Beamable vs Metaplay

Framework vs Service

With Beamable, the backend already exists when a project starts. A developer installs the SDK, signs players in, and calls services for inventory, currencies, stores, leaderboards and events that Beamable operates. Anything those services do not cover is written as a C# microservice and deployed alongside them. The amount of backend code a studio owns can be close to zero.

With Metaplay, the studio writes the game's model itself. Player state, actions, economy rules and progression are C# classes in a shared project that compiles into both the Unity client and the .NET server. Metaplay supplies the machinery around that model: persistence, the actor-based server runtime, configuration pipelines, the dashboard and deployment. This is more work at the start and produces a backend shaped exactly like the game.

Shared Deterministic Logic

Metaplay's central technical idea is that one piece of C# game logic runs in two places. The client executes an action immediately for responsiveness; the server executes the same action against its own copy of the state and remains the authority. Metaplay's documentation describes the result as instant feedback for players with cheat-proof results on the backend. For economy-heavy mobile games, where every tap changes server state and cheating targets the economy, this architecture is a strong fit and is difficult to reproduce on a request-and-response service.

Beamable achieves server authority differently. Sensitive operations are moved into microservices or handled by its built-in economy services, and the client calls them over the network. That is the conventional model, it is easier to adopt incrementally, and it works from any engine. It does not give the same automatic client-side prediction for arbitrary game logic.

Source Code and Lock-In

Metaplay states that it ships with source for the C# game server, the Unity SDK and the LiveOps dashboard, and describes itself as source available and contractually structured to avoid vendor lock-in. Its documentation also describes moving from managed hosting to self-hosting on AWS using Kubernetes and Terraform, which its pricing page places under the Private Cloud plan. A studio that expects to run a hit game for many years has a credible path to operating the whole stack itself.

Beamable is a managed service first. Its Unreal SDK is described as source-available, and its Private Cloud offering is described as single-tenant infrastructure with a full source code license, so an ownership route exists for enterprise customers. On the standard tiers a studio owns its microservice code and content, and depends on Beamable for the platform services underneath.

Engine Coverage

Metaplay's documentation describes a normal Unity project using the Metaplay SDK, and the shared-logic design depends on client and server both running C#. Beamable publishes SDKs for Unity and Unreal, the latter with both C++ and Blueprint access, and a TypeScript/JavaScript Web SDK. Unreal and web projects therefore have a documented path on Beamable and not on Metaplay.

Pricing

Metaplay's published plans rise with the stage of the game. Local development is free. Starter is €195 per month and capped at five daily active users, Pre-launch is €995 and capped at 100, and Production is €1,985 per month including the first 5,000 daily active users, with €2.95 for each further 1,000. Support plans are separate, from a free community Discord to €5,000 per month for dedicated support.

Beamable's tiers are $125, $595, $1,895 and from $3,500 per month after a 90-day trial, sized by monthly active users (1,000, 30,000 and 200,000 on the first three) and API calls. The two schemes are not directly comparable because one counts daily and the other monthly actives, and the currencies differ. In general, Beamable is cheaper to take live at small scale, while Metaplay's free local development costs nothing for as long as a game stays off the cloud.