A hot potato: The 100-hour monthly playtime cap Nvidia introduced on GeForce Now in January will expand to all members next month. Users can buy 15-hour blocks of time if they need extra, so a Redditor has created a helpful chart showing how much you'll spend based on daily playtime and what tier you're on.
Nvidia introduced the 100-hour GeForce Now monthly cap for new members at the start of the year. Existing paid members received unlimited playtime until January 1, 2026.
Team Green said that the restriction will allow the service to continue providing "unparalleled quality and speed – as well as short or no queue times – for all paid members, without increasing membership fees." It's definitely not about making even more money, obviously.
Those on the $9.99 per month Performance tier can pay $2.99 for a block of 15 hours if they use up their time allotment, while those on the Ultimate tier have to pay $5.99 for every 15-hour block. The free tier doesn't have the cap, but those users are limited to one-hour sessions, less powerful hardware, and often have to endure long waits.
Redditor appleroyales created a helpful chart to show just how many hours of daily play you can get from GeForce Now before costs start getting close to the price of a full PC - and higher.
The chart shows that playing 3 hours per day will average around 91 hours per month, meaning the base costs aren't going to change. However, if you increase that to 4 hours per day, or about 122 hours per month, and the Performance tier price jumps to $15.97 and Ultimate goes up to $31.97.
Adding more hours to every day's playtime sees the monthly costs spiral quickly. 5 hours a day costs $21.95 on Performance and $43.95 on Ultimate, while 6 hours per day is $27.93/$55.93.
Appleroyales included the 1, 5, and 10 year total costs for each tier and daily playtime amounts. Six hours per day on the Ultimate tier comes to $671 a year, around the same amount as a PS5 Pro and the expected price of the upcoming Steam Machine. Five years at this level will resulting in total spending of $2,637 on the Ultimate tier, roughly the same as a higher-end PC.
Most GeForce Now customers aren't going to play this many hours per month, of course. Nvidia previously said that only 6% of people use the service for more than 3 hours every day on average. But the chart does show how quickly the costs can add up.
GeForce Now lets users stream games they already own on Nvidia GPUs --those on the Ultimate tier get access to RTX 5080 GPUs. You can check out our previous feature – created before the playtime cap – to help decide if it's worth it.
Nvidia's 100-hour GeForce Now cap hits all users next month – here's how expensive it gets
