Can You Get Cities: Skylines for Free? Ways to Play Without Buying It
Cities: Skylines is a paid city builder. Steam Families, store promotions, reward apps and its price history are the honest ways to spend less on it; here is how each works.
Cities: Skylines is a paid city builder from Paradox Interactive, not a free-to-play game. Within a Steam Family you may be able to run a relative's copy, and otherwise the aim is to buy it for less. The card below leads to our price comparison, where some store links earn us a commission.
Is Cities: Skylines free?
No, it is a paid game. Colossal Order developed it and Paradox Interactive published it on 10 March 2015. It is a modern city simulation: you plan and run a city, handling both the satisfaction of growth and the problems of keeping services working. We compare its PC prices.
Pages offering a free download of the full game are passing on unlicensed copies, and those downloads are a common source of malware. If you want it for less, use authorized stores, Steam Families or a giveaway run by the store itself.
On 2 October 2026 it held 91 % positive from 296,923 Steam reviews, and 9,473 players were in a city at the same time that day. For age ratings, the ESRB puts it at Everyone.
Free or almost-free options
Borrowing within a Steam Family
Steam’s store data listed Cities: Skylines for Family Sharing when we looked on 6 October 2026. Steam Families groups a household on Steam: a game bought by one member shows up in the family library, and another member can play it with their own saves and achievements. Ownership does not move; the copy is still the buyer’s, and only one family member can be in it at a time. With no multiplayer mode, that only means one mayor per copy. Check your family library to see whether it is really there.
Store giveaways
Games a store is handing out to keep right now are listed on our free games page, each for as long as the store’s offer lasts.
Reward apps
Some apps pay points for playing mobile games or completing tasks, and let you exchange the points for gift cards that can be spent on games. Which apps and offers you get depends on your device and country; collecting enough can take days or weeks; there is no guaranteed amount; and each app sets its own age limits and payout rules. You still buy the game, with credit you earned. We have no commercial relationship with any reward app.
What the price history shows
Discounts on this city builder are the norm rather than the exception. At the stores we track, it sold below Steam’s list price in 12 of the last 12 months, and its deepest monthly low, in March 2025, was 91 % below today’s Steam list price. The Cities: Skylines price history covers more than two years of monthly lows, so you can see whether today’s offer is near the bottom of that range. Our Steam sale dates page shows when the next major Steam sale starts.
Which package are you buying?
Steam sells more than one package. Its list names them as Cities: Skylines, Cities: Skylines - Starter Deluxe Edition and Cities: Skylines - Commercial License. Before you buy a key, read the listing to see which of these it is for.
The card shows every store we currently track, while the Cities: Skylines price page has the full offer table with store types and regions.
A light game to install
Cities: Skylines needs 4 GB of storage. Memory-wise, plan for 8 GB at minimum; Steam suggests 16 GB for smooth play. It runs natively on Windows, Mac and Linux; the Cities: Skylines system requirements page has the full list. When we checked on 6 October 2026, its Steam page offered 10 languages, Polish and Russian among them.
Store links on our game pages may be affiliate links: if you buy through them, the store may pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. How we earn money.
Questions
Should I buy Cities: Skylines II instead?
Cities: Skylines II is the next game in the series and a separate purchase with its own price page.
Can friends build in the same city?
Steam lists it as single-player, so no.
Guides written and checked by the SuperDuperBundle team against our own price data and the stores' published policies.