How much does it cost to RUN a web3 game? Not build. Run. Every month, forever, as long as players exist. We learned this expensive lesson across 3 game launches and consulting on 20+ others.
Everyone budgets for development. Almost nobody budgets correctly for operations. Here's the real breakdown.
Costs at 1,000 Daily Active Users
This is indie scale. Most web3 games never exceed this. Here's what you'll actually pay.
Monthly infrastructure costs:
| Category | Low Estimate | High Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud servers (AWS/GCP) | $400 | $800 |
| RPC endpoints | $150 | $400 |
| Database (managed) | $100 | $250 |
| CDN and asset hosting | $50 | $150 |
| Monitoring and logging | $50 | $100 |
| SSL and security | $20 | $50 |
| Backup and disaster recovery | $30 | $80 |
| Total | $800 | $1,830 |
This is manageable for a bootstrapped team. Two engineers working part-time can handle operations.
Hidden costs at this scale:
RPC overages. Free tiers run out faster than you expect. We burned through Alchemy's free tier in 2 weeks. Budget for paid plans from day 1.
Database scaling. 1,000 DAU seems small until you realize each player generates 50-100 database writes per session. That's 50,000-100,000 writes daily.
Customer support. Even 1,000 users generate 20-50 support tickets weekly. Someone has to answer them.
Realistic monthly total with hidden costs: $1,500-2,500
Costs at 10,000 Daily Active Users
This is success territory. You have a real game. You also have real expenses.
Monthly infrastructure costs:
| Category | Low Estimate | High Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud servers (multi-region) | $2,500 | $5,000 |
| RPC endpoints (growth tier) | $1,200 | $2,500 |
| Database cluster | $800 | $1,500 |
| CDN and asset hosting | $300 | $600 |
| Monitoring and APM | $400 | $800 |
| Security (WAF, DDoS) | $300 | $600 |
| Backup and DR | $200 | $400 |
| Subtotal infrastructure | $5,700 | $11,400 |
Staffing costs (unavoidable at this scale):
| Role | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| DevOps engineer (part-time) | $3,000-6,000 |
| Customer support (2 people) | $4,000-8,000 |
| Community manager | $2,000-4,000 |
| Subtotal staffing | $9,000-18,000 |
Total monthly: $14,700-29,400
This is where projects die. You need $15-30K monthly revenue just to break even on operations. Most games at 10K DAU generate $5-15K monthly.
The gap kills you. Revenue doesn't scale linearly with users. A 10x increase in users might only mean 3x revenue increase. But costs scale faster than revenue.
Costs at 100,000 Daily Active Users
This is rare. Maybe 20 web3 games have sustained this level. Here's what it costs.
Monthly infrastructure costs:
| Category | Cost Range |
|---|---|
| Cloud infrastructure (global) | $25,000-45,000 |
| RPC endpoints (enterprise) | $8,000-15,000 |
| Database cluster (sharded) | $6,000-12,000 |
| CDN and media | $3,000-6,000 |
| Real-time infrastructure | $4,000-8,000 |
| Monitoring and observability | $2,000-4,000 |
| Security stack | $3,000-6,000 |
| Disaster recovery | $2,000-4,000 |
| Subtotal infrastructure | $53,000-100,000 |
Staffing (required at scale):
| Role | Count | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| DevOps/SRE team | 2-3 | $20,000-35,000 |
| Backend engineers | 2-4 | $25,000-50,000 |
| Support team | 4-8 | $12,000-24,000 |
| Community team | 2-3 | $6,000-12,000 |
| Security specialist | 1 | $8,000-15,000 |
| Subtotal staffing | $71,000-136,000 |
Total monthly: $124,000-236,000
At this scale, you need $150K+ monthly revenue to survive. That's $1.8M annually just for operations. Most "successful" web3 games never reach this revenue level.
Case Study: The $50M Project's Real Costs
Our highest-volume project hit 15,000 peak DAU. Here's exactly what we paid.
Monthly operations breakdown:
| Category | Actual Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| AWS infrastructure | $4,200 |
| Alchemy RPC (growth) | $1,800 |
| MongoDB Atlas | $1,100 |
| Cloudflare | $450 |
| DataDog monitoring | $380 |
| PagerDuty | $120 |
| Miscellaneous tools | $350 |
| Infrastructure total | $8,400 |
| Staffing | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| DevOps contractor | $5,500 |
| Support (2 contractors) | $4,800 |
| Community manager | $2,800 |
| Part-time security review | $1,500 |
| Staffing total | $14,600 |
Grand total: $23,000/month
For 18 months, that's $414,000 in operational costs alone. On top of the $180,000 in development costs. On top of the $95,000 in marketing. On top of the smart contract audits, legal fees, and token listing costs.
Total project cost: approximately $800,000.
Total project revenue: approximately $920,000.
Net profit after 18 months: $120,000.
That's a 15% margin on an 18-month project. Most of the team made more money from salaries than from project success. This is considered a successful outcome.
Hidden Costs That Kill Projects
Gas subsidy programs. To onboard web2 users, many games subsidize gas costs. At 10,000 DAU with 5 transactions per user per day, you're looking at:
50,000 daily transactions × $0.05 average gas = $2,500/day = $75,000/month
We tried this for 3 months. Burned $180,000. Stopped when we realized users weren't converting to paying customers.
Smart contract upgrades. Every upgrade requires new audits. Basic audit: $5,000-15,000. Comprehensive audit from a top firm: $50,000-200,000.
We've done 4 major upgrades across our projects. Audit costs: $85,000 total.
Exploit response. When (not if) something goes wrong, you need to respond fast. Emergency security consultants cost $500-2,000/hour. We've had two incidents requiring external help. Cost: $35,000 combined.
Legal and compliance. Ongoing legal review, especially if you're operating internationally. Budget $2,000-5,000/month for a game with a token.
Token listings. Centralized exchange listings cost $50,000-500,000 depending on the exchange. We spent $120,000 on listings that generated minimal volume.
Infrastructure Architecture That Scales
After three games, here's the architecture that works:
Game Layer (Traditional):
- AWS or GCP for compute
- MongoDB or PostgreSQL for game state
- Redis for real-time features
- Cloudflare for CDN and DDoS protection
Blockchain Layer:
- Alchemy or QuickNode for RPC
- The Graph for indexing
- Custom event listeners for real-time blockchain data
- Separate hot wallets for automated transactions
Integration Layer:
- Queue system (SQS or RabbitMQ) between game and blockchain
- Transaction batching to reduce gas costs
- Retry logic for failed transactions
- Reconciliation system for blockchain/database consistency
Critical insight: Never let blockchain latency affect gameplay. All blockchain operations should be asynchronous. Players interact with your game servers. Blockchain confirmation happens in the background.
Chain Comparison for Gaming
We've deployed on 6 different chains. Here's honest operational comparison.
| Chain | Transaction Cost | Finality | RPC Reliability | Gaming Suitability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum L1 | $5-50 | 12 min | Excellent | Poor (too expensive) |
| Polygon PoS | $0.01-0.05 | 2 min | Good | Good (most common) |
| Arbitrum | $0.10-0.50 | 1 min | Excellent | Good (DeFi games) |
| Immutable X | $0 | Instant | Good | Excellent (NFT games) |
| Solana | $0.001 | 400ms | Variable | Good (high frequency) |
| Base | $0.05-0.20 | 1 min | Good | Good (consumer apps) |
Our recommendation: Start on Polygon or Immutable X. They have the best cost/reliability ratio for gaming. Consider Arbitrum if you have DeFi mechanics. Consider Solana only if you need sub-second finality and can handle occasional network issues.
Cost Reduction Strategies That Work
1. Batch everything.
Instead of individual transactions, batch player actions. 100 players claiming rewards? One transaction with a Merkle proof, not 100 separate transactions.
Savings: 80-90% on gas costs.
2. Off-chain first, on-chain only when necessary.
Game state lives off-chain. Only ownership and high-value transactions go on-chain.
Example: Player inventory changes 500 times per session. Only the final state matters for blockchain purposes. One transaction, not 500.
3. Lazy minting.
Don't mint NFTs until players withdraw or trade. Mint on demand.
We had a game that "minted" 50,000 NFTs. Only 8,000 were ever actually on-chain. Saved approximately $15,000 in gas.
4. Tiered RPC strategy.
Free tier for non-critical reads. Paid tier for writes and critical operations. Archive nodes only when needed for historical queries.
Typical savings: 40-60% on RPC costs.
5. Regional optimization.
Deploy game servers in regions with the most players. Most web3 games have 60%+ Asian users. Put servers in Singapore, not Virginia.
Reduces latency and can reduce costs by 20-30% due to regional pricing.
Resources
Cloud Infrastructure:
- AWS Game Tech - Gaming-specific AWS services
- Google Cloud Gaming - GCP gaming solutions
- DigitalOcean - Cost-effective alternative
Blockchain Infrastructure:
- Alchemy - Most reliable RPC for gaming
- QuickNode - Multi-chain infrastructure
- Infura - Ethereum-focused infrastructure
- The Graph - Decentralized indexing
Monitoring:
Security:
- OpenZeppelin Defender - Smart contract operations
- Cloudflare - DDoS protection
- Hacken - Smart contract audits
- Trail of Bits - Security research
Cost Optimization: