Build games, not backends.
Managed backend and app server for games and apps. Fixed, transparent pricing for solo devs and teams. All features included, free to try.
No credit card. Live in ~2 minutes.
Fixed Pricing That Makes Sense
Know exactly what you'll pay every month, no matter how successful your game becomes
100% Fixed Pricing
Choose your tier, know your cost. Period. No hidden fees, no surprise bills, no anxiety when your game goes viral.
All Features Included
Core features are available on every tier. You're mostly paying for capacity, not for access to core functionality.
No Hidden Fees
The price you see is the price you pay. No data transfer charges, no API call fees, no compute overages.
Personal Support
Get help when you need it via Tickets, Email, and Discord. Our team is here to support your success.
Global Low Latency
Servers in EU, US, and Asia for fast response times worldwide. Your players get the best experience regardless of location.
Future-Proof
New features are added automatically at no extra cost. Your plan grows with our platform.
Measured in the running system, not estimated
Build for Apps, Designed for Developers
A complete game backend with all the features indie developers actually use
User Management
Complete player authentication, profiles, and role-based access control. Support for email, social logins, and guest accounts.
News System
In-game announcements with scheduling and auto-translation. Reach players in their language via AI or manual translation.
Gift Codes
Create and manage promotional codes for in-game rewards. Track redemptions and set usage limits.
Remote Config
Update game settings without deploying. A/B testing, feature flags, and live tuning for your game.
Localization
Manage in-game translation strings for up to 15 languages from one dashboard. Players download only their own language at runtime.
Leaderboards & Player Profiles
Global and segmented leaderboards, plus player profiles with avatars, frames and badges from your own catalog.
User Logs
Track player actions with detailed activity logs. Monitor user behavior and debug issues quickly.
Cloud Saves
Secure player progress storage with automatic syncing across devices. Per-user storage limits scale with your plan.
User Feedback
Collect player feedback and ratings directly in your app. Understand what players love and what needs improvement.
Crash Reporting
Monitor crashes, ANR events, and non-fatal errors with stack traces, breadcrumbs, and device context.
Email Sending
Send transactional emails to your players -- confirmations, reminders, and event alerts through your own SMTP server.
Validated Actions
Server-checked runs for leaderboards and in-game currency, without writing server code. Cloud only.
More Coming Soon
We're constantly adding new features. Check our roadmap to see what's next!
Honest Assessment
We believe in transparency. Here's what we're great at and where we have limitations.
Fixed, predictable pricing every month Simple, intuitive dashboard All-in-one SDK for all platforms Personal support via Tickets, Email, and Discord
No dynamic auto-scaling (fixed capacity tiers) Fewer maximum resources than enterprise competitors New to the market (but growing fast) Capacity is fixed: when the servers are busy, every customer waits until new capacity is added. Nothing is billed extra.
Integrate Once, Deploy Everywhere
SDKs for every major game engine and programming language
Same flow across every engine. Pick yours.
Create your account
Sign up at horizon.pm in 30 seconds.
Generate an API key
Create a project in your dashboard and generate an API key.
Download the config
Download the auto-generated config JSON from your project settings.
Install the SDK
Get the SDK from Unity Asset Store. Alternatively: Install the horizOn Unity SDK via Package Manager from the GitHub URL.
Unity Asset Storehttps://github.com/ProjectMakersDE/horizOn-SDK-Unity.gitDrop in the config
Import the config JSON via the horizOn editor window and hit Save.
Want full control? Our free, open-source PHP server is a lightweight starting point for your own backend — no dependencies, no frameworks. Fully compatible with all horizOn SDKs.
Looking for the full experience with dashboard, multi-region, and more? That's what horizOn BaaS is for.
Why PHP? For maximum simplicity — horizOn's core backend runs on Spring/Kotlin. The Simple Server is intentionally built in PHP so you can easily understand and self-host it.
The Unpredictable Cost of Pay-Per-Use Backends
What starts as 'free' can spiral into costs you can't predict
Checked 12 Oct 2026. Sources on the comparison pages.
Your game goes viral on a Friday. The bill arrives on Monday.
Firebase
Free Spark plan: 50,000 reads and 20,000 writes per day
Pay per use
Every read, write and function call above the free quota is billed Remote Config is billed above 100,000 fetches per day since 1 September 2026
AWS
A self-built backend from separate cloud services
Billed per service
You build auth, saves and leaderboards yourself Database, compute and traffic are billed separately
PlayFab
Free up to 1,000 players
Metered from player 1,001
$7.15 per million profile writes Standard $99 or Premium $1,999 per month
The Pattern is Clear
Pay-per-use pricing punishes success. The more players love your game, the more you pay. That's backwards.
Where horizOn Is Stronger, and Where It Is Not
Three criteria horizOn is built around. The comparison pages check them against eight providers, every value with its source and check date.
Fixed monthly price
From €0 to €59.99 per month incl. VAT. No billing per request, per player or per GB: at a plan limit requests are refused, not billed.
Three regions included
Every project is served from Helsinki (Finland), Virginia (US) and Singapore at no extra cost. Several providers run in a single region.
13 features ready to use
From login to crash reports and gift codes, in one dashboard and on every plan, without your own backend code.
horizOn has no real-time multiplayer, no console support and no custom server code. The comparison shows which providers are stronger there.
Simple, Transparent Pricing
No hidden fees, no surprises.
FREE
Perfect for individuals and small teams starting out
Users:5,000 Players per day (estimate):~200 Remote Config:100 / 256 values / chars Cloud Save:1 KB/user
BASIC
Billed annually (€119.88), incl. VAT
Ideal for growing teams needing advanced features
Users:25,000 Players per day (estimate):~1,000 Remote Config:500 / 512 values / chars Cloud Save:5 KB/user
PLUS
Billed annually (€299.88), incl. VAT
For games that outgrow Basic. Four times the daily players of Basic at half the price of Pro.
Users:100,000 Players per day (estimate):~4,000 Remote Config:750 / 512 values / chars Cloud Save:10 KB/user
PRO
Billed annually (€599.88), incl. VAT
Best for teams that need a guaranteed support response
Users:200,000 Players per day (estimate):~10,000 Remote Config:1,000 / 512 values / chars Cloud Save:15 KB/user
ENTERPRISE
On request
Your own horizOn instance. Capacity and performance sized to your game, your own domain and direct support. We prepare an offer for you.
Full Feature Comparison
Every feature across all pricing tiers
Roadmap
What's coming next
Friends & Groups
Friends list with global chat, private chat, and group chat functionality
Achievements
Global achievements per API key with unlock tracking
Statistics
Statistical events with filterable diagrams and analytics
Item Catalogue
Define items with various parameters in the dashboard
Server-based Currency
Events and actions that generate costs/credits/points charged server-side
Turn-based Multiplayer
Temporary sessions for card games and turn-based gameplay (not real-time)
Push Notifications
Configurable push notifications for client-side alerts
Friends & Groups
Friends list with global chat, private chat, and group chat functionality
Achievements
Global achievements per API key with unlock tracking
Statistics
Statistical events with filterable diagrams and analytics
Item Catalogue
Define items with various parameters in the dashboard
Server-based Currency
Events and actions that generate costs/credits/points charged server-side
Turn-based Multiplayer
Temporary sessions for card games and turn-based gameplay (not real-time)
Push Notifications
Configurable push notifications for client-side alerts
Frequently Asked Questions
Get answers to common questions about horizOn
Our customers shouldn't worry about storage optimization or compression. We've carefully designed packages based on extensive studies and analyses to give you the best experience without the complexity.
To offer our customers the best possible price, horizOn needs a strong foundation. We're scaling slowly and deliberately to ensure reliability and quality for all users. Capacity is constantly expanding.
horizOn is designed for smaller developers without a large budget who want good server infrastructure. Our competitors have strong infrastructure, but their costs are unpredictable. With horizOn, you get a clear dashboard, easy setup, a free tier to start, and fixed costs you can plan around.
horizOn is optimized for indie games, casual games, and medium-sized projects. It's not designed for real-time multiplayer games requiring sub-100ms latency or AAA titles with millions of concurrent users. For turn-based games, leaderboards, cloud saves, and backend services, horizOn is an excellent choice.
horizOn is actively used by ProjectMakers for several internal and client projects, so the backend runs regardless of paying customers. ProjectMakers is a German sole proprietorship that Simon Daniel März has run since 2016, not a single-product startup: horizOn is one of several products, and the infrastructure is funded by the broader business. Should we ever end horizOn, our Terms (clause 11.5) commit us to tell you at least 12 months ahead and to publish the backend as open source. Your way out is horizOn-simpleServer, an open-source PHP server (MIT) with the same game API, so the SDKs work with it unchanged. It has no dashboard and no Validated Actions, runs on one server you choose, and you operate and maintain it yourself. There is no automatic transfer of existing player data to it yet.
You're Not Alone
Get help from the community or directly from us
Discord Community
Join our Discord for real-time help and discussions
Talk to other developers Answers directly from the horizOn developer Feature discussions
Support Tickets
Write to us directly
Track issues in dashboard Priority for paid tiers Also without an account
What Developers Say
See what developers are saying about horizOn
From a test project to a firm backend strategy: horizOn convinced me. I first used horizon.pm for a small test project: a browser-based shopping list with login, cloud sync and sharing. I wanted to see how it holds up in everyday use. The result? I'm thrilled! No server setup, no database, no infrastructure. Paste the API key, use the endpoints, done. My app was a single HTML file and still had user management and persistent cloud storage. The API is clear, logical and developer-friendly. Sign-up, sign-in, cloud save, everything works exactly as expected. Especially strong: the simple cloud save system via POST with userId and JSON data. The test project turned into a decision: from now on I rely on horizon.pm for games and business applications. The value for money is unbeatable, and the development time saved is enormous.
Read moreTranslated from German
Bug Bounty Program
Help us keep horizOn secure
We invite security researchers to help protect horizon.pm and the horizOn platform.
Report vulnerabilities responsibly and privately Provide clear steps to reproduce and describe impact Valid findings may receive impact-based rewards and optional public recognition
Report security issues to:
horizon@projectmakers.deStart Building Today
Start on the free plan and switch to a fixed monthly price when your game needs more. No usage meter.
* Measured on our status page. Uptime: backend average over the last 90 days. The backend counts as down only when no region answers, because a load balancer sends requests to the regions that are still up. Response time: backend average over the last 13 days, measured inside each region, without the network path to the player. It is the mean of the daily averages across all regions, the status page shows the values per region. Availability target in our Terms and Conditions: 99.98% for the backend.