Phasmophobia vs Lethal Company

The short answer: platforms first, then how much you want to be scared

Buy Phasmophobia if anyone in your group is on PlayStation. It runs on PC and PlayStation with crossplay between them, so a mixed group can actually play it. It is also the genuinely frightening one - if your four want to be scared rather than to laugh, this is the game.

Buy Lethal Company if all four of you are on PC. It is cheaper, it is funnier, and the proximity voice chat produces the specific kind of chaos that groups end up quoting for weeks. It is PC-only, so a single console player rules it out entirely.

Both take up to four players, both are cheap, and both are built around the same underlying idea: a small group going somewhere dangerous with inadequate equipment and gradually losing composure. The difference is what the game does with your fear.

Availability is the first filter, and it decides most groups

Phasmophobia is on PC and PlayStation, with crossplay between the two - so a group split between a PS5 and a couple of PCs works. Lethal Company is PC and Steam only, with no console version at all.

That is not a close call for a mixed group. If one of your four is on a console, Phasmophobia is the only one of the two you can actually play together, and no amount of preference changes it. Our games without crossplay page covers the wider pattern of platform limits catching groups out.

Your voice is an input in both, for different reasons

This is the shared feature that makes both games work, and it is worth understanding before you buy either.

In Phasmophobia, the ghost reacts to what you actually say out loud - your microphone is a piece of ghost-hunting equipment rather than a chat feature. That turns a normal group voice call into part of the game, and it is the single cleverest thing about it.

In Lethal Company, proximity chat means you hear people who are near you and lose them when they wander off. The result is less a horror mechanic than a comedy one: the entire game is four people shouting increasingly useless directions at each other while the audio fades out.

Both mean a microphone is effectively mandatory. If part of your group cannot use one, neither game is the right pick and our games without talking guide is the better page.

Phasmophobia: the investigation

Up to four of you enter a haunted location with equipment - a thermometer, a camera, a book the ghost might write in - and the job is to work out what kind of entity is there and get out. It is methodical. There are long stretches of nothing happening, which is precisely how the tension is built, and then something happens.

It rewards a group that will take it slightly seriously: dividing up equipment, reporting what they saw, agreeing a plan. A group that treats it as a laugh will find it slower than they hoped. Crossplay between PC and PlayStation, four players, and it is not usually stocked on Amazon so check the store price directly.

Lethal Company: the shift

Four of you land on a derelict moon, scavenge scrap to meet a quota set by an uninterested employer, and mostly die. The framing is corporate satire and the tone is comic, but the moment-to-moment experience is still four people alone in the dark making bad decisions.

It is looser and shorter per session than Phasmophobia, which makes it the easier one to fit into a normal evening - see our short sessions guide for why that matters more than most groups think. It is also the cheaper of the two. PC and Steam only, and not on Amazon, so check the Steam price.

Which one your group will actually enjoy

Pick Phasmophobia if your four want to be frightened, will co-operate on a task, and include someone on PlayStation.

Pick Lethal Company if your four are all on PC, want to laugh more than they want to be scared, and prefer shorter, messier sessions.

Pick neither if anyone is out on horror or cannot use a microphone.

What about three players, or five?

Both are built for four and both work with three, though a smaller group makes Phasmophobia noticeably harder and Lethal Company noticeably quieter. Neither takes five, which is worth knowing before you invite someone - our five-player page covers what does, and Dead by Daylight is the one horror game built for exactly five.

If you are a trio specifically, our three-player page lists games designed around that number rather than tolerating it.

The verdict

Phasmophobia is the better game for a group that wants horror, and the only one of the two a mixed PC-and-PlayStation group can play. Lethal Company is the better evening for four PC friends who want to laugh, and it is cheaper.

Decide by platform first, because that removes the choice for most groups, and by tone second. Both are on our horror roundup alongside the crossplay alternatives, and our Steam page covers the wider PC co-op catalog.