Do You Need PS Plus to Play Split-Screen?

No. Local split-screen is not online multiplayer, so no subscription is required

If two or four people are sitting in front of one console sharing one screen, you do not need PlayStation Plus, Xbox Game Pass or Nintendo Switch Online. That is the answer for the overwhelming majority of split-screen games, and it is the reason split-screen is the cheapest multiplayer there is: one copy, one console, as many controllers as the game supports, nothing else.

The reason people search for this is that the console makers sell the subscriptions as "the thing you need to play with other people", which is true of online play and not of the person next to you. Where it gets genuinely confusing is that a handful of modern games route even their local modes through online services - and when they do, the subscription comes back. Checked October 11, 2026.

What each subscription actually covers

PlayStation Plus.PlayStation's own support pages say most PS4 and PS5 games require a PlayStation Plus subscription for online multiplayer, that some games do not require it, and that the PlayStation Store listing is where you check a specific game. Note what that sentence is about: online. Nothing in it concerns two people on one sofa.

Xbox Game Pass and Xbox's online service. Same shape - the paid tier is for online multiplayer in paid games. Free-to-play titles on Xbox do not require it for online play, which is a useful quirk if your group plays Fortnite rather than Call of Duty.

Nintendo Switch Online. Also an online-play service. Four people passing Joy-Cons around a Switch in the same room are not using it at all.

The four things that genuinely do cost money

Online play, obviously. The moment one of your players is in a different building, you are in subscription territory on paid games. Our free versus paid multiplayer guide is the full cost breakdown.

A couch pair joining an online lobby. This is the case people get wrong most often. Two players on one console entering an online match together is online play - the local split is incidental. Expect to need the subscription. The games built for this are at split-screen online multiplayer.

Hosted worlds and servers. Minecraft Realms, for instance, is a paid service separate from both the game and the console subscription. Local split-screen on the same console is free; a world that stays up while you are asleep is not.

Games that require a connection by design. Which brings us to the exception below.

The exception, named: Call of Duty Black Ops 7

Activision's own editions FAQ states that Black Ops 7 uses texture streaming across all game modes, so a continuous internet connection is required to play any game mode, including Campaign, and that a PlayStation Plus or Game Pass Essential subscription is required to access all social features and play all game modes except for solo gameplay in Co-Op Campaign. Its split-screen is also two players only and limited to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

So a game that supports local split-screen can still require both a connection and a subscription to use it. That is a real change from how split-screen worked ten years ago, and it is why "does split-screen need PS Plus" cannot be answered with a flat no for every title. The detail is at how to play split-screen on Black Ops 7.

How to check any game yourself, in thirty seconds

Open the game's store listing on the console you own and read the requirement line. PlayStation's guidance is explicit that the Store listing is the authority for a given game, and the listing will say something like "PS Plus required for online play" alongside the local player count. If the listing offers a local or offline mode and the subscription note is scoped to online play, your couch session is free. If the listing says a connection is required in all modes, believe it.

The second-account question

The other half of this search is "do both players need their own subscription", and for local split-screen the answer is no, because neither of them needs one. Where it becomes a real question is a shared console with two accounts both wanting to play online. On a PS5, Sony's mechanism for that is Console Sharing and Offline Play, which is what lets other accounts on your console use benefits tied to yours. The equivalent idea exists on Xbox as the home-console setting. Both are features you switch on once, not extra purchases.

For a family, the practical configuration is: one subscription on the account that owns the games, console sharing enabled, and local split-screen used for everything that can be played in the same room - which is most of what we recommend. Our family multiplayer guide and one copy, two players guide cover the rest of that economy.

The four picks, explained

Overcooked! All You Can Eat is the cleanest demonstration of the rule: four players, one screen, console unplugged from the internet, nothing owed to anybody. It also has full crossplay for later, when somebody moves away.

Rayman Legends is the cheapest four-player local game we recommend, and it needs nothing at all - no connection, no accounts, no service. This is the one to own for a power cut or a holiday house.

Minecraftshows where the line falls inside a single game. Console split-screen for up to four players: free. Joining a friend's world over the internet, or running a Realm: that is the paid part. Same purchase, two different answers - see Minecraft split-screen.

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is here as the counter-example, with the requirement quoted from Activision above. If you want shooters on one screen without a subscription, Borderlands 3 on console is the four-player answer and four-player split-screen games has the rest.

What we are not claiming

We have not published a per-game subscription table for every title on this site, because those requirements are set by publishers and change with updates - a table like that would be wrong within a month and we would not notice. What is above is the rule, the four categories of genuine cost, one fully sourced exception, and the thirty-second method for checking any game yourself. Everything attributed to Sony or Activision is from their own support pages, with the check date in this page's source.