In your pocket, playable anywhere
The phone is the one device everyone has, which makes mobile the great equalizer for group play - nobody needs to buy hardware. The best mobile games to play with friends are the ones with genuine crossplay, so a phone player can join friends on console or PC, and they're perfect for a long-distance group on a call. This list is ranked for real multiplayer, not just single-player games with a leaderboard.
Our top mobile pick is Minecraft - the Bedrock edition runs on phones and crossplays with every console and PC, so one world works for the whole group. Among Us is the free social-deduction classic, Fortnite and Genshin Impact both play well on mobile, and Terraria and Stardew Valley bring deeper co-op to the small screen.
Because mobile picks are so often crossplay, they double as long-distance and free picks - a phone plus a call is the lowest-barrier group setup there is. For playing right inside a voice app, see the Discord guide.
Two specific cases have their own pages. For two people sharing a single handset - which works less often than search results suggest - see two player games on one phone. For a group where nobody wants to spend anything and not everyone is on a phone, see free crossplay games.
One situation this page does not cover: everybody has a phone and you are all in the same room. That is a different shortlist, because the winning setup is one person buying a game that the other phones join as controllers rather than everyone installing the same app - phone games to play in the same room works through all three ways of doing it.
Several of the picks above began life as console games, and touch controls are the reason most people stop playing them on a phone. A Bluetooth pad fixes that for a smaller outlay than people expect - the best mobile games to play with a controller covers which pads list phone support in their own specifications, and where to check whether a given game accepts one.
