Eligibility
Developers are eligible for Foundation Mode if they meet the following requirements:- Register a studio in PlayFab Game Manager.
- Ship or plan to ship their game on XBOX.
- Link their PlayFab account to their Partner Center studio and product.
During the preview, Foundation Mode is available for new PlayFab titles only. You can create new titles in Foundation Mode, but existing titles can’t be migrated at this time. A migration path for existing titles is planned for late 2026.
What’s included
Foundation Mode includes the following PlayFab features: Identity
Live service management
Game data stream
Multiplayer
Community
Progression
Economy
What’s not included
The following features aren’t available in Foundation Mode. Calling APIs for these features returns a permissions error.- Economy: User-Generated Content (UGC), including
CreateDraftItem,PublishDraftItem, UGC-scopedSearchItems, and UGC file upload flows. - Multiplayer: Multiplayer Servers for dedicated hosting, including server allocation and management APIs.
- Live service management: CloudScript (classic) (use Azure Functions instead), Segmentation, Experimentation (Targeted Configuration), Churn Prediction, and CDN.
- Game data stream: custom telemetry events and Telemetry Keys (custom event ingestion is blocked; service-generated PlayStream events are included), Event Archive, Rules/Actions/Webhooks, Player Search, and cross-region or S3 Data Connections (only same-region connections are available).
- Legacy APIs including Economy v1, and Statistics v1/Leaderboards v1 (use the modern replacements which are included in Foundation Mode).
Service limits
Foundation Mode includes API rate limits to ensure fair resource allocation, but it doesn’t include monthly caps on usage for Foundation Mode titles. Most rate limits apply on a per-API, per-player basis. This limit restricts the number of calls a single player can make to a specific API endpoint in a short time period (for example, 30 calls per 2 minutes). This limit means that any experience that works at a developer’s desk should accurately reflect how the game operates at scale, regardless of how many players your live game has. You can view all limits for your title in Game Manager under Settings > Limits.Billing and pricing
Foundation Mode simplifies access to core PlayFab services under the XBOX publishing framework. Titles onboarded through Foundation Mode don’t need a payment instrument on file, and all included services listed earlier are provided at no extra cost. There are no per-operation charges for reads, writes, storage, or executions within the included feature set. Foundation Mode applies at the title level. As long as your title only uses the core services included under Foundation Mode, no extra charges apply.Foundation Mode blocks APIs for features that aren’t included. If your title calls an excluded API, PlayFab returns a permissions error and the call doesn’t complete. No usage is recorded and no charges apply. For the full list of excluded features, see What’s not included.
Azure Functions compute costs: While Foundation Mode includes PlayFab function invocations, you pay separately through your Azure subscription for the underlying Azure compute resources (measured in GB-s). For more information, see Azure Functions pricing.
Foundation Mode doesn’t replace existing PlayFab pricing plans. If your studio has other titles that use Pay-as-you-go, Standard, or Premium plans, those titles continue to be billed under their respective pricing models and require a payment instrument on file. Studios can have a mix of Foundation Mode titles and titles on existing plans within the same account.