Is EVE Online free to play?

Yes, with limits. EVE Online is free to download and free to play as an Alpha clone, which is what every new account starts as. Steam lists it as free, and the sign-up page offers a free account. Full access needs Omega, the subscription: £16 a month on Steam UK, or less on longer plans.

The free version covers more than many people expect: you can fly ships up to battleships and keep playing as long as you like. The limits are on how far your character can train, which ships and skills you can use, and how many accounts you can run.

What can you do on a free Alpha account?

Fenris Creations' support pages list what an Alpha clone gets:

• Ships: frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships, haulers and a mining frigate, except Triglavian ships.
• Skills: a fixed Alpha skill set, worth about 20 million skill points in total. Free training runs at the basic speed up to 5 million skill points, then pauses.
• Missions: up to level 3.
• Mining: asteroids, gas clouds and ice, in high-security (green) and low-security (yellow) space.
• Corporations: Alphas can create one.

So you can learn the game, fly with a corporation and fight in fleets without paying. What you can't do for free is get the bigger ships, the full skill tree or the faster training.

What does Omega add?

	Alpha (free)	Omega (subscription)
Ships	Frigates to battleships, haulers, a mining frigate	All ships
Skills	Alpha skill set only	Every skill
Training speed	Basic, pauses at 5 million skill points	Twice as fast, no cap
Missions	Up to level 3	All
Accounts at once	One, and no other client can log in while it's running	Several Omega accounts at once
Contracts	One unfinished contract at a time	More, depending on skills
Industry and science jobs	2% extra tax	Standard tax
Planetary interaction	Can't export from colonies	No limit
Mining	Green and yellow space	Red (null-sec) space too

The Omega page itself sums it up as "unlimited access to the best ships, best skills, an infinite skill queue and much more".

Upgrading takes effect straight away, without logging out. If your Omega time runs out, any skills outside the Alpha set go inactive on your next login, and modules that need them go offline. Nothing is lost: they come back when you add Omega time again.

What does Omega cost?

On Steam UK, read on 11 November 2026:

Omega plan	Steam UK price	Per month
1 month	£16.00	£16.00
3 months	£38.40	£12.80
6 months	£67.20	£11.20
12 months	£115.20	£9.60
24 months	£211.20	£8.80

EVE's own store sells the same plans in dollars, from $20 for one month to $264 for 24 months, and on 11 November the longer plans there were discounted and came with some PLEX. The EVE Online page has PLEX prices per pack.

Can you stay free and still progress?

Partly. The EVE store sells Daily Alpha Injectors, which give an Alpha 50,000 skill points a day, up to a cap of 20 million. They cost money ($7 for 10 on the store, read 11 November), so they're a way to pay for progress without subscribing. Alphas can also use ordinary Skill Injectors, but only into Alpha skills.

PLEX, which you can buy for money or for ISK from other players, can be turned into Omega time. That's how some players keep Omega without paying each month, and it's why EVE's in-game losses can be given a real-money value: see our history of EVE's real-money moments.

How does that compare?

EVE sits between the two older MMOs we've covered. Old School RuneScape is also free to start, with most of its world behind membership, much like Alpha and Omega. Black Desert goes the other way: you pay for the game and there's no free tier.

How we checked

We read the Steam store page and Valve's store data for EVE Online (app 8500) on 11 November 2026: it's listed as free, with the five Omega plans above and a PEGI 12 rating (in-game purchases, violence). The Alpha and Omega limits come from Fenris Creations' two support articles, read the same day. The 5 million skill point pause is also in CCP's 2 November 2017 post on clone states, which gives the Alpha skill set as 20,443,989 skill points; the support page's current figure is "about 20M". Dollar prices are from EVE's own store, which shows a $ sign without naming the currency; offers there change often. The support articles say Alphas can't refuel a starbase or use its fuel bay, but can use Upwell structures' fuel bays; we've left starbases out of the table because the two articles word it slightly differently.