These are the best free Xbox games available

The Xbox ecosystem has come a long way since this page first went live in October 2020. Sure, Xbox Game Pass is still going strong, but it’s been made even better by the addition of EA Play and a whole range of Bethesda games. So if you want to find fully free games, or the best ones included with a subscription, this page has you covered with our pick of the best ones to play on Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X.

There are five key ways to get your hands on free Xbox games that either don’t cost a cent or come as part of a subscription:

• Xbox Store free-to-play games
• Xbox Store demos
• Xbox Live Games with Gold subscription
• Xbox Game Pass subscription
• Xbox One trial weekends

If you want a free new-gen game to play on your Xbox Series S or Xbox Series X, take free-to-play World War II shooter Enlisted for a spin. Otherwise, there are scores of free-to-play games on the Xbox Store that work on last-gen and new-gen Xbox consoles. Our pick of the top 10 free Xbox Store games are:

There are more than 100 free demos on the Xbox Store that you can download and play today. Here’s our pick of the top 10 free Xbox demos:

Part of having an Xbox Live Gold subscription means access to a rotating roster of monthly games that are part of Games with Gold. You have to add them to your library each month to have access to them (as long as you stay subscribed). The majority of these titles are offered at a discounted price to buy outright (called “Deals with Gold”), but a handful of games are free with Games with Gold each month.

At the time of updating this page, Dungeons 3, Armello and Tropico 4 (Xbox 360 game) were the free monthly games. In 2020, 24 games were part of the Games with Gold monthly program. The list below is the top 10 free Xbox Live Games with Gold titles of recent times:

Xbox Game Pass is separate from Xbox Live, but can also be bundled as part of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate package. The core Xbox Game Pass subscription comes with a library of games for Xbox One consoles (and works on the Xbox Series X and Series S, too), while Xbox Game Pass Ultimate also includes a rotating roster of games for Windows 10 PCs. It costs $10.95 for Xbox Game Pass or $15.95 for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Now that Bethesda has joined the Microsoft family, and EA Play was recently added to Xbox Game Pass, there are even more amazing games to choose from. To make life easier, we’ve separated this into three lists to cover the best Game Pass games, and then separate lists for EA Play and Bethesda titles.

Below is our pick of the top 10 Xbox Game Pass games:

And here’s our pick of the top 10 Bethesda games on Xbox Game Pass (from a list of 20):

There are dozens of games included in EA Play, so here’s our pick of the top 10 EA games on Xbox Game Pass:

Sometimes Microsoft and other game publishers offer trial weekends (or even longer trial periods) for games, which let you download and play the full version of a game during the trial period. While free trial periods tend to come and go, here’s our list of the best free recent trials on Xbox (keep an eye to see if they come up again):