These are the best free PlayStation games available

Maybe you’re lucky enough to own a shiny new PlayStation 5. Or perhaps you’re still getting your PlayStation fix on the PS4. The good news for PS5 owners is a lot of PS4 games are playable via backwards compatibility, so there’s a natural crossover between titles.

Sony was giving away free PS4 and PS5 games in early 2021, but scroll on if you’re looking for the best way to play totally free PlayStation games or those subscriptions that cost a little to give a lot.

When it comes to the best free PlayStation 4 games, these are your freebie options:

• PlayStation Store free-to-play games
• PlayStation Store demos
• PlayStation Plus subscription
• PlayStation Plus Collection for PS5
• PlayStation 4 and 5 trial weekends

Not so long ago, there were only 30-odd free-to-play games listed on the PlayStation Store. Fast-forward to today and that number is at 125. Granted, some of those titles are free PS5 upgrades for PS4 games, others are the same game listed for PS4 and PS5, some are part of the EA Play and PlayStation Plus subscriptions, plus there are apps like Share Factory Studio. Still, there’s a fair chunk of free-to-play games, and some great ones at that.

At the time of updating, these were the top 10 free-to-play games on PlayStation 5 (the bottom of seven of which are also playable on PS4):

There are a lot more free PlayStation 4 games to choose from, some of which should be playable on PS5 via backwards compatibility. Below is our pick of the 10 best free-to-play PS4 games (outside of the seven cross-gen games above):

There are around 150 demos you can download from the PlayStation Store today, none of which were exclusive to the PlayStation 5 at the time of updating this page. That said, the two entries at the top of our pick of the top 10 PlayStation Store demos below are for PS5 and PS4 (remember, PS5 owners, backwards compatibility covers most PS4 games):

For PlayStation VR owners, we found just shy of 20 demos on the PlayStation Store. Below is our pick of the top 10 best PSVR demos to take for a spin:

Unless it’s a free-to-play multiplayer game, you need PlayStation Plus to play multiplayer on PS4 and PS5. If you pay for PlayStation Plus, you also get access to a monthly rotating roster of games that are yours to keep as long as you stay subscribed. The only catch is you need to remember to add them to your library every month, but that’s even easier nowadays thanks to the PlayStation App.

At the time of writing, the included PlayStation Plus games were Wreckfest (for PS5), Battlefield V and Stranded Deep. Assuming you’ve been diligent with adding the monthly games to your library, here’s our pick of the top 10 best PlayStation Plus games for PS4 in recent times:

There have been more than a handful of PS5 games, too. Below is our pick of the top five so far:

To help expand the library for the launch of the PlayStation 5, Sony introduced the PlayStation Plus Collection, which is a list of 20 games that PS5 owners have access to as long as they have an active PlayStation Plus subscription.

Here’s our pick of the top 10 must-play PlayStation Plus Collection games:

Outside of Sony offering occasional free multiplayer weekends without having to have an active PlayStation Plus subscription, third-party publishers also offer free trial periods for particular games. Free trial weekends come and go (either for full-release games or as part of pre-release trials), but here’s our list of the 10 best free trial weekends on PlayStation 4 and 5 in recent times (which, fingers crossed, may come up again):