Free Games to Play With Friends on PS5 and Xbox

Download Fortnite. It is free on both consoles, it crossplays with everything, and it is the only pick here that also runs on a Switch and a phone so nobody in the group gets left out

The verdict first: for a mixed group of friends on PS5s and Xboxes, Fortnite is the one to open, and the reason is reach rather than taste. It is free, it has full crossplay, and it runs on PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC and mobile - so the one friend with the wrong console and the one friend with only a phone are both still in the party. If the group is four people and competitive shooting is not the mood, Rocket League does the same job with a lower skill floor and the same full crossplay.

Beyond those two the pick depends on the size and shape of your group, and the list below is ordered that way. Three players and you want to shoot things: Apex Legends, which is built around three-player squads. A big group that wants to laugh rather than win: Fall Guys, or Among Us, which takes four to fifteen. Five a side: Overwatch 2. A squad that wants a long co-op game rather than a match: Warframe. A group that wants an MMO to live in: Throne and Liberty.

Read this first: do you need PlayStation Plus or an Xbox subscription for these?

Generally no, and that is the single most valuable thing on this page. Sony's own wording is that “for the majority of games that you have purchased on disc or downloaded from PlayStation Store, you need a PlayStation Plus membership plan to play online”, and that “most free to play games such as Fortnite, Apex Legends and Call of Duty Warzone do not require a membership”. Xbox works the same shape: paid games sit behind the paid online tier, free-to-play multiplayer does not.

So a group of four on consoles can play any of the picks below tonight for nothing - no game purchase, no membership. That is genuinely unusual, and it is why this list is worth more to most households than any paid roundup on the site. The caveat is that platform rules change, so check the individual game's store page if your plan depends on it; our full breakdown of what multiplayer costs works through every platform's rules with the operators' own wording.

What “free” actually costs on a console

Three things, none of them the game. The first is storage: these are large downloads and a console that is already full is the most common reason a free game night does not start on time. Start the download before everybody is in the room, not after.

The second is accounts. Every pick here wants a publisher account attached to your console account - an Epic account for Fortnite, and similar for the rest - and that is the step that eats fifteen minutes with a group of four, because somebody always has to reset a password. Do it in advance.

The third is the money the game is actually built to take. None of these charge for the game; all of them sell something. A battle pass across a year costs more than a paid co-op game you buy once, which is the honest arithmetic our cheap picks page keeps returning to. Free is the right word for tonight and the wrong word for a year.

Crossplay: all eight, and what that means for a mixed room

Every pick on this page carries crossplay, which is why they are the right answer for a group with a PS5 in one house and an Xbox in another. Fortnite, Rocket League, Apex Legends, Fall Guys, Overwatch 2 and Among Us all list full crossplay. Warframe goes further with cross-platform play and Cross Save across every platform, so your account follows you between a PS5 and a PC. Throne and Liberty lists cross-play on PC, PS5 and Xbox with the exception of PlayStation-only servers - a detail worth reading before the whole guild picks a world. Our free crossplay page ranks the same titles by how far that reach extends, including to phones.

If your group is not all on consoles

This page is deliberately the console cut. If everyone is on a PC, free games on Steam is the better list. If the group is holding phones, free mobile games is the one to send round. And if the problem is that nobody wants to install anything at all, multiplayer games with no download exists for that exact evening.

Picked by the size of your group

Two of you. Rocket League. Two to four online plus local play, full crossplay, five-minute matches, and the rare free game that a non-gamer can be competitive in within an evening.

Three of you. Apex Legends. It is built around three-player squads, which means a trio is the intended group rather than a group with a gap in it - the same reason it leads our three-player list.

Four of you. Fortnite or Fall Guys, both of which take a squad of up to four and both of which are free on both consoles. Fortnite if the group is competitive, Fall Guys if the group wants to lose cheerfully.

Five of you. Overwatch 2, which is five on five, so a group of five fills a side exactly. That is a rarer fit than it sounds - our five-player page exists because most games round down to four.

Six or more. Among Us. Four to fifteen players, online and local, free, full crossplay, and it works over a voice call as well as it works in a room - the full review is blunt about the one requirement no setting supplies, which is a group that will actually talk.

A squad that wants co-op rather than a match. Warframe. One to four players, free, cross-platform play and Cross Save everywhere. The opening hours are long - that is the real price - but it is the deepest free co-op game a console group can start tonight.

Why there are no paid games on this page

Because the question is “what can we play tonight for nothing”, and answering it with a game that costs money is the thing that makes these lists useless elsewhere. Every pick above downloads free on both consoles. If you want the paid console picks, the PS5 list and the Xbox list are the right pages, and Xbox Game Pass crossplay games covers the middle ground where a subscription you may already have replaces the purchase.

Where to go next

The free hub is the parent list, and free crossplay games is the version of this page that includes phones and Switch rather than just the two big consoles. If the group is spread across cities rather than consoles, the long-distance hub is the better starting point, and the online hub is where the paid picks for the same situations live.