, though all of PlayFab's documentation seems to be for C# for Unity. Source: about 2 years ago
  • The Fundamentals of LiveOps with PlayFab
    This video blog provides a high-level overview of Azure PlayFab and how its services like LiveOps can be used to makes games more engaging for your players. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

Photon Engine mentions (2)

  • 'Foxhole' players launch organised in-game strike to demand change
    Source: photonengine.com (provides server networking and hosting for tens of millions of daily users on steam and other platforms). Source: over 2 years ago
  • steam vs itch.io
    With Steam you get 70% of the money you make from your game, and it costs $100 to put your game on the platform. But you get stuff like Steam Networking, VAC, Steam Achievements, etc. You might also get more sales if you put your game on Steam. With itch.io however, you get 100% of the money you make, and it's free to put your game on the platform. The problem is you will get less players than if you were to put... Source: over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing PlayFab and Photon Engine, you can also consider the following products

Nakama - Nakama is an open-source distributed social and realtime server for games and apps.

Unity Multiplayer - Create real-time, networked games.

Firebase - Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications for mobile and web.

GameSparks - GameSparks is a Backend-as-a-Service solution provider to mobile game developers to help them...

SmartFoxServer - Massive multiplayer platform

Colyseus - Multiplayer Game Server for Node.js. Focus on the gameplay instead of networking.