Nvidia GeForce Now users just got hit with a playtime cap that's almost impossible to avoid

From January 1, 2026 nearly all users of Nvidia GeForce Now will be subject to its monthly playtime cap. The new Nvidia GeForce Now 100 hour cap will only be avoidable if you have a coveted Founders Edition subscription, with all other users having to pay a surcharge of up to $5.99 per extra 15 hours of game time, if they exceed the 100 hour limit.

This 100 hour cap has been in place since November 2024, but at the time of its initial implementation, existing users were exempt - it only applied to new users. However, that grace period has now ended, and all but Founders Edition users will be subject to the new limit for Nvidia's service from the start of next year.

GeForce Now is a game streaming service that offers the ability to play the games you already own on just about any device. Your games are run on the company's servers, with your inputs sent to the server where the game renders, with the resultant compressed image and audio sent back down to your device. It's currently available in three tiers, starting from free, rising to $19.99 per month, with limits on graphical quality, time per session, and more depending on the tier.

Founders Edition subscriptions were available when the GeForce Now service first launched, offering unlimited playtime among other perks. A year into the service's launch, they stopped new sign-ups to Founder Edition, but existing users were allowed to keep their accounts.

Over time, the relative quality of these accounts has diminished, with the modern Ultimate tier offering higher resolution and frame rate options, though at a far higher price than the $5 a month of the now-renamed Founders for Life plan. However, the perk of completely unlimited playtime has made Founders Edition accounts a still-coveted prize, with this latest announcement further cementing the value of OG accounts.

For all other subscribers, from January 1, 2026, they'll have to pay either $2.99 per extra 15 hours if they use the Performance tier, or $5.99 per extra 15 hours if they are on the Ultimate tier.

Of course, for many, even very avid PC gamers, 100 hours a month of gaming will not seem like a problematic limit. It may technically only work out as just over three hours a day, but that's every single day with no breaks. Once you factor in just a handful of days a month where you don't use the service, you're up to well over four hours a day of use. Even in my younger, Counter-Strike or Apex Legends-obsessed days, that would be the limit of my daily play.

Still, if you want to get a sense of the potential rising price of GeForce Now, one Redditor has usefully tabulated the new cost of gaming between 0.5 and 16 hours a day. Reckon you play six hours a day every day of the month? That'll cost you $27.93 a month for the Performance tier (up to 1440p, 60Hz, six-hour limit per session) or $55.93 a month for Ultimate (up to 4K, 240Hz, eight-hour limit per session).

In many ways, this chart actually goes to highlight just how reasonable value GeForce Now actually is, if, when it comes to your PC, all you care about is gaming. Even gaming six hours a day every single day on Ultimate, you're still only paying $3,351.60 over the span of ten years, all while being able to play at 4K/240Hz with RTX 5080-tier performance. Considering a brand new PC with an RTX 5080 would cost you about that much up front - especially with the current DRAM price bubble - that's not bad value.

Still, most of us value the power of our PCs for more than just gaming, or at least we value them for the ability to game via other avenues than just using GeForce Now. Plus, PCs are steadily upgradable, so you're seldom dropping $3k in one go. Regardless, if you are an existing GeForce Now user or were tempted by the service, you may want to tot up how many hours you actually spend gaming over the course of a month.